Civil Liberties: A Left-Right Alliance?

Henry Porter writes:

I often find myself joining progressive and conservative politicians on platforms to talk about the erosion of civil liberties and the growth in state power. To be honest, it would be hard pressed to slide a piece of paper between Tony Benn and David Davis on so many of these issues, or for that matter Sir Ken Macdonald and Dominic Grieve. This is because one of the great divides in our post-ideological politics is now about the power of the state. Do you trust the state and give it every sort of power at the expense of parliament and the people, or do you believe that increasing state powers are not just a menace to individual liberty but a cast-iron guarantee of bad government?

This in a nutshell is the raison-d’être for this website. I firmly believe that supporters of what used to be described as left and right-leaning parties are united in their rejection of overwhelming state power to intrude, oppress and criminalise. I think Tories and real Labour supporters see entirely eye to eye on the unjustness of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), which presupposes everyone is a paedophile when trying to get employed. I think they agree that the ID cards and identity regime which the Home Office wants to bring in is fundamentally dangerous, that the state shouldn’t have the power or the right to control and monitor literally every single private transaction in this country. I don’t think people who were once political enemies disagree at all that it’s fundamentally wrong for Peter Mandelson to empower any agency he likes with police powers in the name of protecting corporate ‘intellectual property’ rights, nor to kick people off the internet without any judicial involvement at all. Noone thinks stopping and searching someone for taking a photograph of a chip shop or a sunset is anything short of bonkers, and I’ve not heard anyone agree it right to extradite anyone to the United States (or anywhere for that matter) without evidence first being necessary, nor through legislation which parliament hasn’t even voted on.

The problem has been in recent years of what to do about it? As we’re in a post-partisan political world, where does your vote go? The Tories are themselves planning on curbing the right to protest and have nothing serious on the table in terms of repealing the legislation which has got us into such a fundamentally paranoid mess. But that’s not surprising -the current, neo-conservative/neo-liberal political consensus isn’t likely to result in the restoration of power to the individual – how could it? Both ideologies (essentially merged post-Bush/Blair) depend on the quashing of the power of the individual in favour of the interests of the state. It results in preemptive arrests at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, it gets non-violent protesters’ heads bashed in in Bishopsgate, it results in illegal strategic wars with the outrageous justification of “protecting ourselves”, and in the state ignoring the European Court of Human Rights in favour of a blanket support of retaining innocent people’s DNA on its national database, when it’s already been proven there’s no advantage in doing so. The binary choices we still have for the ballot boxes are entirely insufficient to alter this odious political consensus, and with more people facing preemptive criminalisation than at any previous point in modern history, the room for opponents of this consensus to maneuver is increasingly limited.

I don’t think all is lost however, and in time I hope this site helps to set about proving it. A minority is becoming ever more vocal about these abuses to our rights, despite the best efforts of our far-right, corporate-leaning press, be it the ‘I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist’ campaign, the NO2ID campaign, or the increasingly strident attacks from every angle against the ISA and Digital Economy Bill. When will it turn into a majority though? When will we start protesting en masse against the erosion of our rights and (still necessary) freedoms? Given the fear people have of our patchwork police state, and of human nature saying ‘it won’t happen to me (until it does)’, I don’t think we have immediate solutions on the table. I think we can however work across party lines, and regardless of who is in government, for constitutional reform by stealth, as both major parties start to realise there is electoral advantage in it, and then use it to constrain their behaviour. I accept that a written constitution failed to curb the excesses of the Bush Administration in America, but we have even fewer avenues of redress against the abuses of the state. The Supreme Court is there – ready and waiting – we’re just waiting for a constitution for it to get on with interpreting.

In the meantime it’s time to say ‘no’. Know your rights and use them when the state challenges them or abuses them; bring your stories here and expose this authoritarianism to an ever wider audience. But let’s also work together to aim for a proportional voting system and a written constitution as well. Of course they won’t be a panacea, but they could be one of the important missing links for those of us from all political backgrounds who oppose this corporate-driven authoritarianism which is making criminals of us all. Our informal checks and balances against government abuse have broken down in parliament – it’s time for a renewed constitutional arrangement to build broader constraints against abuses of power, and protections for the individual.