With Labour addicted to regulating how we live, the lone rebel deserves support if we want our freedoms to remain intact
Henry Porter
Sunday June 29, 2008
The Observer
The Spanish parliament last week voted overwhelmingly to enshrine a
system of rights for the great apes - orang-utangs, chimps, gorillas
and bonobos, the species that is closest to man and fashions tools to
winkle termites from their mounds. The law will mean that the non-human
hominids have the right to life and freedom and may not be tortured.
The move is welcome, though there is no mention of the two lesser apes
- the gibbon and the siamang - and it seems odd that this comes from a
country whose national pastime is the terrorising and slaughter of
bulls.
Still, civil libertarians have to take what they can get these days. It
would be ridiculous, and dishonest, to attempt any contrast between the
concern for the rights of the great apes in Spain and the wholesale
attack on rights in Britain, or the worrying signs in Italy where
Silvio Berlusconi's government has plans to fingerprint the children of
gypsies. But there is something to be drawn from the Spanish law which
captures the essence of any system of rights -for great apes or humans
- and that is the empathetic Christian tenet to treat others as you
would be treated yourself. This is civilisation, progress.
Forget bonobos. In Britain, we have regressed and that is the trend
which David Davis is importantly drawing attention to in the run-up to
his byelection and no doubt beyond. Rights, liberties and the liberty
instinct are evaporating in this country, partly through ignorance of
the historic struggle to win our freedoms - and the civilising effect
this had on the world - and partly from selfishness and fear that has
been remorselessly encouraged by the tabloid press. Into this gap have
stepped sinister forces in the Civil Service and a government
programmed to think of governance as no more than control.
We may be at the stage where we should coldly ask what is the point of
personal freedom in our society? Russia has democracy without liberty
and China has capitalism without democracy or liberty. Does the 21st
century need to bother with the thing that tied up so much effort in
the previous 250 years? Have personal freedom and rights become
redundant, rather like the familiar objects that are gradually
disappearing in our de-physicalised world - letters, CDs, road maps,
photos, address book, albums?
Would it not be simpler if we handed over our rights to people like
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who last week announced that the state
will identify children as young a five as being at risk of becoming
criminals and troublemakers and force their parents to sign legally
binding contracts to control those children? Do we sacrifice the
freedom to bring up children as best we can, to assembly, to protest,
to free speech and privacy of communication and movement for the -
unguaranteed - freedom from terror, crime and antisocial behaviour?
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister a year ago, for a brief moment
it looked as though he might just provide some of the right answers to
these questions. A couple of months after he succeeded Tony Blair, the
Department of Justice published a fat report entitled 'A British Bill
of Rights: Informing the Debate'. We haven't advanced on a bill of
rights and there wasn't even much of a debate. However, three months
later, Justice Secretary Jack Straw declared: 'Yes, the sun does rise
in the East. And yes, we have deepened and extended civil liberties for
all', sentences which should earn him a pelting with soft fruit
whenever he appears in public.
As Davis points out, Brown has banged on about Britishness in an
attempt to bolster the Union, but in successive measures, culminating
in 42-day pre-charge detention, has attacked the very essence of
Britishness. It is interesting that among the strongest responses to
Davis's stand is the fierce bewilderment of people who remember the
last war and what we were fighting for.
So who is to answer those questions? Certainly not Labour, though there
are many good people on the backbenches. The Liberal Democrats already
have done so because, to a man and woman, they are ardently for
freedom, even though they could do much more to contribute to the
public understanding of the issues. So it must be the Tories, right?
Well, maybe. In an essay to be published on the Our Kingdom website,
constitutional campaigner Anthony Barnett says: 'The action David Davis
took was profoundly radical because what he was saying from the steps
of the House of Commons is that Parliament won't defend us because it
is corrupted and suborned.'
There is some truth in that. If the Tory party was totally at ease with
the issues of liberty and rights and did not fear being boxed into a
corner by another terrorist attack, there would be no need for Davis to
resign his seat. With Labour's dreadful showing in the polls, the
Tories may be tempted to sit on their hands and simply watch the
beleaguered Brown without making any big analysis. A trawl along the
frontbench last week provided some interesting reactions, especially
from those regarded as authoritarian. There was greater warmth for
Davis than I had expected, though it is still hedged with doubt about
his resignation. They concede that he has received more support than
they thought was out there and better coverage than they expected.
In terms of individuals, David Cameron, whom I regard as unreadable, is
said to be more libertarian than his friend, the shadow Chancellor
George Osborne. Dominic Grieve, who has succeeded Davis as shadow Home
Secretary, is solidly libertarian. Andrew Lansley (health), David
Willetts (innovation, universities and skills), Nick Herbert (justice),
and Michael Gove (children, schools and families) are said to be less
absolute. Gove offered this about Conservatives in general: 'In my
observation of Tory grassroots, there are grave concerns about liberty
and civil liberties in particular. The Conservatives of England are
more exercised about the erosion of civil liberties than the centre.'
That may explain the popular support for Davis.
The mystery perhaps is why he is left to make the big argument, because
there are political opportunities here. The first is that Labour has
betrayed its mission to champion the poor and vulnerable. A report by
Independent Scheme Assurance Panel on ID cards found that not only
would there be inbuilt mistakes in the database, but that poorer people
would suffer a greater risk of fraud. This follows the pattern set in
Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act, which allows bailiffs to offer
violence to householders while seizing goods in settlement of fines,
and in the thousands of criminal justice measures that place people
beyond the law who were not previously guilty of any offence.
What is fascinating about New Labour's seeming horror of the underclass
and frustration with its problems is that both display a lack of the
empathy required in any system of rights or in those who fight for
social justice. This overlap is important because it underlines the
truth that there can be no social justice without a proper respect for
the rights of everyone. The Tories could surely demonstrate Labour's
failure in this department.
The second opportunity concerns the traditional Conservative mission to
champion the individual and roll back state power. Last week, the
Poynter review on the loss of 25 million records from HM Revenue &
Customs was published. The culprits - Gordon Brown, Dawn Primarolo MP
and David Varney, the former head of the HRMC - have all moved on to
other jobs, in Varney's case to the Transformational Government project
that will oversee the merger of all government databases in a monstrous
implement of surveillance. Forget privacy, let's just think about the
appalling, and expensive, mess that this is likely to result in. And
while we're about it, the waste of public funds in local government
surveillance operations and CCTV systems which Detective Chief
Inspector Mike Neville, Scotland Yard's CCTV expert, declared an 'utter
fiasco'.
With the Tories' post-bureaucratic theme, there is surely more to be
made of the relentless aggregation of power to the centre, seen in the
planning bill that seizes democratic rights from the people and places
them in the hands of an unelected quango or the measure proposed in the
counterterrorism bill that allows ministers to interfere with the
running of coroners' courts. What do Conservatives stand for if not
smaller government, much less matronly interference, devolution of
power, privacy and the freedom of the individual to express and fulfil
him or herself to the maximum of their potential?
Parliament had better begin to address these issues soon or a chimpanzee living in Spain will have more rights than you and me.
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