BOOK REVIEW: TAKING LIBERTIES
By Chris Atkins, Sarah Bee and Fiona Button
This accessible and well written polemic assembles a collection of views and stories from right through the political spectrum, which chronicle the ways that many of the freedoms which keep Britain a society worth living in have been eroded. Contributors range from Tony Benn to Ken Clarke, from Clare Short to Boris Johnson, and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty to Kate Allen of Amnesty International.
Often hysterically funny, often infuriating, it lists the rights which have been removed from ordinary citizens, the extra powers which have been granted to the police and ministers, and the ludicrous situations which have resulted.
I wouldn't suggest that this book gets everything right or that I agree with every word in it, but it certainly scores more than a few direct hits and is an important contribution to the debate.
Since this book, and the film of the same name which contains much of the same material, were published, Gordon Brown has promised to repeal one of the most ridiculous laws which this book describes – section 132 of SOCPA (the Serious Crime and Police Act.) This odious law bans demonstrations, no matter how harmless and peaceful, within a mile of Westminster unless the protesters have applied to the police six days in advance for permission and been granted it.
The first person convicted under this act, a woman called Maya Evans, received a fine and a criminal record for standing at the Cenotaph and reading out the names of British Service personnel killed in Iraq.
Section 132 of SOCPA may be on the way out, but the remainder of the three thousand new criminal offences which have been added to the statute book under New Labour are still there. There is the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 which has yet to catch a single terrorist, but was used to briefly detain an 87-year-old former refugee from Nazi Germany for shouting “nonsense” at the foreign secretary.
Some of the excessive laws and procedures described in the book are so silly that they are amusing, but other stories will make any reader with an open mind quite furious. For example, after breaking into an airfield and staging a sit-down, a group of environmental protesters were arrested, with which I have no problem. But I do have a serious problem with the fact that after being held for about 36 hours, several young female protesters were released alone at half-hour intervals in the middle of the night, in an urban area they didn’t know, without their phones (which had been confiscated) or the means to get home.
The book systematically shreds the case for ID cards, “extraordinary rendition” which allows suspects to be carted round the world to jurisdictions where laws protecting them against inhumane treatment are less effective, and the one sided extradition treaty with the USA which congress still has not ratified but Britain has implemented, sending a number of British citizens for trial in the states without the need for evidence to be produced of a substantial case for them being guilty.
Incidentally, I have no objection whatsoever to the UK having a fair and even- handed extradition treaty with the USA – e.g. one which provides for British citizens the same legal protections which the American constitution requires for American citizens. If US prosecutors can produce evidence in a court of law that there is a case to answer against a British citizen for a crime under US jurisdiction that person should be extradited, but only if there is such evidence. Just as our prosecutors have to provide evidence if they want to extradite someone from the states.
Some of the most frightening sections of the book are the passages about how Britain and the US have eroded the national and international rules which previously attempted to outlaw torture. Others cover the extraordinary attempts made to push through laws which would have permitted detention of suspects for 90 days without charge or trial. As Ken Clarke is quoted as saying
“At one point the Labour whips office were asking Chief Constables to ring up their Labour Members of Parliament to try to get them on side to give the government a majority. That’s not what a Chief Constable is for.”
The Sun Newspaper printed a picture of one of the 7 July bomb victims on its front cover with the headline “Tell Tony He’s Right” (to support detention without trial for 90 days.) As it turns out the victim concerned was Professor John Tulloch, who strongly disagrees with the views his image was used to promote. As he said,
“Now I’d seen the newspapers putting narratives over pictures of me, and this one of the Sun is such a strong one. The Sun, like a number of tabloids, takes a totally populist view about being ‘for the people’, but they don’t manage even to ask the person they use for this particular story. For me, the 90-day legislation is an assault on civil liberties. And that’s there to put pressure on the Labour back benches as much as anything else, to vote the other way.
“The implication’s pretty obvious. I mean, they might as well have a little speech bubble to my mouth. I was totally opposed to that legislation. And it’s using my image both emblematically and symptomatically, i.e, victim, look what they do, back the 90 day law. And they’re using my image without my authorisation – to do something which I think is going to make the situation worse if anything.
“I don’t think one should be doing the terrorists’ work for them and destroying the very democratic principles that we stand for.”
Quite.
This accessible and well written polemic assembles a collection of views and stories from right through the political spectrum, which chronicle the ways that many of the freedoms which keep Britain a society worth living in have been eroded. Contributors range from Tony Benn to Ken Clarke, from Clare Short to Boris Johnson, and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty to Kate Allen of Amnesty International.
Often hysterically funny, often infuriating, it lists the rights which have been removed from ordinary citizens, the extra powers which have been granted to the police and ministers, and the ludicrous situations which have resulted.
I wouldn't suggest that this book gets everything right or that I agree with every word in it, but it certainly scores more than a few direct hits and is an important contribution to the debate.
Since this book, and the film of the same name which contains much of the same material, were published, Gordon Brown has promised to repeal one of the most ridiculous laws which this book describes – section 132 of SOCPA (the Serious Crime and Police Act.) This odious law bans demonstrations, no matter how harmless and peaceful, within a mile of Westminster unless the protesters have applied to the police six days in advance for permission and been granted it.
The first person convicted under this act, a woman called Maya Evans, received a fine and a criminal record for standing at the Cenotaph and reading out the names of British Service personnel killed in Iraq.
Section 132 of SOCPA may be on the way out, but the remainder of the three thousand new criminal offences which have been added to the statute book under New Labour are still there. There is the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 which has yet to catch a single terrorist, but was used to briefly detain an 87-year-old former refugee from Nazi Germany for shouting “nonsense” at the foreign secretary.
Some of the excessive laws and procedures described in the book are so silly that they are amusing, but other stories will make any reader with an open mind quite furious. For example, after breaking into an airfield and staging a sit-down, a group of environmental protesters were arrested, with which I have no problem. But I do have a serious problem with the fact that after being held for about 36 hours, several young female protesters were released alone at half-hour intervals in the middle of the night, in an urban area they didn’t know, without their phones (which had been confiscated) or the means to get home.
The book systematically shreds the case for ID cards, “extraordinary rendition” which allows suspects to be carted round the world to jurisdictions where laws protecting them against inhumane treatment are less effective, and the one sided extradition treaty with the USA which congress still has not ratified but Britain has implemented, sending a number of British citizens for trial in the states without the need for evidence to be produced of a substantial case for them being guilty.
Incidentally, I have no objection whatsoever to the UK having a fair and even- handed extradition treaty with the USA – e.g. one which provides for British citizens the same legal protections which the American constitution requires for American citizens. If US prosecutors can produce evidence in a court of law that there is a case to answer against a British citizen for a crime under US jurisdiction that person should be extradited, but only if there is such evidence. Just as our prosecutors have to provide evidence if they want to extradite someone from the states.
Some of the most frightening sections of the book are the passages about how Britain and the US have eroded the national and international rules which previously attempted to outlaw torture. Others cover the extraordinary attempts made to push through laws which would have permitted detention of suspects for 90 days without charge or trial. As Ken Clarke is quoted as saying
“At one point the Labour whips office were asking Chief Constables to ring up their Labour Members of Parliament to try to get them on side to give the government a majority. That’s not what a Chief Constable is for.”
The Sun Newspaper printed a picture of one of the 7 July bomb victims on its front cover with the headline “Tell Tony He’s Right” (to support detention without trial for 90 days.) As it turns out the victim concerned was Professor John Tulloch, who strongly disagrees with the views his image was used to promote. As he said,
“Now I’d seen the newspapers putting narratives over pictures of me, and this one of the Sun is such a strong one. The Sun, like a number of tabloids, takes a totally populist view about being ‘for the people’, but they don’t manage even to ask the person they use for this particular story. For me, the 90-day legislation is an assault on civil liberties. And that’s there to put pressure on the Labour back benches as much as anything else, to vote the other way.
“The implication’s pretty obvious. I mean, they might as well have a little speech bubble to my mouth. I was totally opposed to that legislation. And it’s using my image both emblematically and symptomatically, i.e, victim, look what they do, back the 90 day law. And they’re using my image without my authorisation – to do something which I think is going to make the situation worse if anything.
“I don’t think one should be doing the terrorists’ work for them and destroying the very democratic principles that we stand for.”
Quite.
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