Casual intrusions

I think we were too casual about the intrusions of the state and should have taken civil liberties issues more seriously

Ed Miliband

Given the long list of "intrusions", both large and small, it is worth considering how we got here. Why did a group of people who believed they had a mandate to produce a fairer society, end up degrading human rights so much?

It is instructive to compare what happened to two MPs after they made small libertarian gaffs. Shortly before Gordon Browns premiership, Jack Straw suggested that Muslim women should not wear veils, because they "inhibit inter-community relations". A few months ago, Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, suggested that B+B owners should have the right to turn away gay couples.

Both of these comments were designed as semaphores to a tabloid audience, not an uncommon practice for MPs needing to expand their support. In both cases, the wrong bits of the media picked up on them and some little embarrassment ensued.

But there the similarity ends. Chris Grayling was denied any cabinet position in the first Tory administration for 13 years. Jack Straw was appointed Secretary of State for Justice.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear

In the 70's, I remember hearing that the police in Spain, still under Francos influence, would arrest people for just staring at them. I thought that was ridiculous and surely untrue. Now, I live in a country where it ls illegal to film the police.

The events of 9/11 seemed to be a trigger for those who saw a new and original danger to Western society. Not content with stopping the terrorists and their backers, they wanted the public to take part in a crusade. Tony Blair made some strange and rambling speeches about the new terrorism, but in hindsight, these were overlooked; there were after all some valid security fears.

Partly under the auspices of involvement in the War on Terror, a number of liberty busting measures started to seep into law. Maybe some think tank felt that we were somehow living in a "liberty excess". More likely, it was probably just that the part of the electorate that would whine most were already lost to the New Labour project.

After the 2005 suicide bombings in London, far from calming people down, the government ramped up the fear levels - while taking little effort to investigate what actually took place.

This paranoia reached a peak with the shooting of an unarmed electrician in Stockwell underground. The accidental assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes was treated as a casualty of war, despite the fact we were not at war. But what many people picked up on was the attempt to push this as "the new normal".

It is a little easier in hindsight to see that Britain is not infested with Saudi trained and financed terror cells just waiting for a man in a distant cave to give them the word. The state must play a careful role in security and cannot really act transparently. So we trade some of our freedom in the hope that this will benefit security.

On its side, the government relished removing liberties, as if their bonuses depended on it. The Home Office was told repeatedly in public and in private that ID cards would in no way deliver improved security. But they proudly stuck to it. Arbitrarily increasing the days that a suspect could be detained without trial was a poker game played with human rights.

I have heard well meaning activists point out that CCTV has improved the conditions in many unruly housing estates. And of course it features heavily in just about every public space. While it is a little odd to see a socially progressive government seek to do no more than increase convictions, the idea that only the symptoms should be treated should alarm everyone.

Of course the corollary of the individual having a little less power, is that the state has a little more. And maybe that was all it was ever about? This post was getting too long, so I will try and make a follow up.