Thread: London - "it's down to us to protect our freedoms"

Comment

After a sinister year, it's down to us to protect our freedoms


In 2007, we should demand that MPs of all parties fight to restore the liberties which have been stolen by this government

Henry Porter
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer

An article in the New Scientist has reported that a rhesus monkey named Murph and a bottlenose dolphin called Natua, which lives in a harbour in Florida, have both exhibited a fascinating ability when doing reward-based tests. As well as being able to understand when they answered right or wrong, they learned to signal when they didn't know something and so avoid the disappointment of being wrong. Like Mastermind contestants, they elected to 'pass'.

Knowing what you don't know is a type of abstract thought process called metacognition. A pigeon doesn't know what it doesn't know, but Murph and Natua do and that means they are both very intelligent and have a basic requirement for consciousness.
It occurred to me that during 2006, most of us have been exhibiting precisely the opposite to Murph and Natua's talent. We don't know what we know. Or, rather, we chose not to know the incontestable and unequivocal truth about the character of this government. Certainly, we know about the sale of peerages, the scandal over the manipulation of legal advice and intelligence before the Iraq war, the constant move to centralise power and authority at the expense of ordinary people and the associated contempt for parliamentary scrutiny.

We knew these things, but decided not to know them in the political sense, that is, to remain conscious of them, to hold them at the front of our minds and create the weight of opinion necessary to restrain a government.

So we must accept part of the responsibility for this government's high-handed behaviour, though the lion's share goes to Tony Blair and those members of his cabinet who have been most active in the degradation of standards and the general attack on liberty, which has been unapologetically the concern of this column for so much of 2006.
A year ago, it was difficult not to be depressed. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act was about to come into force and so allow the police to arrest anyone for any offence and take their fingerprints, photo and DNA whether they were charged or not. Ahead of us lay the bill which would ban the glorification of terrorism and the ID card bill, both of which were passed after forlorn opposition in the Lords. There were many measures we had no idea about. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, for instance, which lurked in Labour's programme and offered ministers the chance to bypass parliament and make laws by decree. This was watered down a little after a few in the press alerted MPs to the actual nature of the bill.

We had no such luck with the slew of criminal justice legislation announced by John Reid, Charles Clarke's replacement at the Home office. The police demanded and received legislation allowing them discretionary powers that properly belong to the courts. Barely a week went by without Reid unveiling a tough new package to address terrorism, organised crime or delinquency. The theme of this legislation was to reduce defendants' rights and make the business of obtaining a conviction easier.

And still the nation slept, believing that in some way this frenzy of law-making was benevolent and protective rather than a menace to the rule of law. A year has gone past, but can anyone honestly say that they feel more secure after all this activity? Of course not, because the effect of late-period Blair legislation has been to extend the powers of the executive and of the police - who have got everything they wanted from him - while diminishing the individual and his rights.

The judiciary has never been more concerned. It is unusual for one of the country's most senior judges to approach a journalist and ask him what the hell has got into the Prime Minister.

Judges don't do this sort of thing. But this judge wanted to know whether I thought he should read developments as an expression of New Labour's character in general or of Tony Blair's in particular? Was the government set on this disastrous course for the foreseeable future? How bad was the crisis? We will not know the answer until Tony Blair has gone and we see how Gordon Brown reacts to the gradually mounting concern about civil liberties.

This last year has been lowering because the government's hand was rarely ever stayed. Indeed, sometimes it seemed that in making the argument about liberties, we only succeeded in inflaming Blair's passion to remove more of them. And in this, he was aided by the tabloid press, which intentionally confused the idea of human rights with every category of unearned, frivolous and vexatious claim produced by the modern culture of entitlement. Something has to be done in 2007 to separate the two and to restore nobility to the cause of human rights.

But 2006 was not without achievement or hope. The opposition parties have at last taken the cause of British freedom to heart. Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are against the ID card and both have begun to talk seriously about a bill of rights to secure and embed the liberties that we once took for granted. The Liberal Democrats have suggested a general act to repeal all the authoritarian laws that Blair has slipped on to the statute book while we weren't looking.

What I hope has been gained in the dark hours of 2006 was an understanding of the preciousness of liberty and our democratic institutions. At the beginning of the year, I was astonished how little MPs understood about so many measures passed by their own house. Knowledge of the Inquiries Act or the Civil Contingencies Act, both of which reduce parliamentary scrutiny, was hard to come by. No more than one in 10 MPs could have told you how, using the Courts Act together with the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, the government swept away a 400-year-old common law, which guaranteed that an Englishman's home was his castle and that no bailiff could break in to collect civil debts.

That kind of ignorance among legislators is not nearly so common now. Labour MPs are beginning to see that many of the laws passed in the last nine years persecute those who are least able to defend themselves, the very people that Labour has traditionally championed.

As things stand, single mothers are to be given Asbos if they cannot control their children. Changes in legal aid will mean that it will that much harder to provide adequate defence. The collection of fines by bailiffs using forced entry is penalising - to say nothing of terrorising - many innocent people who happen to share an address with an offender. Often, these are women and children who know nothing about the fine.
There are signs of unease about the tone of these laws among many decent Labour MPs and we can expect their views to become more sharply expressed when Blair leaves office. For despite the Chancellor's brooding presence, he is unlikely to start out with the total control that Blair imposed on the party.

Another achievement of 2006 has been a vivid appreciation of the threat of databases, the potential for abuse in the ID national identity register, the national health database and the national children's index, which, until September, was being set up in conditions of virtual secrecy. In 2007, the fight must go on to popularise the menace that this apparatus of surveillance presents to democracy.

So the analysis has been done. We can see what New Labour has been up to much more clearly than we did a year ago. In 2007, we should resolve to know what we know and re-engage with politics. It is evident that there is no better way of achieving this than a public debate about a bill of rights - with or without New Labour's participation.
henry.porter@observer.co.uk

Guardian Unlimited
Comment
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comme...980598,00.html

Seems like Blair and Bush both were busy doing the same corrupt things to their countries and the people.

Let's maintain some perspective here: Britain is still a monarchy masquerading as a free republic. Everyone and everything still belongs to the Crown, which is why British citizens are called subjects. The British have no Bill of Rights but rather an informal and unwritten collection of general principles which may, of course, be set aside at the discretion of the sovereign ( http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/uk00000_.html ). Most of the protections of the Magna Carta have been repealed, leaving only three clauses in force in British law. A guarantee of rights that may be repealed is scarcely worth the parchment it was written on. Because Britain is a monarchy, any grants by the sovereign to the people may be annulled by sovereign privilege, but it is generally left to the Parliament to do the dirty work. Here in the US, our Bill of Rights may not be set aside or annulled, but we may individually waive any right. So our government sets aside our rights by having us do it for them by entering into UCC agreements without making the required reservation of rights specified under sec. 1-207. Because our laws are now administered under the lex mercatorum, we are deemed to have waived any rights for which we do not provide proof of specific and timely reservation unless the government specifically reserves those rights for us or does not require waiver. That's why bits and pieces of the Bill of Rights still appear tobe intact while others do not. Once your John Hancock is on a federal agreement without a reservation of rights, those rights not preserved at the other party's (typically the federal government or one of the agents for the government's creditors, and possibly the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire) discretion have been waived.

So the happy-go-lucky Brits have never had any rights for the government to violate, at least not by our definition of inalienable liberties, while the stupid Americans simply sign theirs away and then make no effort to reclaim them once they are made aware of the requirement for a reservation and the detrimental effects of UCC agreements. One nation's people are blind while the other's have their eyelids tightly squeezed shut.

Let's maintain some perspective here:

uhhh don't kill the messenger I just posted it. The private opinion of a British citizen who is doing something besides whining they need the government to protect them from the government.

Originally Posted by xanadu

Let's maintain some perspective here:

uhhh don't kill the messenger I just posted it. The private opinion of a British citizen who is doing something besides whining they need the government to protect them from the government.

I'm not killing the messenger. I'm just pointing out that it's rather silly for a British subject to opine on the subject of rights when he has none. If the British don't like the idea of the government deciding how far it may abuse its subjects, then they need to stop taking rhetorical shots at the US and start casting off bad government as the Americans did 230 years ago. Then maybe they can set about avoiding our subsequent mistakes. I guess I just have little patience for a neutered lap dog whining when its owner whacks it with a rolled up newspaper for climbing onto the new furniture.

then they need to stop taking rhetorical shots at the US and start casting off bad government as the Americans did 230 years ago. Then maybe they can set about avoiding our subsequent mistakes.

Well if there is anything left of the American spirit I suspect we will be doing the same thing. I pray this backfires so harshly in the face of these evil people that it is remembered five hundred years from now and NO ONE ever attempts to enslave people again. Ya Ya I know I have two modes small prayers and a huge amount of bitter sarcasim for the moment.

I guess I just have little patience for a neutered lap dog whining when its owner whacks it with a rolled up newspaper for climbing onto the new furniture.

I understand that sentiment fully but still they are peaceful people who may or may not suffer as greatly as Americans. And the last comment I heard from one of them was "I'll be glad to give up a few freedoms for protection." DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH