Personally, I quite like Polly’s columns and I agree with a good deal of what she says. I’m not sure exactly what the point you’re trying to make against her.

You say:

It never seems to occur to her that the preservation of freedom is a precondition for the ability to get the state to meet whatever needs you think should be met.

But how exactly is her attitude to CCTV, ID cards, databases etc (that they are not all that bad) a threat to our fundamental freedoms. Granted, they are erosions of privacy, but the British state does not and can not guarantee it’s citizens absolute privacy.

I put it to you that Polly simply thinks that in terms of threats to our freedoms these are minor issues that the likes of Henry Porter tend to obsess about and overstate.

I think I’ve come around to her view on CCTV. I hate CCTV but every parent I meet wants to have more CCTV cameras everywhere because of trouble-makers.

Her other point was also spot on – for some reason Henry Porter decided to list anti-discrimination legislation as an attack on his (and our) freedom. What a bizarre line to take.

I don’t agree with her main point though:

But the Porter view turns the state into public enemy number one. That is the traditional rightwing view, but many on the left are buying into this creed of individualism against the collective.

Well, that’s because our so-called progressive govt has been anything but leftist…. so why should the left trust it any more than the right?

For me CCTV is a completely separate issue from ID cards and personal information databases, but some of the stuff she is trying to justify is really unjustifiable from anyone on the left…we’ve seen enough postings about pretty much everything else she listed as an “overeaction” on here after all.

I think you’re absolutely right about social democracy, but I think New Labour definitely has the same problem as well…

I have blogged about it here: http://clickeral.blogspot.com/2007/12/o-holy-state-religion-community-and.html

Sunny, you raise an interesting point of contention regarding anti-discrimination legislation.

The aims of the legislation is fine and dandy, but reading the flesh and bones of policies backing up the law clearly demonstrates how anti-discrimination becomes perverted in practice to become positive discrimination – which any liberally-minded person understands is only acceptable, at most, as a temporary counterweight to negative discrimination because it is no substitute for balance.

You provide the same argument for CCTV – the reactionary emotional posture. Understandably polemic, but short-termist, inaccurate and as dangerous as the original problem.

Adequate community policing has been phased out (under the dual attack of failure and obsolescence) and replaced by the illusion of technology and PR, but just when there arises a ‘call’ you should know there is a vested interest behind it and remember that your first instinct rarely, if ever, provides the full picture.

Political debate needs to highlight the lack of messianic solutions which remove all problems ‘once and for all’ to create a ‘final’ settlement. Such utopianism gives the dumb answer and has been proved in every case to fail to address the very real problems in our very real world.

You cannot fully compensate for previous failures – only by preventing future repitition of the failure will you escape the pit of our own design.

clearly demonstrates how anti-discrimination becomes perverted in practice to become positive discrimination – which any liberally-minded person understands is only acceptable, at most, as a temporary counterweight to negative discrimination because it is no substitute for balance.

How so?

Understandably polemic, but short-termist, inaccurate and as dangerous as the original problem.

I agree, but any govt cannot ignore the emotional angle to the electorate. Politics is 90% emotional and 10% look at things objectively. To that extent I can see that while libertarians and Henry Porter make a big deal about CCTV, the electorate isn’t that bothered broadly.

The problem I always have with Polly Toynbee’s argument that concern over databases is born of an elitist preoccupation with privacy is that her view actually elitist.

The ‘privileged’ are unlikely to be trouble by the interlocking web of children’s databases when the criteria for deciding whether a child is ‘at risk’ of, for example, committing criminal offences include financial difficulties, having sub-standard housing or living in a high-crime area. Is it right that those living in poverty should forgo their right to privacy?

The emphasis is on treating children from disadvantaged backgrounds as a management problem to be remediated through Youth Offending Team or CDRP ‘diversionary’ programmes, rather than addressing the structural issues of poverty.

While there is evidence that ‘primary’ prevention – putting facilities and resources into deprived areas – lowers crime levels and improves children’s outcomes, the evidence for ‘secondary’ prevention – targetting individual children as ‘at risk’ of becoming offenders – is very weak. OTOH there is good evidence that stigmatising children has powerfully negative effects.

School exclusion also figures in assessment criteria, but two-thirds of exclusions are of children with special needs, and even the government has accepted that the SEN system is inadequate. Again, a structural problem is being re-framed as personal.

My concern is that the whole children’s database agenda is merely a re-brand of a very old agenda: how do we make the lower orders with their street-urchin children behave nicely?

As for the emotive argument that the central Contactpoint database is somehow connected with Victoria Climbie: even the government has stopped pretending that this is the case. Their FAQs specifically state that Contactpoint is *not* about child protection. In fact they have been warned by several eminent child protection specialists that, if anything, their database plans increase the dangers to children at risk of harm.

I never thougt I’d say this…but…I agree with Polly Toynbee: read the entire article to understand her distinction between individualism and collective civil rights…I think sh’e got a poiunt as opposed to the right-wing libertarian Henry Porter… and it’s good that someone has finally made that point.

Porter wasn’t objecting to anti-discrimination legislation but to the Race and Religious Hatred Act, on the grounds that it infringes freedom of speech. I have mixed feelings on the merits of that particular piece of legislation, just as, like Sunny, I don’t have a strong objection to CCTV cameras. However, even if we might disagree with Porter on a couple of particular issues there is still enough in his article to make a convincing case against the government.

I generally like Polly and agree with much that she writes but I think she’s wrong on this. Of course those of us on the left reject the anti-government, anti-state rhetoric of the right, but just because we believe that it is sometimes right and appropriate for the state to provide certain services and in some cases intervene in peoples’ lives it doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be strict limits on the powers of the state in some areas and that we shouldn’t object when the government overreaches itself and our civil liberties are threatened.

I don’t know what Porter’s politics are – maybe he really is a right-wing libertarian. However, he has been a constistent and powerful voice on this issue and I have generally agreed with what he has said. If he starts arguing for dismantling the welfare state then I will disagree with him equally strongly. If Polly is arguing that some people arguing against the governments on the cibil liberties issue are on the anti-state right then I would ask why many prominent voices on the left are quiet on this issue.

I think a fair amount of those who misuse the language of civil liberties for selfish ends are basically petrolheads. Their main interaction with the state is car tax, speed limits and driving bans.

As such, they oppose things that make the state effective enforcing those for the same reasons a talking fox would be in favour of restrictions on hunting. Once you have put yourself inside the head of somone who routinely breaks the law, and wants to continues doing so, everything else follows.

They hate id cards, databases and cctvs, admire the kind of legal procedure that allows someone on their 11th court apearance for a speeding offence to cleverly escape with no penalty (it doesn’t particularly matter if this happens that often or not – it is an aspiration, a dream that makes them smile when they think of it).

There are a couple of other areas of law (employment regulations, tax law, incitement to hatred, perhaps rape) where they see themselves as the potential accused, not the victim. Outside those, everything is completely different, and they would be enraged by any attempt to apply similar standards.

For example, they might worry if terrorist laws have a politically neutral definition that mean they could apply to something like fuel tax protests, but could give a shit what happens to people with a different set of cultural headgear or country of origin.

Some would say take allies where you find them. Personally, I don’t feel somone is a natural ally just because they use similar language, without actually having any common ground or interests beyond using the same words to mean different things.

The same principle would apply to an actual terrorism suporter, who could easily use the language of civil rights to make an argument actually intended to make terrorism simpler, cheaper and more effective. Such people need to be watched for, and the inevitable contradictions in their arguments pointed out.

You can only laugh at Poll, can’t you?

More CCTV needed to watch the yobs.
Fine.
But should we actually discipline those yobs?
Heaven forfend!

This column displays once again Polly’s naivety regarding the dangers of the database state and the overarching nature of State power. It seems no matter how illiberal New Labour get she will still cheerlead for them.

I too have blogged about this, here: http://questionthat.me.uk/2007/12/what-will-it-take.html

soru,

That was a really good post, so it was.

@6 There are some things which simply can’t be legislated for, however well-meaning and good intentioned they are.

You need to be able to tell the difference between discrimination and differentiation, or else prejudice and your responsive measures become two sides of the same coin – it is ALWAYS an illusion to think any permanent solution has been found by papering over cracks.

In fact you will never even be able to measure how efficient any legislation has been at regulating the original problem, nor will you ever be able to know whether it was the legislation itself or something else that proved effective.

Yes, we need to take account of symbolism, but it is false to say that political decisions are 90% emotional, as it is a self-fulfilling prophecy to advocate policy choices based on the assertion of it – if we want good government and good governance we must fight to improve quality across the board, not to equalise standards irrespective on the implications.

Take the problem over all-women constituency short-lists, for example, which became the wide-spread popular fix-all measure a whole generation after we had our first female in the top political position. Has the quality of public or parliamentary debate improved? Has party membership noticably changed as a result?

Yes, it is possible to argue that political representation benefits from becoming more accurate to the make up of the population as a whole, but this is no panacea for the practical problem of getting and keeping more women involved in political culture, nor does it create a more open and meritocratic system of election to provide positive examples and positive role-models (Mrs T/Maggie is surely still a contentious and divisive figure for women as much as she remains for the population as a whole).

Artificial structures do more to encourage estrangement than to encourage engagement over the longer term – especially after we percieve their failure when the political establishment takes advantage of many restrictive practices to the detriment and exclusion of valuable participation from many who wish to learn and be enthused from experience gained.

Legislation is the corporatist/statist solution which benefits most those with resources (the time, money and know-how) to put it into effect – the old dictum that while the state goes about protecting itself, only individuals can free themselves remains true even today.
And that requires a marriage of education with participation, not solely the pre-nuptual ceremony of engagement divorced from the day-in, day-out reality after the honeymoon is over and taken away from the glare of the photographers.

It is an age-old tragedy for people to try to regain what they never had which will be eternally repeated until they are entertained, rather than used as a spectacle for entertainment.

One wonders why Polly chose to spend the time on that rubbish rather than helping “those whose needs are most urgent”.