Very true. The Tory party and their rich masters only got interested in Police abuse when one of their own pompous, front benches got held in a police station for 9 hours without trial. That, according to most Tory propagandists means we are living in a police state. As for the rest of the population they could not give a shit.

As for New Labour, well, they like copying Tory’s. Which is why they are in the mess they are in.

Clause 24? Is that Clause 4 or Section 28?

Anyway, I think it’s fair to say that the steps taken by Labour, in particular on the erosion of trial by jury, have eclipsed anything done by the Tories 20 years ago. The abolition of double jeapordy, the erosion of Legal Aid, the extension of in camera justice – these were Labour policies, not Conservative ones, and I’m not sure that it’s fair to state that, because the Tories got rid of the right to silence that led automatically to the rest.

And I really don’t think that the abolition of the GLC has much to do with civil liberties.

The Tories also eroded certain traditional liberties in the 1980s that many civil liberties campaigners have forgotten about. That said they haven’t done anything as serious as the current lot.

Who cares who has eroded our freedom.

Just give us it back……

Obviously the sins of Labour in this respect are going to be emphasised as they are the ones who have been in government for the last eleven years. The Tories’ record certainly hasn’t been great in the past though – there are numerous examples mentioned above and for all the current talk of a “police state” the closest we have ever come to this was during the miners’ strike in the 1980s. For this reason I think most of us are skeptical about their credentials as civil liberties campaigners, but there are prominent Tories who acknowlege their past faults and do have some encouraging things to say on the subject so I think it is only fair to give them a hearing even if we reserve judgement for now. Personally my worry isn’t that the individuals themselves are not sincere but rather that their views do not have sufficient support within the party as a whole.

The attitude of some on the left, especially certain Labour members, has certainly been very depressing. I don’t include Paul Evans in this – I disagreed with a lot of what he said but he at least acknowleged there was a problem and made a rational argument. Too many, as Shuggy points out, simply dismiss the issue out of hand. There has always been a tendency of New Labourites to dismiss their critics on many issues as middle class liberal/elitist types (somehow the fact that they are overwhelmingly middle class themselves apparently isn’t relevant) who are indulging their own obsessions at the expense of issues which matter to the poor. It’s a rubbish argument, easily countered but it does worry me because it seems to be prevalent amongst younger members of the party, so it doesn’t bode well for the party’s future. Also, supporting for civil liberties and guarding against state-authoritarianism has always seemed to me a pretty fundamental part of what it means to be on the left and if they are willing to abandon these principles what else are they prepaed to abandon? Actually, we can answer that to an extent already.

The opening syllogism is a little unfair – no-one is applying the logic that way. However some of us are claiming that posh people tend to be concerned with DIFFERENT civil liberties to other people (eg not being snooped on as oppposed to not being deported. I think the three most important liberties are freedom of movement, control over your own body and freedom to organise politically. (I’m leaving aside the issue of poverty as many people wouldn’t class it as a “traditional” liberty although for me economic security is just as important a liberty.)

I will admit that the freedom to organise politically has been compromised in some areas (although extended in others) by the Labour government. Freedom of movement has been infringed massively. Control over your own body Labour has been okay on (unless I’m forgetting something huge). However, Tory politicians who claim to be in favour of civil liberties usually have completely reactionary positions on all three of these that are much worse than Labour’s. They are concerned about different liberties to the ones I’m concerned about and I will continue to criticise them for that. Which liberties you are most concerned with is inevitably a class issue just as the impact of the removal of liberty is too.

How did the Tories erode trial by jury? I thought this was one of their no-go areas.

When was the majority verdict brought in?

1967

Control over your own body Labour has been okay on

Except they prohibit or nag you if you smoke, drink or eat what you want to……..

I DOUBT that things will get much better under the Tories but I’m fucking CERTAIN they will get worse under Labour.

Repeating the same actions (i.e. voting for the same fuckers over and over) in the expectation of a different outcome is the definition of insanity.

Here is a variation on the argument:

More generally, despite the claims of a systematic erosion of liberty by those organising this weekend’s Convention on Modern Liberty, my very good constituency office files show no recent correspondence relating to fears about the creation in Britain of a “police state” or a “surveillance society”.

The implication seems to be that there isn’t a problem if Jack Straw doesn’t receive such correspondence from the good people of Blackburn.

I agreed with Shuggy’s article up to the point where he started blaming the Conservatives for the last eleven years of Labour’s illiberalism.

Ultimately the only people it is reasonable to blame for bad legislation are the Parliamentarians who voted for it (or abstained, I suppose).

But don’t you see that Labour’s underlying bias toward the rights of the group and away from the rights of the individual will result in illiberalism?

Shatterface @11, quite.

And surely if Labour get in again (please god, no) they may will even take it as a mandate for even more illiberalism.

Clause 24? Is that Clause 4 or Section 28?

Um, it was the one that said you could nationalise stuff provided you weren’t wearing a pink tutu…

I agreed with Shuggy’s article up to the point where he started blaming the Conservatives for the last eleven years of Labour’s illiberalism.

I wasn’t doing this – merely pointing out that the Conservatives’ attempt to paint themselves as the party of civil liberties is hypocritical given their past record. But Labour is responsible for what Labour have done. I was suggesting, however, that they have done this because they have been pursuing a right wing, Daily Mail appeasing, agenda.

In that case I apologise for claiming you blamed the Conservatives for the last eleven years. It just seems like almost every time there is an article like yours from ‘the left’, the author tries to apportion blame to the Conservatives.

The Conservatives haven’t been in Government for eleven years. And for the past eleven years they have been fairly consistent in opposing infringements on liberty. Not quite as consistent as the Liberal Democrats, to be fair. But it seems hardly a populist position.

The “Daily Mail appeasing agenda is an interesting one”. I am sure there is an element of that. But apart from the dreadful Melanie Phillips, the Daily Mail seems to oppose the database state and surveillance society. Who is Labour appeasing with its measures relating to the database state and surveillance society?

tim f @6:

You’re missing some huge things, unfortunately. Labour have, as Shuggy says, parked their tanks on the Conservative’s lawn, and there’s nothing worse than a reformed zealot.

Hmm. I appear to have been Labouring under a misapprehension, being that the front benches were supporting Nadine Dorries. This is apparently not the case, so far as I can tell: or at least, not where anyone was looking too hard. My last comment was less well constructed than I’d like.