Civil liberties under attack

I include the trailer clip from YouTube here…

This week we have been watching the excellent documentary Taking Liberties (available from amazon for just £4.97) in lessons as part of our coverage of a synoptic assessment of the way in which the UK and USA protect civil liberties. This could be used equally as effectively as part of a UK issues course, or within the context of coverage of the ideologies syllabus.

According to the no liberties website:

“TAKING LIBERTIES is a shocking but hilarious polemic documentary that charts the destruction of all your Basic Liberties under 10 Years of New Labour. Released to coincide with Tony Blair’s departure, the film and the book follow the stories of normal people who’s lives have been turned upside down by injustice - from being arrested for holding a placard outside parliament to being tortured in Guantanamo Bay.”

Interestingly the front page of today’s Independent relays the story of how protest is to be curtailed by the government at Aldermaston, the nuclear weapons base.

As the papers says, this is a further blow to civil liberties and illustrates how the government is not letting up in rebalancing the relationship between the citizen and the state.

There is an excellent summary of how civil liberties have been curtailed under New Labour in the same paper here.