Reclaiming liberties?

The pick of the weekend’s press coverage of the latest developments in British politics has to be the focus on rights and liberties. The current government has shown something of a split personality when it comes to civil rights. On the one hand it has passed the Human Rights Act, but on the other has passed a raft of legislation that has been used to (deliberately or not) severely curtail liberties. Of course, the Tories before them were not exactly guilt free. Here we could think of death on the rock, union bans at GCHQ, Spycatcher, banning illegal raves (identified as events where “music with a repetitive beat” is played). But people from across the political spectrum (except Labour ministers) have expressed grave concerns about erosion of rights and liberties that took years of effort to establish have been swept away by government since 1997. This weekend a series of events launched by the Convention on Modern Liberty took place throughout the UK. According to the Observer, the event was the biggest convention on civil liberties ever held in Britain. Is this a sign that people are no longer satisfied to watch us sleepwalking towards a police state?

The co-leader of the event lays out his case in an Observer column here. The report by the Student Human Rights Programme at UCL detailing how civil liberties have suffered a sustained attack is well worth a read and can be downloaded here. The article I am going to use for my Media Monday sessions is a short piece by Eamonn Butler in the Sunday Times, which can be found here. The Liberal Democrats have taken a distinctive stance on this and have published a Freedom Bill.