The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Liberty for the Law-Abiding

The Vicar of Downing Street, whose commitment to legality is even now being sampled by several million Iraqis, has placed a special sermon in the Observer to set us all straight on his war against crime. "Our citizens should not live in fear," proclaims the headline, with customary Blairite restraint. "The most important freedom is that of harm from others," proclaims the tagline, with customary Blairite subtlety. "It is not just about tough versus soft but about whose civil liberties come first," proclaims Tony, with customary Blairite egalitarianism.

"Britain, by 1997, had undergone rapid cultural and social change in recent decades," Tony tells us, incidentally highlighting the chronic shortage of English teachers for future spin doctors. Much of the change was "necessary and good", but some of it had "damaging and unforeseen consequences", which was not good. There were weaker family ties, and communities became more fractured, sometimes desirably fractured and sometimes not. Civil institutions such as the church - the only civil institution worth mentioning - declined in importance. "At the start of the 20th century, communities shared a strong moral code," Tony informs us, calling up his predecessor's Edwardian paradise of warm beer, cricket and a low crime rate.

By the time Tony was vouchsafed the responsibility for the country's salvation in 1997, the criminal justice system "was failing every reasonable test that could be applied". Crime, it appears, had doubled (since the beginning of the year? the beginning of the decade? the beginning of the century? Tony does not confuse us with such matters). "Trials were ineffective, witness protection was poor and the courts were very inefficient. ... The choice was stark; either we accepted that nothing could be done ... or we granted new powers to local authorities and the police." The answer to ineffective trials is to introduce detention without trial. The answer to inefficient courts is to take the courts out of the equation.

All this has "a strong philosophical justification, from within the Labour tradition" because "one of the basic insights of the left, one of its distinguishing features, is to caution against too excessive an individualism", except when George W Bush and the CBI say otherwise, of course. "People must live together," Tony informs us, "and one of the basic tasks of government is to facilitate this living together, to ensure that the many can live without fear of the few." Well gosh, I never thought of it like that before.

This basic managerial facilitation imperative is the reason why rights must be coupled "once again" with responsibilities. Tony is opposed to "the breakdown of society on the basis of rights divorced from obligations". Tony does not wish to be associated with "the belief that the causes of crime are entirely structural". After eight years of Tony's restructuring premiership, how on earth could they be? "Instead of record unemployment, we now have record numbers of people in work. Sustained investment in schools is improving education for all. The New Deal has helped one million youngsters off the scrapheap and into work. Sure Start and the New Deal for Communities are making huge differences to the most deprived neighbourhoods." Well, that settles that. Those who remain anti-social in this paradise must be just plain bad.

Tony reassures us that "authority always has to be exercised with due restraint" and that he is "very sensitive to the need to preserve accountability". He will ensure that "good appeals processes are always built into new structures." It is a shame he finds so much less time to detail those processes than he spent on New Labour's record of putting people in work, improving education and getting juvenile resources off the scrap heap. In any case, his final paragraph makes clear that the only other possible option was "to do nothing", and that, naturally, his own proposals are somewhat superior to this. "The basic liberties of the law-abiding citizen should come first." The nature of the laws by which citizens must abide can safely be left to Tony and his chums - those paragons of laisser-faire legality.

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