Comment is free: Taking liberties

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Taking liberties Fighting terror and preserving freedom are only contradictory aims if the government insists on permanent measures without safeguards. AC Grayling Articles * Latest * Show all Profile Webfeed All AC Grayling articles About Webfeeds November 13, 2006 11:45 AM | Printable version Perhaps the most pressing political problem we face in contemporary Britain is: how do we preserve our civil liberties while effectively combating terrorism? The conjunction of two things - the chilling survey of the current terrorist threat given by the head of MI5 last week, and the impending Queen's Speech which is sure to contain proposals for yet more civil-liberty-reducing legislation - makes finding an answer yet more urgent. Here is a suggested one. In a time of genuinely serious threat, it is justified to place temporary and careful limits on certain civil liberties, if a good case can be made for doing so. The stress lies on the words "genuinely", "temporary", "careful" and "if a good case can be made for doing so". Assume that the threat is indeed serious. Then it would be justified for the government to institute a temporary and limited regime of emergency powers - temporary in the strict sense that they lapse after 12 months, but are renewable for a further 12 months on advice provided, after examination of the need for their continuance, by two separate bodies: a panel of judges, and a committee of both houses of parliament. The proposal to renew the powers should then be debated in parliament, and voted upon. Renewal might occur every year for a number of years; some powers might be found unnecessary and allowed to lapse, and others adopted, on the same annually lapsing basis, as the nature of the threat evolves. Eventually, the threat will dissipate, and the powers can then die a grateful and automatic death. With the safeguard of annual renewability on these terms, such aids to security as monitoring of financial transactions, use of intercept evidence in court, and longer periods of remand, can be temporarily justified given the threat posed by increasingly sophisticated people intent on mass murder. What is totally unacceptable is permanent reduction of civil liberties, as currently envisaged by the government. The government's probable next leader also appears to be committed to the false proposition that security matters above all else. It matters all right - but not above liberty and justice. Those who care about the latter are unlikely to be persuaded that liberty and justice have had their day and that we must now take ourselves permanently hostage, thus in any case doing what the mass murderers are themselves bent on doing, by breaking our polity and remaking it closer to their own desire. If the government wishes to forge a consensus on the question of how to enhance security while protecting civil liberties, something close to this suggestion must be right. What possible reason, in any case, could there be for making civil-liberty-reducing measures permanent? The head of MI5 says that the terrorist threat might last a generation; a generation is a blink of an eye in historical terms. What purpose does our government think will be served by permanent limitations of liberties once the threat has passed - unless the purpose in question is the convenience of governments even in unthreatening times? For governments are ever on the alert for ways to make life easier in the face of pesky citizens who will insist on having minds of their own.