Sunday
(1)Lest anyone forget about the "broken-watch principle" (i.e. even a broken watch is still right twice a day), a reminder is served up courtesy of this excellent and unsettling article by Nick Cohen in the Guardian:
Politicians might be despised, but it is a fair guess that if a home secretary or prime minister proposed repealing the Human Rights Act or tearing up habeas corpus a majority of the population would clap their hands and cheer him on. A paradox of our time is that while ministers are everywhere vilified as scheming liars, and bureaucrats as sinister incompetents, large sections of the supposedly cynical and wised-up electorate are eager to allow them to behave like major-generals.
Sadly true. Mr Cohen even goes on to quote H.L. Mencken:
'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,' said H.L. Mencken. But in modern Britain it's hard to know who is the leader and who is the led. It's easy enough to blame elite politicians, desperate to win the approval of apathetic voters, and elite media managers, desperate to hang on to their shares of declining audiences. But there's also no doubt that politicians are buffeted by an angry and fearful public which isn't overly concerned if the punitive measures they demand tear up civil liberties or, indeed, work.For such great wrongs are liberties which this country fought Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to defend abandoned without a squeak.
Mr Cohen's doleful analysis chimes with my own observations and experiences of life in contemporary Britain and because I often come to the same melancholy conclusions I am sometimes accused of 'revelling' in pessimism. But this is not true. It is rather that I am unwilling to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and ears.
For those same reasons, I find myself growing increasingly impatient with analyses of our current woes in terms of historical precendents (the 1930's, the 1950's and the 1970's appear to be the most referred to). If Nick Cohen is right (and the evidence points towards his being right) then comparisons with previous eras are specious. We are facing a whole new situation here.
Amongst the lodest cheerers for the repeal of the Human Rights Act would be me. It has virtually nothing to do with ancient English liberties and simply acts as an invitation to "liberal" aka left wing judges to impose their political opinions on the rest of us, without the trouble of standing for election. While also providing the Blair household with a steady source of income. Call me when they "discover" the right to bear arms, the right to watch the TV without a licence from the government, the right to say "homosexuality is immoral" in a public place, or the right to operate a business without being required to alter the premises to suit disabled people on pain of criminal conviction.
Posted by Lee Moore at May 9, 2004 06:05 PM
Lee Moore,
Actually, as far as the Human Rights Act is concerned, I agree with you and disagree with Nick Cohen.
The HRA is a ghastly charter of entitlements that has nothing whatsoever to do with liberty and cannot be ripped up quickly enough for my liking.
However, it is our customary real liberties that are being ripped up first and foremost.
Posted by David Carr at May 9, 2004 06:12 PM
A couple of years ago I'd have been on the down with the HRA side, too. (It is still on my fantasy bonfire of legislation.) However, things are now so bad for civil liberty on other counts that I'm a convert. The Human Rights Act may not be much protection, and it may be clogged with a mishmash of positive covenants enforceable against private individuals, but those protections it does offer are ones one we can no longer afford to lose. We may yet be grateful for the forthcoming EU Framework regulations on criminal procedure and the rights of suspects, too.
Posted by Guy Herbert at May 9, 2004 07:15 PM
Lee Moore: "... the right to operate a business without being required to alter the premises to suit disabled people..."
That would be the last Conservative (ho, ho) government's Disability Discrimination Act 1994 coming into force, not the HRA. Though the bureaucrats and lobbyists aren't keen to allow the distinction, rights against "discrimination" are only auxilliary to other rights.
Posted by Guy Herbert at May 9, 2004 07:24 PM
David,
I have to agree. This doesn't just go for rights like habeas corpus, most't even care when so-called public servants brutalize people.
If the abuse at Abu Ghraib had happend at some prison in America or Europe people would merely shrug or even approve of it. The most common reaction to the abuse of prisoners is "Well, prisons are no holiday resorts and you should think of their victims first" (etc, etc). If there were no international angle to this and if it didn't give the usual suspects another chance for anti-American posturing hardly anybody would give a f**k.
Physical abuse in prisons worldwide and endemic prison rape in America (and probably elsewhere) wouldn't be tolerated if it weren't popular. The way many bloggers and their commenters belittled or even made fun of what happened at Abu Ghraib was shocking but not surprising. Only recently investigators discovered severe physical abuse of inmates by guards in a German prison, but the story sank like a stone here.
I'm very pessimistic about the future right now. Some more attacks like that in Madrid or worse and civil rights will go out of the windows, once the state-worshipping herd gets really frightened. And neither constitutions nor any EU frameworks will offer any protection.
Posted by Ralf Goergens at May 9, 2004 08:24 PM
This is why the right to bear arms gives freedom lovers in the US such an advantage. If things get *really* bad, the government is always restrained by the fear that lots of people will start gunning down government agents, including the president. No such restraint exists in the UK or Europe.
Posted by Cobden Bright at May 10, 2004 12:03 AM
I suspect, Cobden Bright, the right to bear arms is beside this particular point. Punitivity and support for state brutality among the public seems to be stronger in the US than in other Western countries. Americans find group particularism, the Us-and-Them game, easier to play than many other Westerners.
Posted by Guy Herbert at May 10, 2004 06:39 AM
Well you'll please excuse this American from noting that in the case of the U.S., THEY really are out to get US. If most of our erstwhile "friends" weren't either too weak to help or actively hostile to us maybe many of us wouldn't feel that way. And yes, I happen to prefer punitive punishment, we've decayed in so many other ways that capital punishment is viewed as one small bastion of moral firmness, cold blooded killers *deserve* death, no crying about root causes. And frankly you Europeans could do with more nationalism (Us vs Them mentality) yourselves, as has been repeatedly trod on in this site and else in the blogosphere, the EU nations are on course to being swallowed demographically.
Posted by Matt W. at May 12, 2004 12:49 AM
