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Sir Bob On Liberty
Bob Geldof wrote a stunning column for today's Daily Telegraph on the betrayal of British liberties taking place under the current government. Geldof, best known as the man behind Live Aid, has turned his attention to the campaign of David Davis to put a stop to the government's anti-liberty agenda, specifically the 42 day detention act, but, as Geldof writes in his article, the principle can be applied to the entire range of surveillance measures introduced and planned, from ID cards to email and website intercepts.
It's a very welcome intervention, not least because the supposedly Tory press has reserved particular venom for Davis' rebellion, painting him as a dangerous eccentric liable to destroy the opposition's big lead in the opinion polls by "splitting" the party and distracting attention from leader David Cameron. Davis has built up a true cross-party support for his stance, from libertarians like Geldof to old-style Left-wingers like Tony Benn. Yet the best the British press can do is snipe at the man's ambition - for daring to put country before his party!
We're reproducing the entire article below, but do check out the Telegraph, in particular its comments section following Geldof's piece.
Don't let 'Brave New Britain' remove our fundamental rights
Today's by-election in Haltemprice and Howden is not normal. It is extraordinary.
The people there are not being asked to consider the competing policies of government and opposition. They are being asked to think about who we are, what we stand for and whether we will continue to be the country built by previous generations. This is a fight about how much of our liberty the state can remove, before it changes who - and what - we are.
As a voting issue, it may appear less immediate than the financial downturn. There will be no debate about standards of living, but rather the standards we choose to live by. I hope the people of East Yorkshire come out in greater numbers than ever, because the issue is more vital than even our immediate food and fuel bills.
They are being asked about what kind of country we wish to live in. We may never get to vote on something so profoundly fundamental again.
Let us be grand for once, for we talk of great subjects. Ask "what is the point of Britain?" if we so casually give up the liberty which defines this country, its greatest gift to the world.
Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: "To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right." Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?
What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha'p'orth of momentary panic?
What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This "war on terror" is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment.
How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.
Why should I carry an ID card? I own my identity - nobody else. The war on terror is no answer. ID cards did not stop the bombers in Germany or Spain. Nor does it diminish crime, nor illegal immigration. And if for some mad authoritarian reason they are introduced, stand by for a brisk trade in false British ID cards.
It is comically Orwellian to trot out that absurd authoritarian excuse: "Only the guilty need be afraid." How sickening to hear in England that repulsive expression so beloved of the Stasi-state, which is so demonstrably false.
Shall we say it to the innocent men of Forest Gate, shot, banged up and subsequently released without charge? Shall we say it to the demonstrators going about their democratic business who are roughed up, abused and detained?
Then there are the everyday liberties that affect us all. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - the law that empowers the state to conduct surveillance and get hold of your phone records, emails and website usage - now extends to 786 councils and public bodies.
In 2006 they made 1,000 applications, each day, to use these powers! They say: "Only the guilty need be afraid." Not in Brave New Britain. It is only the innocent that need be afraid. For the state now already assumes our guilt. We have all become suspects - guilty till proved innocent.
It is our complacency that lets them get away with it - our apathy we must fear. Are we so threatened that we must uniquely introduce the most illiberal precautions? The United States feels itself at war, but has an absolute limit of two days of pre-charge detention.
In Ireland, at the height of the IRA terror campaign, the limit was seven days. Australia, 60 miles from the most populous Muslim nation and the victim of its own bomb horrors, only has 12 days. Spain, France, Germany, Russia - all victims of terror, yet none detain longer than seven days.
What is wrong with us? Have we lost our confidence, our stoicism, our bravery and dignity - our sang froid? Not if the great dignity of the victims' families following the 7/7 bombings in London, is anything to go by. Or the magnificent response of the capital with that very British attribute of "getting on with it".
Is Parliament afraid? Apparently not. MI5? They say not. So why imprison people on mere suspicion for 42 days? How very unBritish.
I am not complacent about the terrorist threat. But the Government has presented no case that is remotely convincing. On the other hand, 42 days is most definitely counterproductive. Unjust law is grist to the terrorist mill - allowing them to take from us the very freedoms they despise.
What the terrorists are frightened of is the very thing this law rejects: reason, values, logic, liberty and law; what Rumpole, that great defender of Justice, calls the Golden Thread that runs through British justice. And what moral authority rests in a lawmaking body that acts against the liberties of its own people?
I was told David Davis was out on a limb on this one. Shamefully that is true. But it is the right limb to be out on. And it is a limb I am happy to join him on. It's the same limb that William Wilberforce clambered out on to in his fight against slavery. It is the limb that justice, liberty and rights are perched upon.
This by-election is about that, nothing else. Not party, policy or personality. It is about Magna Carta, habeas corpus, the constitution - what Britain is, was and must remain.
Today East Yorkshire gets to speak for us all, on behalf of justice versus intolerance. To whistleblow against encroaching authority. To firewatch against unthinking power. To speak about an idea of liberty under law. To vote for an idea of a kind of life. The idea of Britain.
Tory, Lib Dem, Labour: who cares - clamber out on this limb with us, for it's where we all belong. Turn out hugely and thank God that you are in a country that is still free to do so.
Liberty is always dangerous - but it's the safest thing we have.
