Blair Behaving Badly

Tony Blair’s “public email exchange” with Henry Porter in yesterday’s Observer is well worth a read. In the exchange, Blair defends his government’s succession of law-and-order legislation, introduced under his so-called ‘Respect’ agenda, and provides a clear look at the reasoning that has driven this frantic expansion of the remit of the law. The exchange is a great insight (especially for American readers) because it both provides a summary of the UK’s stunning rollbacks in civil liberties, and helps us to understand how the government has ended up advocating such intrusive and draconian measures.

Blair simultaneously defends his current policies and advocates expanding the state’s security apparatus still further. His responses, in their unerring pragmatism, make clear just how important it is that those who seek to defend liberty attempt to cultivate a principled, non-pragmatic position. Blair continually argues on the grounds of efficiency and efficacy, defending his policies against Porter’s criticisms by explaining that (a) the new laws affect relatively few people (for example, he justifies ending the jury trial right in criminal cases involving “serious fraud” on the basis that the change affects 20 cases out of 40,000 jury trials per year; he justifies changes in law that allow an inference to be drawn against a defendant who refuses to testify in cases where the charge involves causing the death of a child or vulnerable teenager, because “[t]his again is in a tiny number of cases”); and (b) these policies are highly effective (again, Blair: “You complain of the DNA database samples being retained. Since we allowed this, over 14,000 offences have been successfully matched to over 8,000 suspects including over 100 murders and 100 rapes”). Lost on Blair is the notion that we might have other priorities higher than catching as many criminals (or anti-social types, “thugs” in the Prime Minister’s words) as possible, and that there is potentially more at stake than the pragmatic pursuit of police work.

Furthermore, Blair is using the old guise of crime-busting to attempt to address wholly unrelated concerns about a changing society, and the feeling that people are less integrated into a national social fabric. He correctly recognizes that the criminal law as it has historically developed cannot address such social concerns. But instead of concluding that this must be the case in these non-criminal matters, he advocates continued adaptations of criminal law to provide the government with further coercive authority to, essentially, make people get along.
Blair speaks as if he lives in more crime-addled or violent times than his predecessors (an almost shocking historical amnesia) and that therefore the old liberal institutions will not suffice. “You can't deal with the levels of sophistication in today's organised crime by traditional methods. That's why we are giving the new agency new powers to force suspects to disclose information, to open up their accounts; to ensure that their advisers can't conceal evidence; and to track their movements not just in Britain but abroad. But look at what these people do. They traffic in human beings, often, as I heard for myself a few weeks back, young girls sold into prostitution; they deal in drugs, with levels of violence unimaginable in the past. I am sorry to tell you: I want us to go further in all these areas. The alternative is that they, who do not play by our rules or any rules, get away with it.” Blair’s panic over increasingly sophisticated crime rings is belied by the recent capture of mafia boss, Bernado Provenzano, who was hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse in rural Sicily. He had allegedly escaped capture for decades by communicating exclusively through written notes carried by trusted lieutenants.

Rather than facing a more significant threat than ever, it seems that Blair is in a quandary of facing no significant threats—not in the classical sense, at least—and is, rather, facing an internal “crisis” of meaning. Blair describes Britain as “ages away” from “the stable communities of 50 years ago” (but whether the instability of today’s communities is a reality is seriously in doubt).

Of his critics, who claim he is undermining fundamental liberties, Blair says “they are out of touch with their own voters.” If he is, as he claims, more “in touch” with the concerns of the people, these are concerns that are expressed as nebulous anxieties without a particular focus. Consider Blair’s justification for developing a regime of punishment for offenses that would not meet the standards for criminal prosecution:

“Please speak to the victims of this menace. They are people whose lives have been turned into a daily hell. Suppose they live next door to someone whose kids are out of control: who play their music loud until 2am; who vilify anyone who asks them to stop; who are often into drugs or alcohol? Or visit a park where children can't play because of needles, used condoms, and hooligans hanging around.
It is true that, in theory, each of these acts is a crime for which the police could prosecute. In practice, they don't. It would involve in each case a disproportionate amount of time, money and commitment for what would be, for any single act, a low-level sentence. Instead, they can now use an ASBO or a parenting order or other measures that attack not an offence but behaviour that causes harm and distress to people, and impose restrictions on the person doing it, breach of which would mean they go to prison. And yes, because often these thugs terrorise those who challenge them, we allow the police to give the evidence as hearsay. But the result is that where these powers are being used, the law-abiding no longer live in fear of the lawless.”

What Blair appears to be trying to tackle is whether Brits are “happy” and feel “respected”, whether British society feels like a community of old—it seems at the moment that the answer to all of these is no. As he explains: “[O]n anti-social behaviour I agree the causes of this are very deep - to do with shifting communities, dysfunctional families, globalisation and myriad influences, not all benign, to which our young people are subject. And, at the risk of opening another front, the remedies here are quite stark too. The system intervenes once kids are off the rails. This is usually hopeless. We need intervention at an early age… People aren't naive about it. They know the old days aren't coming back. The age of deference has passed and a good thing too. But people mourn the loss of respect. That is something utterly basic to any society. They want it back; and if, in order to get it back, we have to alter our traditional way of thinking and doing, then people, and I mean wholly reasonable, moderate people, will make a very conscious decision to do just that.”

As to how to battle this demon, Blair is clearly at a loss. And his plans for increased state intervention, for criminalizing new realms of behavior and mediating between individuals in conflict cannot help. Indeed, to blow every minor squabble into a matter deserving legal intervention can only increase the sense of estrangement that people experience. Blair may correctly pick up on a mood of alienation in Britain, but his actions can only intensify it.