Law And Order in Blair's Britain

In Blair's weekend email extravaganza, on which we have already commented, one thing that became clear was the way in which a fuzzy conception of civil liberties allows New Labour and their ilk to bolster the case for draconian legislation. Thus in discussing the use of highly irregular legal measures against the disruptive denizens of British public housing, Blair asks of their persecuted neighbors,

"When we talk of civil liberties, what about theirs, the law-abiding people; the ones who treat others with courtesy and good manners and expect the same back? Don't theirs count for anything?"

The assertion here is that to live free of loud music, unruly kids and other menaces is a form of civil liberty. This is even more explicit when Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, defends his boss in the same venue today. Clarke states that freedom vis a vis the state is less critical today because,

"as democracy has advanced so powerfully across the world, other rights become important too. The right to go to work safely on the tube. The right not to be killed by someone who has served his sentence for violent crime but remains dangerous. The right to live at home without being disturbed by antisocial behaviour outside the front door."

Thus we are left with a battle of rights, and which right (in this case, due process versus the right to live a life unmolested by bad neighbors) wins, can be based on a pragmatic assessment of the costs and benefits of abrogating each right (although no prizes for guessing which right will come out on top for Clarke and Blair). Freedom and security have become two points on a continuum and what we need to find is a balance between the two.

But this is not the case. To give a somewhat idealized schematic, civil liberties emerged in relation to the development of a powerful state that had become the final arbiter in any dispute (thus removing a degree of arbitrariness from individuals' relations with one another). To compare the playing of loud music, an annoyance with which people have dealt for many years without needing to involve the legal system, to the possibility of facing government prosecution stripped of all one's legal protections, is preposterous.

That said, Clarke makes the reasonable claim that liberal journalists have reacted somewhat hysterically to recent legislation, often using terms such as "police state" and "fascist". While they might be right to flag up the novel nature of much current law and order legislation, it would be wrong to try and force it into pre-existing categories. Clarke and Blair are probably right that most Brits have not experienced, and are unlikely to experience, the arbitrary force of the state in their day to day lives. This is not the real danger of draconian measures against nuisance behavior. Instead, what people experience from such law and order drives, is the sense that society is a chaotic place, that their fellow citizens are untrustworthy, and that any dispute between them can only be resolved through the intervention of a third party (the state). This is a sinister development, in which, even as they seek to address the lack of social cohesion through the criminal system, Clarke and Blair work subtly to undermine it further.