The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights by Dominic Raab
4th Estate, £8.99
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, director of Liberty, in her opening remarks to the Convention of Modern Liberty at the Institute of Education earlier this year, told the story of what happens when a frog is placed in a saucepan full of water and heat is gradually applied, in order to convey how freedom can be eroded. (The same story is sometimes used by climate change campaigners to illustrate what is happening to our weather, poor frogs.) The frog adapts to the change in temperature, but ultimately boils to death. That, she said, is what is happening to our freedom. And that is what Dominic Raab in this book believes has happened to our rights since Labour came to power in 1997.
As he writes: “Over the last twelve years, the police have clamped down on freedom of speech, restricted public demonstration and stifled peaceful protests – using an array of new powers bestowed by a blizzard of legislation, hastily enacted by Parliament on the flimsy pretext of national security. Wave upon wave of anti-terrorism measures have been introduced by an increasingly authoritarian government, including proposals to extend police detention without charge that even the former head of MI5 describes as draconian. Wide new surveillance powers allow half a million private conversations between British citizens [sic] to be bugged each year by snooping spooks, including hundreds of local authorities.” A charge sheet which, as they say, has the defendant bang to rights. Guilty as charged, your honour.
In case anyone thinks the author, a lawyer who has worked for both Liberty and the Conservative Party, has embarked on a right-wing rant, well, the introduction is written by former Tory shadow home secretary David Davis. His introduction begins with a two word sentence – liberty matters. But in fact Raab’s book complements Just Law written by Helena Kennedy five years ago, although she makes the same case from the perspective of a left-wing QC and Labour peer.
Kennedy’s disillusionment with New Labour came late one night when she was berated by a whip for voting against a government measure when he said her concerns about civil liberties were out of touch with the voters. Her rebuttal was simple. Law matters. In her book she lists 18 instances where civil liberties had been eroded since Labour came to power. She adds, dryly, that she found it hard to place a final full stop to her book because it seemed that every week some new announcement was being made to erode our civil liberties.
Raab carries on where Kennedy finished. They both believe that law is cultural. Kennedy says laws have to resonate with the value systems of a people and their historical pulse. Raab believes the passing of the Human Rights Act in 1998 is fundamentally at odds with the British legacy of liberty going back hundreds of years. He takes particular exception to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg with its political appointees, some of whom have no experience of being a judge.
Raab hopes his book will be part of a debate in the months leading up to the general election next year – a debate about civil liberties and the introduction of a British Bill of Rights. From his Conservative perspective he wants to see the assault on liberty reversed and our rights restored to their proper place within the wider architecture of the liberal democracy we enjoyed before the general election of 1997. There are many on the liberal left who may want to make common cause with him.
Terry McGrenera
