American people several important freedoms and securities, including the right to ‘keep and bear Arms’ (Second Amendment) and protection from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ (Fourth Amendment). The Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen), adopted in 1789 during the French Revolution, is another key civil liberties document; in addition to forming the basis for the French Constitution, it was a forerunner of international human rights documents.
What civil liberties do we have in the UK?
The right to a fair trial, the right to privacy, habeas corpus (the right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason), freedom of speech and freedom to protest: all of these are in the famous British tradition of civil liberties, gained over centuries of hard-won reform rather than violent revolution. Documents such as Magna Carta (1215), the Great Reform Acts (1832 & 1867) and the Representation of the People Act (1918) represent important steps on the way to ‘freedom under law’ and our modern political system, a parliamentary democracy that is the envy of many other countries of the world. However, despite this strong tradition, we have no single written constitution that specifies exactly what our civil liberties are; and because of parliamentary sovereignty, which incorporates Acts of Parliament into the constitution as they are passed, our civil liberties are not fixed, but subject to change. In recent years, and particularly since the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the Labour government has passed a swathe of legislation in the name of security that has led to widespread criticism of what many see as the erosion of civil liberties in this country. The Liberal Democrats and campaign groups such as Liberty and NO2ID have been particularly vocal in their condemnation of these measures.
Stop and Search
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (2000) allows police officers to stop and search anyone for ‘articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism’, whereas previously they needed to have ‘reasonable grounds’ for doing so. This was introduced as an anti-terrorism measure but has been applied in other contexts, such as with protesters at anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-nuclear demonstrations. In 2007-8 a total of 117,278 people in England and Wales were stopped and searched under this legislation, the vast majority of these searches occurring in London. Fewer than 0.1% led to arrest for terrorism offences (let alone charges or convictions). As well as being overused, the Act has also caused social tensions, with black and Asian people four times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. If you are subject to a random stop-and-search, remember that you are under no obligation to divulge any personal details to the police.
Freedom to protest
Sections 132-8 of the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) introduced several measures that have interfered with the right to peacefully protest, including banning unauthorised protests within 1 km of parliament and placing restrictions on those that are authorised. This was widely viewed as a way of ousting the anti-Iraq war protester Brian Haw from his five-year ‘peace camp’ in Parliament Square. A High Court hearing in the same year ruled that SOCPA did not apply to Haw as his protest predated the legislation, but the Home Office won an appeal in 2006 that overturned this ruling. After further legal battling, Haw was allowed to stay but with various restrictions placed upon his protest, including limited use of his loudspeaker and a greatly reduced protest area. Maya Evans and Milan Rai were the first people to be convicted under SOCPA in 2005, for standing at the Cenotaph on Whitehall and reading out the names of UK soldiers and civilians killed in the war in Iraq. Two parliamentary committees (the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill and the Joint Committee on Human Rights) have recommended that sections 132-8 of SOCPA be repealed, but at the time of writing the government has done nothing about this.
Freedom of speech
An extension of the Terrorism Act in 2006 outlawed the ‘glorification’ of terrorism, even if no intent to commit terrorist acts is involved. Some civil liberties campaign groups such as Liberty fear that silencing political extremists or dissenters by limiting their freedom of speech could make the country a more dangerous place by forcing their activities underground.
Habeas Corpus
As part of Tony Blair’s post-9/11 measures to combat terrorism in the UK, the amount of time suspects could be held without charge in police custody was increased from 14 to 28 days, the longest in Western Europe. In 2008 Gordon Brown tried to extend this to 42 days—this was narrowly passed in the Commons but emphatically rejected by the Lords later in the year. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis resigned in protest over this issue, saying that it threatened to undermine habeas corpus, the right not to be imprisoned without charge or reason established by Magna Carta. The limit remains at 28 days.
The right to a fair trial
The 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act allowed the government to place control orders on terrorism suspects in cases where there was insufficient evidence to prosecute them, for example when intelligence against the suspect had been compiled by using bugging, which is not allowed to be used as evidence in court, or where sources needed to be kept secret. Control orders can take many forms, such as restricting an individual’s movement, work or communication with others, curfews, electronic tagging, requiring the individual to report at a certain place and time and confiscating a suspect’s passport. In 2007 the Law Lords ruled that 18-hour curfews were too long to be imposed as part of control orders, but otherwise that control orders were not unlawful.
The right to privacy
CCTV has been used by Labour as their main way of fighting crime. Since the 1998 Crime Reduction Act, the number of CCTV cameras in the UK has risen astronomically from a few thousand to over a million (exactly how many is unknown). It is unclear whether CCTV has been effective in reducing crime, and the ubiquitous cameras have led critics to talk of the UK’s transformation into a ‘Big Brother’ or a ‘nanny’ state. Other government measures have added weight to these Orwellian concerns. The 2006 Identity Cards Act provided the legal framework for compulsory ID cards to be issued to everyone over 16 who remains in the UK for longer than 3 months. The proposed card can store 52 pieces of information on the National Identity Register (NIR) about every individual, any of which could be passed on by the Home Office to any other public authority when deemed necessary. The cards have been criticised as being too expensive, both for the government (around £10 billion) and the individual (they could cost up to £60 each), and for being ineffectual in tackling terrorism and stopping illegal immigration, two of their intended aims. The launch of the card has been delayed several times, but is currently tabled for all new passport applicants for 2012.
The NIR is one of several controversial government databases: the National DNA database, which was set up in 1995 to retain the DNA records of criminals, is the largest in the world except for that of the US, and contains the DNA records of over 4.4 million people. Of these, 850,000 are innocent, including 40,000 children, while 40% of convicted criminals in the UK do not appear. In December 2008 the European Court of Human Rights judged that the database was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Other databases labelled illegal by groups such as the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust include ContactPoint, which contains the personal details of children; Onset, which identifies potential child offenders by examining their behaviour and social background; and the Detailed Care Record, which enables GPs, nurses and social workers to make unmonitored updates of patients’ NHS records. David Cameron has pledged to scrap ID cards and ContactPoint if he is elected.
The UK public’s fears for their privacy were heightened by a number of high-profile cases in 2007-8 in which confidential records concerning child benefits,
