The short walk to unfreedom
The Sunday Times yesterday carried an interview with the historian Richard Overy, whose book on the Thirties (The Morbid Age) suggests parallels with our own fractious era. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
A brief period of time. That's not something we hear very much. The usual language for the coming of the surveillance state - which most now recognise, and which some still welcome, though opposition is steadily increasing - is gradualist. The erosion of liberty. The salami-slicing of freedoms. A frog placed in lukewarm water that is slowly brought to the boil (Shami Chakrabarti's favourite metaphor). Function creep. Sleepwalking into a dystopian future of total state oversight. And so forth.
But it's not really that slow and gradual, if you think about it. While many of the developments - ID registers, the DNA database, the placement of CCTV cameras - have indeed been on the horizon for quite a long time, the total surveillance state that is now almost upon us began to be constructed not much more than a decade ago. And a decade, in the grand sweep of history, is a very short period, however long a week may seem to be in politics. Without making invidious comparisons, it's a similar span of time that saw the transformation of Germany from a humane liberal democracy, in which the Jewish population was among the best integrated in Europe, to a totalitarian state, wedded to a crazy racialist ideology, that was building gas chambers for the untermenschen.
In his book about the Nazis, The Third Reich, Michael Burleigh prayed in aid a similar gruadualist metaphor, that of a bridge being steadily rebuilt bolt by bolt and girder by girder, until not one piece of the original remained. Doubtless that was how it seemed to people at the time, but with hindsight the rapidity is amazing.
Of course, there are some major differences between Nazi Germany and New Labour Britain. Not least, the transformation of Germany was accompanied by a powerful and all-pervasive rhetoric of change. The erosion, sorry demolition, of civil liberties in modern Britain has been disguised with lulling talk of "preserving our way of life" and "protecting our shared values". Thus far-reaching increases in police and civil service powers, the construction of all-knowing databases, the bureaucratisation and formalisation of normal life - expressed in the spread of "health and safety" culture and endless, unnecessary demands for ID - are spun as small-scale compromises and as the inevitable ramifications of modern life.
Our politicians talk of change, even transformation, but as something that ought to happen ("We need a change") or as something that is happening to our society whether we want it to or not ("In this rapidly changing, interconnected world..."). Most of the time they offer their plans as antidotes to change, coping mechanisms, necessary accommodations, devices for mitigating the most disruptive aspects of the changes that cannot be avoided. What they don't tend to admit is that their policies are the change. Terrorists, binge-drinking teenagers, paedophiles, "increasingly sophisticated" international criminals, those are the true change-makers, we are told. They are the reason why you can be arrested for writing down the number of a police car (as nearly happened to Peter Hitchens the other day) or interrogated by overweening customs officials when entering your own country (like Robert Crampton) or CRB-checked by your own child’s school (like Suzanne Moore).
A misprint in Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain quotes the privacy commissioner, Richard Thomas, as saying that 21st century Britain "had becoming a surveillance society". That's a very accurate summation.
Overy left the Labour party in 1997, when Blair was elected prime minister, and now describes himself as a nonaligned member of the (nonexistent) sceptical party. His central political position — which is not really right or left — is that we need to resist the overweening claims of the state. “We are rapidly moving towards a society that is dominated by people in uniform. The state’s claims are increasingly absolute. That’s happened in a very, very brief period of time. We are in danger of creating a worse situation than the one we are fearful about.”
A brief period of time. That's not something we hear very much. The usual language for the coming of the surveillance state - which most now recognise, and which some still welcome, though opposition is steadily increasing - is gradualist. The erosion of liberty. The salami-slicing of freedoms. A frog placed in lukewarm water that is slowly brought to the boil (Shami Chakrabarti's favourite metaphor). Function creep. Sleepwalking into a dystopian future of total state oversight. And so forth.
But it's not really that slow and gradual, if you think about it. While many of the developments - ID registers, the DNA database, the placement of CCTV cameras - have indeed been on the horizon for quite a long time, the total surveillance state that is now almost upon us began to be constructed not much more than a decade ago. And a decade, in the grand sweep of history, is a very short period, however long a week may seem to be in politics. Without making invidious comparisons, it's a similar span of time that saw the transformation of Germany from a humane liberal democracy, in which the Jewish population was among the best integrated in Europe, to a totalitarian state, wedded to a crazy racialist ideology, that was building gas chambers for the untermenschen.
In his book about the Nazis, The Third Reich, Michael Burleigh prayed in aid a similar gruadualist metaphor, that of a bridge being steadily rebuilt bolt by bolt and girder by girder, until not one piece of the original remained. Doubtless that was how it seemed to people at the time, but with hindsight the rapidity is amazing.
Of course, there are some major differences between Nazi Germany and New Labour Britain. Not least, the transformation of Germany was accompanied by a powerful and all-pervasive rhetoric of change. The erosion, sorry demolition, of civil liberties in modern Britain has been disguised with lulling talk of "preserving our way of life" and "protecting our shared values". Thus far-reaching increases in police and civil service powers, the construction of all-knowing databases, the bureaucratisation and formalisation of normal life - expressed in the spread of "health and safety" culture and endless, unnecessary demands for ID - are spun as small-scale compromises and as the inevitable ramifications of modern life.
Our politicians talk of change, even transformation, but as something that ought to happen ("We need a change") or as something that is happening to our society whether we want it to or not ("In this rapidly changing, interconnected world..."). Most of the time they offer their plans as antidotes to change, coping mechanisms, necessary accommodations, devices for mitigating the most disruptive aspects of the changes that cannot be avoided. What they don't tend to admit is that their policies are the change. Terrorists, binge-drinking teenagers, paedophiles, "increasingly sophisticated" international criminals, those are the true change-makers, we are told. They are the reason why you can be arrested for writing down the number of a police car (as nearly happened to Peter Hitchens the other day) or interrogated by overweening customs officials when entering your own country (like Robert Crampton) or CRB-checked by your own child’s school (like Suzanne Moore).
A misprint in Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain quotes the privacy commissioner, Richard Thomas, as saying that 21st century Britain "had becoming a surveillance society". That's a very accurate summation.
Comments
Peter Hitchens wasn't arrested. Oooh how scary! I wasn't arrested yesterday either - proof positive that civil liberties as we know it are a thing of the past. Put on your Tin Foil Hats! Peter Hitchens is not what one might call a reliable source or particularly well balanced, after all somebody who doesn't rate Stephen Fry is clearly a couple of sandwiches short of the full hamper.
The state can be rolled forward. The state can, and has, been rolled back. Yes it was found that local councils were exceeding the intentions of parliament with their usage of RIPA powers. They were then made to stop. You should be pleased, democratic oversight and accountability working exactly as its supposed to.
But are you pleased? No you do not appear to be, you look like someone has shot your fox just as you got the hunt assembled. You seem determined to have a jolly good gallop around and blow your horns even though the fox is already dead.
And you've seriously misrepresented the Robert Crampton article. So long as the UK fails to grow up and properly join in with the EU we'll always have these wretched immigration holdups and delays to endure. When exactly do you imagine that border control were happy to see someone with an ancient passport that could well be a fake?
If you're sensible then like me you'll register with IRIS and sail through at arrivals. You won't have to queue or even produce your passport! But then again you will have to take off your Tin Foil Hat. It's a free country - you can make your own choice.
As for your other points, it is treating everyone who offers to give children a lift home from school like a potential abuser, requiring them to register for a database and pay for the privilege, that creates mutual suspicion and destroys trust. I certainly don't believe, as you imply, that all people with "access to children" should be subjected to CRB checks, with the exception of parents. It's a bureaucratic, ineffective and ridiculous procedure. But I expect you to take the contrary point of view, given your love of surveillance.
I had these thoughts long before I started reading Henry Porter, but I'm glad he's there.
As for RIPA, you seem to be referring to an utterly phoney "consultation exercise" that has not, to my knowledge, resulted in a single public body losing their right to spy on the public.
If you want to abolish all CRB checks then please say so clearly. You have a point, they don't seem to achieve much and are just a reaction to a few high profile cases rather than a rational bit of government. Such is life in a democracy I'm afraid. The current system is crazy as people have to apply for multiple checks - a supply teacher or classroom assistant has to apply for a CRB check for every school they work at even if they are part of the same education authority. I was talking to a Paediatrics Consultant, rather a senior one in fact, who has to have a CRB check for every hospital she has a clinic in.
This is one nonsense that a proper identity register could sort out. Currently each school and hospital cannot assume the person is the same one as that cleared in previous checks so must do it all over again.
Investigating crime is as you say a matter for the police. But what about nuisance parking? Stealing a place at a sought-after school to which your child is not entitled? Should local councils simply give up and let the crooked get away with it or should they investigate. There is agreement that they should not abuse the RIPA but you seem to take the position that the Police should be involved in everything. That is the definition of a Police State. I for one find the idea of a police officer on every street corner abhorrent. This makes liberals like me a very small minority I know.
Would it not perhaps be a good idea to find out before trumpeting loudly that we are marching into a dystopian society?
Besides, it is irrelevant whether or not the powers are currently being abused (and, frankly, I would be amazed if some jobsworth somewhere weren't abusing the power). What matters is that the powers are so widely-drawn that abuse of them is inevitable.
One big problem facing local government is the abuse of the handicapped parking spaces. Either they have to force people with serious mobility problems to report to an official to verify they are a genuine user or they will find that dishonest antisocial able bodied types have stolen all the allocated spaces so those in genuine need are denied.
What are they to do? Enforcement by eyes on the ground is impractical due to expense - and nobody wants to live in a Police State with officials in every car park and street in the land do they? CCTV surveillance to spot the creeps who steal special parking seems the best solution to me.
(joke courtesy of Viz top tips - just thought the discussion needed lightening up)
Nice article, there are a lot of parallels between then and now, IMO.
The only people who see parallels between Britain today and Weimar Germany are those whose Tin Foil Hats have slipped over their eyes.