Henry Porter wrote an excellent article in yesterday's Observer in which he said:

"[...] it is worth underlining one sentence that needs to be written in neon across every town centre: Britain is on the way to becoming a police state.
"Writing about the crisis of liberty in Britain, I have been careful not to use these words, but today I see no other conclusion to draw."

Like Porter I've tried to avoid calling the UK a "police state". Britain is clearly not a police state according to the traditional definition. Yet the similarities are many.

In Britain today we have (deep breath): routine monitoring of our daily lives and communications, 20% of the world's CCTV cameras, over 3000 new criminal offences created in ten years, vetting for all manner of jobs and other activities, fingerprinting of children in schools, increasing use of summary justice, erosion of the presumption of innocence, restrictions on the right to trial by jury, internment without charge, the threat of compulsory national ID Cards... Some people also believe the UK government has been complicit in the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - which, in a South American dictatorship, would have been called "forced disappearance".

The main difference between the UK and a police state is lack of actual oppression: the authorities don't need to use force, we "baa" happily as we're shorn of our rights.

How has this happened? Partly because of the piecemeal approach the authorities have taken, introducing repressive laws one small step at a time so that most people haven't even noticed. In a country that thinks Big Brother is a jolly TV show, civil liberties just aren't as interesting as celebrity lifestyles.

Where there is any resistance the fear card has been played again and again. Since 911 it has mainly been fear of terrorism - a valid fear but not one which justifies the self-destruction of our way of life. Other weapons of fear include illegal immigrants and identity fraudsters along with the paedophiles who apparently hide behind every tree.

These objects of fear are used like sheepdogs, gently herding an ovine populace away from the wide fields of freedom and into the restricted pen of a de facto police state.

Britain isn't a police state for one simple reason: it doesn't need to be. We're collaborating in our own oppression.

Of course the sheepdog analogy suggests a shepherd running everything according to a master plan. I'm not paranoid enough to believe that - and not naive enough to rule it out.

civil liberties UK politics ukpolitics

Labels: civil liberties