Taking Liberties: This Is Not Tony Blair’s Police State

IN The Guardain, Martin Kettle is looking at Taking Liberties, a film about loss of rights and liberties in Tony Blair’s Britian. He says the but the basic premise simply “does not stand up“.

To challenge the account in Taking Liberties is not in any way to deny that the Labour government has often treated the criminal law in a cavalier manner over the last 10 - and particularly the last six - years, or to dispute that some of the episodes highlighted in Taking Liberties are anything other than shameful. To see again how Maya Evans and Milan Rai were arrested for reading out the names of Iraq war victims opposite the Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall (though if they had given the right notification they would not have been), how Walter Wolfgang was detained under the terrorism laws for shouting an objection to a minister’s speech at a Labour conference, or how Gloucestershire police prevented a bus full of anti-war demonstators from protesting outside RAF Fairford (an action overturned by the law lords), is in each case to witness an oppressive denial of the right to protest.

See the words “though if they had given the right notification they would not have been”?

If they had asked the police to exercise their right to free speech they could have spoken freely. And no it is not a police state. As if…

Anorak

Posted: 9th, June 2007 | In: Twitterings Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink