The Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, has a piece in today's Guardian in which she discusses the government's proposed counter-terrorist measures. Some of the issues which she raises - is it counter-productive to ban extreme but apparently non-violent organizations? even if it isn't counter-productive to ban them, should we refrain from doing so anyway, on libertarian grounds? - are entirely proper and indeed necessary objects of debate by the head of an organization devoted to defending liberty. These are issues of the first importance for a liberal democracy, and we should hear and welcome all the relevant arguments both for and against those measures. But some of the things Chakrabarti says - for example, that previous generations endured the terrors of war and 'left us our rights and freedoms', with the implication that no restrictions were needed then, and hence aren't needed now - are very misleading: highly restrictive laws were passed during the Second World War, and were duly rescinded after it. And throughout her article the tone, as displayed in the final sentence ('[our rights and freedoms] must not be sold in a summer') and the headline ('Tony Blair cannot be allowed to sell our rights and freedoms'), strikes an accusatory and sensationalist note that is misplaced.
The appeal to rights and freedoms can be deployed on both sides of this debate; hence we can disagree with a proposed restriction of our liberties without assuming that the proposers don't care about human rights, just as we can disagree with a defence of unrestricted liberties without supposing that the defenders covertly sympathize with the terrorism that the restrictions aim to thwart. The tone of Chakrabarti's attack is depressingly reminiscent of the playpen rhetoric of the 60s, when anything political that you didn't like counted as a 'sell-out', with all the corresponding implications of unprincipled venality on the part of the politicians, and elevated purity of motive on the part of the accuser. But the debate we currently need to have is one in which there are quite persuasive arguments on both sides, and this should be recognized by any serious participant - such as the Director of Liberty in particular. In any case, who does Chakrabarti think Blair is selling our freedoms to? I'd love to know. (Eve Garrard)