Queen Boudicca fought the might of the Roman Empire, King Alfred led the Anglo-Saxons against the marauding Vikings and Winston Churchill inspired Britain to stand alone against the unique evil of the Nazi Empire. David Davis, meanwhile, is making his heroic stand for British liberty by holding a by-election in the 100% safe Tory seat of Haltemprice and Howden.
There are several things that I dislike about Davis one-man-against-the-world civil liberties campaign. His decision is egregious and hypocritical; he is trying to bypass the bastion of British liberty, the House of Commons, and hold a definitive referendum on the subject in a town that would vote for a donkey if it wore a blue rosette. And what is it, exactly, that entitles the population of Haltemprice and Howden to speak with such authority on the subject of civil liberties? By the same token should we poll the residents of Hackney North for a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem? Or perhaps we could ask the voters of East Surrey how we should stop global warming?
Furthermore I would have a lot more sympathy for Davis' libertarian crusade if he was, well, more of a libertarian. The man consistently voted against the repeal of Section 28 and equal rights for gays and he has repeatedly spoken in favour of the death penalty, which is surely the ultimate intrusion of the state into a citizen's life. Davis also voted in favour of the 28 days detention law so he seems to appreciate that there is a threat to national security. He clearly accepts the logic of holding terrorism suspects for longer than seven days so why claim that '42 days' is part of the "the insidious and relentless erosion of civil liberties in Britain"?
Davis refers to the prevalence of CCTV cameras and the DNA database as evidence of this insidious and relentless erosion. But what exactly is wrong with CCTV camers? Have they not been used to solve inumerable crimes? No single body actually controls these cameras and what threat to they pose to our liberty? By the same principle one may also complain about the number of policemen, security guards or traffic wardens on the streets. The DNA database has been crucial in solving many horific and violent crimes as well numerous ‘cold cases’. Should the police be banned from holding the details of British citizens? What about finger prints and criminal records? What about the rights of sex offenders? There are countless public bodies that hold our private details; the DVLA, the NHS, the Inland Revenue, libraries; are they all part of the insidous erosion of our cherished liberties? Does that Data Protection Act not adequately cover the storing of private data? Where is the evidence that civil liberties are threatened?
Free citizens must accept the rule of law and a certain amount of Government interference in their lives. If we had complete freedom we would be free to break traffic rules, disregard the wearing of a seatbelt, take illegal drugs, incite violence and racism and ignore the multitude of laws that govern a stable democracy. This is called anarchy. We are protected from our Governments by democracy and an independent judiciary. We accept that we must follow laws that allow us to exercise our own free will while at the same time preventing potential harm or injury to others. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that the DNA database or CCTV cameras have infringed on anyone’s liberty. Quite the opposite, it has made our society safer and more secure by helping to take some extremely dangerous people off the streets.
Yesterday The Independent reported that since the Government implemented the smoking ban that 400,000 people had given up smoking and 2 billion fewer cigarettes had been smoked. It is estimated that ban will help to save 40,000 lives over the next 10 years. At the time of the ban ‘libertarians’ protested that it was a threat to their personal freedoms. Yet what about the freedom of those people who had to share their cancerous smoke? The Government has the right to protect non-smokers from smokers and it also has the right to introduce laws that curb the influence of tobacco which is an insidous and relentless killer.
In the Declaration of Independence, a libertarian manifesto if ever there was one, Thomas Jefferson wrote that man was "Endowed with certain unalienable rights" including "Life, liberty and the pursuit happiness". The pursuit of happiness is man’s eternal goal and it is hard enough to achieve without being threatened by passive smoking, rapists and murderers or, for that matter, Jihadi terrorists. The DNA database, 42 days, seatbelts in cars, they all allow us to follow those unalienable rights. These truths are self-evident.