Taking Liberties: A Short Review

Yesterday, I finally got to see Taking Liberties after more than a month of watching the trailer, reading various reviews and encouraging people to go and see it. I have to say I was very impressed. It's going to be difficult to say anything vastly different from what Tim over at Bloggerheads has already said but I'll give it a go. The documentary covers in great detail the erosion of civil Liberties in Britain since Tony Blair came to power. It does this by breaking the subject into sections rather than taking a chronological approach. These sections are:

• Right to protest
• Free speech
• Privacy
• Detention without Trial
• Extradition
• Torture
  

These sections are largely taken from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) set up in 1950 by the Council of Europe in order to prevent the appalling abuses of the Second World War from happening again. Some of these rights though are very ancient like Habeas Corpus which dates back to Magna Carta. Taking Liberties explains these rights and their origins with some entertaining animated sequences.

The film opens with the story of bus loads of anti-war protesters at the start of the Iraq war who were wrongfully stopped by police and escorted back to London after being prevented from continuing on to their peaceful protest. It is a good starting point and sets the tone for the rest of the film. Using a mixture of interviews with both politicians and ordinary people along with news footage interspersed with animated sequences, the film shows us the decline of civil liberties from the heady days of Tony Blair's arrival in Downing Street which seemed to promise a bright new era. There are frequent news clips of Blair saying things like:

When I pass protestors every day at Downing Street... I may not like what they call me but I thank God they can. That's called freedom. - Tony Blair 07/04/02

These are followed by other news clips that completely expose Blair's statements for the utter rubbish they are, for example, the arrest of Maya Evans, the manhandling of Walter Wolfgang and the attempts to silence Brian Haw.

For such a serious subject, Taking Liberties does manage to inject just the right degree of humour to make it entertaining without detracting from the film's important message. Much of the film's humour comes from the ingenious ways peaceful protestors try to get around the Draconian restrictions placed on them. Particularly funny were two elderly ladies who defied a police ban on protesting outside an American listening station. I won't say any more but these two ladies seemed to encapsulate 'Britishness' better than Gordon Brown ever could. The film also covers the Mass Lone Protests which take place on a monthly basis to highlight the stupidity of the demonstration esclusion zone. One of the things I liked about the film was the focus on ordinary people caught up in Blair's assault on freedom and not just what politicians say.

For a film which shows Tony Blair and New Labour in such a bad light, Taking Liberties is remarkably non-partisan which is something I really appreciated. Among the politicians interviewed are Clare Short and Tony Benn as well as Ken Clarke and Boris Johnson. This is an important part of the argument because we seem to be moving away from a discourse between 'Right' and 'Left' into a more crucial discourse between 'Libertarian' and 'Authoritarian'.

Where I do perhaps disagree with Tim is on the animated sequences. I don't think they do "stray from the narrative/thrust". For me they break up what might otherwise be too much news footage and interview at any one time and inject some humour as well as covering very dry subjects like the ECHR in an entertaining fashion. However, I wholeheartedly agree with Tim that these animations are spectacular.

If I had to find a quibble about the film, I would say that I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on the role of the media in allowing the attack on civil liberties to go ahead even though, as the film suggests, we all bear some responsibility. The film did allude media manipulation several times with the smear campaign against Mohammed Abdulkahar who was shot by police in the botched Forest Gate raid, the July 7 bombing survivor who was used against his will by The Sun to justify 90 days detention and with the "45 Minutes From Doom" headlines relating to the September dossier prior to the Iraq war. But the death of Dr David Kelly and the subsequent Hutton whitewash which resulted in the BBC being severely punished and which has affected much of its reporting since wasn't mentioned. For me this was the event that removed any lingering doubt I may have still had about the direction in which Britain seems to be heading (not that there were many doubts remaining). The role of the media in bringing about so much knee-jerk legislation and Tony Blair's cosy relationship with Rupert Murdoch, as well as Alistair Campbell's media manipulation deserved a bit more scrutiny in my opinion. However, this is a very tiny quibble in what is a great film. And I realise that it is impossible to cover a decade-long attack on civil liberties fully in two hours. As it is I'm impressed so much was fitted into a couple of hours, from the right to protest to pre-natal ASBOs to ID cards to torture and rendition. Like Tim, I'm just so relieved that a film like this has finally been made...and made well.

Contrary to what Martin Kettle said about this film in The Guardian, I don't think the premise of Taking Liberties is that Labour has turned Britain into a police state...yet. Of course we can't compare what is happening in Britain to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. To me the film is a warning that unless we stop this erosion of civil liberties and reverse it, we could eventually find ourselves in a similar situation. Civil liberties are very easy to remove if we allow it (as we have seen) but they are much harder to re-introduce. Nazi Germany lost all its freedoms almost overnight. In Britain we have seen the erosion of our freedoms by a sustained decade-long attack, and with this continuous chipping away at civil liberties it's much harder to define the point where we do find ourselves in a police state. New Labour seems to be laying the groundwork for a police state, a point that even Martin Kettle can't avoid making by referring to "the oppression we all suffer under the Blair tyranny".

Not Saussure points out that the Soviet Constitution guaranteed the right to hold demonstrations but that when people did try to protest they were told that they did not have the necessary permits to do so. I would add that in Albania these days people can protest outside their parliament without the need for permission. The fact that at the moment some protests are allowed outside the British Parliament (provided permission is obtained a week in advance) is beside the point. We shouldn't need permission.

Finally, I'd like to pay tribute to the director of Taking Liberties, Chris Atkins, and all those who participated in the film. Once again I urge people to go and see Taking Liberties and help give it the publicity it deserves. Go see this film and take people who might not be aware of what is happening in their name with you. Also, buy the book. I expect it's as entertaining and informative to read as the film is to watch.

Tags: Taking Liberties, Civil Liberties, Blair, Entertainment, Film