Why freedom matters

When I decided to attend a discussion of Why Economic Freedom Matters at the International Policy Network, I had no idea that I was going to meet one of the most important figures currently influencing the debate between liberalism and the managed economy. Robert Lawson is not a household name, but his Economic Freedom of the World project, published by The Fraser Institute, is one of the most powerful arguments in favour of economic freedom.

Lawson explained that the idea was born in the hot and alcohol-fuelled debates of his undergraduate days. He was an early adopter of liberal economics, citing Smith and Friedman in the face of his friends’ Marxism and Keynesianism. The result of these debates was one familiar to many of us: not once did he recall changing anybody’s mind, nor did he ever question his convictions. For all the wonders of abstract philosophical debate, none of it proved much.

As a professional academic, his solution to this problem has been empiricism. Rather than debate what the effects of different economic policies should be, he has looked at what they actually are. Unable to conduct laboratory experiments, he has instead gone about grading the countries of the world against 42 different economic indicators in five broad categories

Size of government (the level of tax, government expenditure, state enterprise etc.)
Legal structure and security of property rights (including the rule of law, independence of the judiciary and the role of the military in government)
Access to sound money (mainly the avoidance of inflation, but also freedom to hold foreign currency)
Freedom to exchange with foreigners (tariffs, capital controls, regulatory burdens, black market exchange rates)
Regulation of credit, labour and business (how much government meddles)

The results are quite fascinating, and also quite telling. The ten most free economies in the world are

1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. United States
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. Estonia
9. Ireland
10. Australia.

By comparison, Germany is 18th, Sweden 22nd and France 52nd. The highest African country is Botswana (38) while the lowest is Zimbabwe (141st), the bottom of the league (with the remaining 50 countries providing too little data for Lawson to make an assessment). Venezuela, which was 11th in 1975, is now 135th. Interestingly, China is only 86th, but Lawson explains that while the Special Economic Zones by the coast (some of which are huge: Hainan is larger than Belgium) are probably the freest places in the world, the hinterland is as backward and restricted as ever.

All interesting stuff, and there were some fascinating case studies, but the real fun starts when one compares the index to other indicators. Firstly, income: there is a clear trend of greater freedom translating to greater income (measured per capita at PPP, for the economists among you); each quartile contained populations approximately twice as wealth as the quartile below. The pattern with regards growth was less clear: while the lowest quartile hardly grew at all, the third and first quartile outperformed the second; the presence of China in that third quartile may have played a part there, however, and its economic status is unclear, as noted above.

Perhaps the most interesting findings relate to the relationship between freedom and poverty, however, for the critics of liberalism usually blame it for impoverishing the poor. This is not what Lawson found, however. Proportionally, the share of national wealth owned by the poorest 10 per cent of the population rose ever so slightly as freedom increased, but not evenly: again, the third and first quartile were more equitable than the second and fourth. But if one looked at the overall wealth of that poorest 10 per cent, it was dramatically apparent that it is better to be the poorest among the rich than the poorest among the poor. While in the poorest economies the average amount held by the poorest 10 per cent was just $905, in the third quartile it was $1,545, in the second $2,656 and in the freest economies even the poorest 10 per cent had $7,337 to call their own. As noted above, these are PPP figures; the extent to which a dollar stretches in each country has been evened out.

A few other factors are worth noting (though many follow from the above): life expectancy and access to clean water and sanitation rise in line with economic freedom. Meanwhile, incidents of tuberculosis decline as economic freedom rises, and so, intriguingly, do abuses of civil rights. For it appears that Hayek was right; economic freedom is directly related to political freedom. It may be that the command economcy needs political oppression to make it work (to silence the critics of failing policies), or conversely that a lack of political freedom stifles economic freedom (who can do business without the rule of law?) but socialism and tyranny go hand in hand.

Finally, and also contrary to popular belief, it appears that economic freedom correlates with care for the environmental. This is again the reverse of what is often said – that without regulation unscrupulous countries will dump their waste on society; and that fast-consuming capitalist societies are raping the planet. If one compares environmental performance indicators (local air quality, water quality and so forth) to economic freedom it is again the free who come out best in a clear ascending curve.

Liberals have long maintained freedom was not merely an end in itself, but a means to help achieve better outcomes for everybody in society, to free everyone to maximise their own potential and gain most out of society. Their “discontents” have countered that liberalism (or “capitalism”) exploits the working masses to benefit a privileged few and that it would be fairer and better for all if the economy were managed, businesses regulated and money-supply served the goal of full employment. They are wrong, and the Economic Freedom of the World project proves it.

If greater wealth, health and prosperity are exploitation, I wish the bosses would come for me!

What socialism and fascism have in common, and why its always more popular to sling mud at the enemy

John Dixon has written about one particular example of the crass habit of hyperbole that pervades political commentary: the equating of socialism with liberalism and the use of terms such as “liberal mafia” and “liberal fascism”, particularly in America (where they confuse “liberal” with socialist).

One reason, as John rightly notes, is that extremism sells, though I would take issue with his statement that for “some reason extremism sells well in America”, as though the rest of the world were so much more measured and rounded. Extremism sells everywhere. Most of those reading or watching political polemics are not auto-didacts but consumers, mixing politics and entertainment. This is not inherently a bad thing, but does explain why Morgan Spurlock is more popular than serious works of dietary science. Similarly, it is easier to call the Democrats "liberal fascists" than to explain why both individuals and society benefit from greater individual freedom.

It's a shame, but in an era where people like to take bite-size chunks and move on, it's inevitable.
Nonetheless, there is a genuine criticism of the politics that would-be President Clinton (the subject of the “liberal fascist” claim that so irritated John) and her misnamed "liberal" associates espouse, which he accurately sums up when he says "...it merely means that the state treats you in a patronizing way... [T]hat's socialism." Indeed it is. Socialism (at least, State-Socialism) is based on the premise that Government is better placed to make decisions than individuals: so, for example, the Government knows better than I do how to educate my children, or what pension arrangements I need. This is patently false.

Similary, if John’s tongue was not firmly in his cheek when he wrote "I order you to watch" the interview in which the claim was made, it, too, would be an example of the socialist mindset: we will make you do what (we think) is good for you – as the Government is attempting with its new "lifestyle politics".

Ultimately, the link between socialism and fascism is that both are willing to use coercion to force individuals to comply with a set of rules aimed at achieving the philosophical aims (be they egalitarian or nationalist) of the ruling party. Nazism was also styled National Socialism, note. By comparison, liberalism (which has little in common with the philosophies and policies espoused by Democrats) tries to create a system that enables every individual to pursue their own goals, only circumscribing individual action where it would impede the freedom of others.

The main reason why socialism has not had the bad press that fascism got (being on the winning side of WWII notwithstanding) is that it has generally been implemented in a more dilute (Social Democratic) format, rather than full-on. This is the “Third Way” of which John says he is “a dedicated enemy”, and while it is clearly not as bad as it’s extremist (aka. Communist) variant, it remains fundamentally flawed because it is based on the principle that individuals are not as good at making decisions for themselves as are the elite, and that coercion should be used to bring them to heel.

What I believe in a (slightly spooky) nutshell

Sometimes I struggle to explain why I am a liberal and what it is all about.

That might sound crazy, but the conversation almost always either gets lost in blue-skies philosophical maxims ("the greatest amount of individual freedom possible that does not constrain the freedom of others"), or else becomes bogged down in specifics (school choice; welfare reform). I guess the fact that I'm usually in a pub does not help, but the simple explanation has always failed me.

Thanks to Rob Knight (who takes his lead from The Devil - read into that what you will!) I am remineded that at the heart of liberalism is self-ownership: "I own my life and all that results from it. Therefore nobody may take my life or its product from me, nor impose their will upon me; neither may I do so to others." Tristan Mills mentioned this six months ago, but it seems it takes a cartoon to help me remember.

This 8 minute Flash film sums it up brilliantly. Sadly, it is also slightly spooky: as I commented to Rob,

"I agree with everything they say, but I do feel like a 6 year old in Brave New
World, getting my latest lesson in how to be a constructive citizen. Pass me the
Soma!"

Still, it's a good basic introduction to the premis of liberalism. Having explained the bases, it should be easier to move on to the specifics without assuming I'm mean, selfish or a Tory.

The environment and liberalism

Joe Otten recently summarised the various chapters of Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the 21st Century (aka. the Huhne Manifesto?). Joe has generally been sympathetic to the “Social Liberal” argument, though as a member of the Sheffield Hallam constituency party one should not take his views on any particular issue for granted.

The focus of Joe’s attentions is liberal environmentalism, so the environment chapter in that book was bound to peak his interest. I’m not going to repeat Joe’s summary here, but I am going to raise three points that I made in response to his post.

Firstly, too many environmentalists are willing to throw away progress – both material and political. This is partly because of a misguided belief that environmental degradation is an inevitable consequence of economic growth, itself an echo of long-standing Romantic critiques of the Enlightenment and the fear of progress and change. Just as population growth did not exhaust our capacity to feed the people or increase their material wellbeing, so it does not automatically have to toast us in an ever-hotter atmosphere. There are alternative means to generate energy and there are technological solutions to rising levels of CO2. Those who want to halt or reverse economic growth are usually fired by either a combination of a Romantic and a quasi-religious view of an Arcadian alternative, or by other ideologies that have found an new justification in environmental extremism.

Secondly, the critique of the focus on economic growth statistics is correct, but only so far. It is true that growth statistics are not particularly useful or enlightening, but there is no doubt that over time we live demonstrably better lives as our economy expands (Layardian happiness research not withstanding). Indeed, much economic growth new results from services rather than manufacturing, which are often (though not always) low-carbon activities. (As an interesting aside, try finding a verb to apply to economic growth that is not a metaphor for either power or transport!). One obvious except is transport, but this highlights one fundamental difference between liberal and Green environmentalism. The Greens want to discourage travel; liberals seek more environmentally friendly transport. At the core of this is the liberal belief that mankind can shape a better future and the Green nihilism that sees humanity as a negative influence upon the planet.

When Greens (which I use here to refer to authoritarian and fatalist environmentalists rather than the Green Party, though there is obviously a huge overlap) criticise modern society, they often accuse it of concentrating on the “bottom line” to the detriment of everything else. This is a critique they share with socialists. It is pure guff. Take our supposedly “Capitalist” society as an example. Taxes are inherently harmful to labour, to profits and to economic growth, yet we tax profits and labour very heavily precisely because we put short-term welfare gains above long-term welfare gains. Similarly, we burden businesses with regulation because we consider other factors (notably but not solely environmental ones) to be of importance alongside wealth creation. I have argued before that we over-regulate and over-tax, but neither I nor anyone I know suggests we should have no regulation and no tax; profit is only one driver in society.

The key is to set rules that clearly guide everybody and lead them to make sensible decisions about the environment. This is traditional liberal ground, if slightly re-emphasised. The value of the environment is not inherent but comes from the fact that it sustains us and gives us pleasure; consequently our impact upon the environment impacts upon the freedom of others (the quality of your life being reduced if I pollute the public spaces). This is classical liberal stuff, and the solutions can be equally liberal. We need clear rules that apply equally to all and do not discriminate: for example, we should tax petrol and congestion rather than cars; we should tax aircraft fuel rather than passengers; and we should tax the carbon produced in electricity generation rather than banning incandescent light bulbs.

The point is that dictating to people how must they lead their lives will inevitably lead to arbitrary decision making that will be partisan and will miss the target (e.g. penalising those who buy big cars even if they don’t drive them very much). It will also cause a huge backlash: nobody likes to be told what to do, let alone told to feel bad about what they have been doing for years, which is why there is such a strong anti-environmentalist movement. The Greens have brought it on themselves (and the rest of us).

By comparison, factoring into the price of things the ecological as well as production costs (“capturing the externalities”, as I said on Friday just one second before I lost my audience) will enable government to reduce overall emissions, while allowing individuals to decide how much emitting is worth to them. That ensures that those who value emitting most can emit at a price, while those who value it less will emit less. Economically this results in an optimal distribution of resources (in this case, the limited capacity the earth has for more greenhouse gasses); socially this creates a free society where everybody is then free to pursue a better life as long as it is not at the expense of others.

Surely that’s a liberalism on which we can all agree.

Whose progressive agenda?

Escaping some rather dull ALDC training, I managed to attend a fringe event entitled “The Lib Dems and Labour: Whose progressive agenda?”. As the title suggests, it was a debate about where “progressives” see themselves and whether there is more space among them or between them and the Conservatives.

This is all pretty traditional stuff, and has been debated for centuries.

In the specifics of modern politics, Vince Cable explained that there were areas where there was a consensus, mainly around freedom (not that one might know it watching Labour’s attack on civil liberties) and the public service tradition. There were areas where the Liberal Democrats and Labour shared an ideology but disagreed on delivery, such as the well-meant but blundered efforts at wealth re-distribution though taxation and tax credits, and there were areas of fundamental disagreement.

Naturally, Vince dwelt on these. The main area was centralisation. Labour (or more accurately socialists and statists, though that words didn’t feature in Vince’s speech) believes that the state can transform our lives in positive ways. As a result, they introduce top-down (and frankly paternalistic) reforms, managing public services from the centre and set everything to a plan. As a consequence, local government is emasculated. An example of this is the Governments approach to energy policy, which assumes that electricity must be generated at and distributed from a few huge nodes – vast nuclear power stations appealing to the statist mind.

By comparison, liberals believe that power (in both senses) should be distributed as widely as possible and generated as near the citizen as possible. The liberal approach is inherently decentralised, because it recognises that people have a better idea of what is in their best interests than politicians and bureaucrats.

Labour minister Gareth Thomas (my parents’ MP) observed that there were progressives in all parties (bringing to mind Hayek’s dedication of The Road to Serfdom “To the socialists of all parties”) committed to equal opportunities, poverty reduction, internationalism and devolution. He argued that the Labour government had proven its progressive credentials by focussing on poverty at home and abroad, taking a lead on climate change and devolving power in Scotland, Wales and London. He criticised the in-fighting between progressive parties, saying that we “must recognise that the progressive cause was under threat in a greater way than ever before” (which sounded somewhat hyperbolic). However, he accepted that the Iraq War had been a huge divider among progressives. He also noted that in 2005 the progressives had been lucky that the Conservatives had chosen Michael Howard – a hangover from the Thatcherite era – as their enemy. They would not be this lucky again.

Baroness (Shirley) Williams stressed that the central difference was the Liberal Democrats unswerving commitment to civil liberties, manifest in their opposition to imprisonment for 90 days without trail, their defence of trial by jury and their opposition to ASBOs. She noted that Britain currently has a higher prison population than ever before even though crime has been falling (which brought to my mind Michael Howard’s assertion that prison works!). Labour’s micromanagement of public services had undermined and “demoralised those on which public services depend”. She cited (to my mind conservative) statistics that 15 per cent of school leavers are illiterate, innumerate and have no qualifications worth the name. Finally, she stressed the internationalism of the Lib Dems. The Iraq war had damaged the view of the UK as upholding the rule of law internationally. The Liberal Democrats must be vocal in their commitment to the United Nations (which, disturbingly, she believed should be funded by an international tax, a very bad idea that would merely gum up global trade) and the European Union.

Finally, Tim Horton began by speaking about electoral reform, noting that a hung parliament was a bad time to begin reforming the electoral system (though Lib Dems might reasonably counter that it was the only time it was ever likely to happen). He argued that the progressives were linked by their commitment to public services whereas the Tories wanted to shrink the state; their commitment to Europe (where he gave the Lib Dems credit for taking the lead) and, bizarrely, civil liberties. He also gave the Liberal Democrats credit for leading on climate change and taxation, where he felt Labour should be bolder. However, he denied the charge of centralisation, saying that the Liberal Democrats had opposed examples of decentralisation such as foundation hospitals.

For my mind there was an elephant in the room to which only Tim Horton eluded, and from which he drew the wrong lesson. While both liberals and socialists (“Labour”) believe in progress, liberals believe that progress is driven by individuals striving for a better life for themselves, which has positive outcomes for society. Consequently, the state should get out of people’s way as much as possible and allow them to control their own lives. In this it is the Conservatives, rather than Labour and Horton’s Fabians, that are nearer the mark: the state is too big and should be shrunk. The cosy consensus that has emerged around current levels of public spending assumes that we have arrived at a natural economic plateau, whereas in fact it is pure chance that has brought us to a point where the state spends 43 per cent of national output. This is the (temporary) result of a conflict between the state’s greed and its timorousness; it wants to spend but fears the taxpayer.

At some point we need to decide how much the state ought to take. I very much doubt that it is nearly half of everything. There is a need to roll back the state and free people from the grip of politicians. That is an agenda for progress.

Restoring Liberties in 2007

Yesterday I wrote an extensive précis of Craig F Smith’s paper Taking Liberties, in which he explained how popular democracy has come to undermine freedom. This is a well-worn theme, notably with John Stuart Mill.

Today, I intend to outline a number of proposals Smith makes in this sequel paper, Restoring Liberties.

It should be noted that Smith proposes these as points for discussion rather than suggesting that any or all should or would be adopted. This is understandable. Untrammelled democracy is a seductive system, as Mill himself noted when he argued that “The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others…is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power.” I have lost count of the number of people I have spoken to who are openly willing to force people to behave in a manner that will supposedly save them from themselves. A universal smoking ban and forced exercise camps are just around the corner.

Nonetheless, with organisations such as Direct Democracy agitating for a constitutional convention, and even the Government suggesting that we might actually begin to consider looking into going about wondering how to get together and discuss drafting a written constitution for the United Kingdom, now seems a good time to set out some thoughts for how to limit the power of the state and strengthen the protection of the individual.

He begins with the most obvious: a written constitution. The very first thing that must appear in a written constitution are rules on how the constitution itself can be amended. This is not small matter, as our current (un-codified) constitution can be changed at will by a simple majority of the two houses of parliament – indeed, probably by a resolute simple majority of just the lower house. Regional devolution and Lords reform may both have been welcome, but they nonetheless represent enormous constitutional change, and yet were required to meet only the same level of assent as a change in the motoring laws. The same is true of every European treaty that has been signed. One may fail to rest, far from assured that Gordon Brown’s newly proposed constitutional changes will be similarly enacted by a simple majority of perhaps just one house.

Smith proposes that in future the constitution should require both houses of parliament to pass the change by a two-thirds majority before the proposal is put to a referendum, where again a two thirds majority must support the change. Thus constitutional tinkering will be kept to a minimum, partisan advantage will be prevented, and yet the constitution will be able to develop if change is widely desired.

In addition, he proposes that each House should have a Constitutional Committee to warn parliamentarians to reject unconstitutional law. These should be empowered to refer existing legislation to a Constitutional Court. The establishment of a Constitutional Court would require a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s membership of the EU, however, as citizens would otherwise be subject to unconstitutional European legislation that the Court could not – under present arrangements – strike down.

The second principle is that there must be absolute limits to the power of the state over individuals. This effectively means a Bill of Rights – though Smith overlooks the fact that this shifts the balance within society from a freedom-based society, where everything is permitted unless it is specifically banned, to a rights-based society where one has rights because one is given them by the constitution. I would therefore finesse Smith’s Bill of Rights by suggesting that it should be a fundamental statement of existing freedoms, should note in the preamble that the list is inviolable but is not exhaustive, and should include as its first clause the principle outlined above that freedom is the norm from which legislation and even the convention deviates.

The specific freedoms Smith identifies (and in brackets my own proposed alternatives, as he uses some terms that are unnecessarily limited) are freedom of speech (expression), movement, religion (conscience, or belief) and property. To these I would add freedom of association. Smith also includes ancient rights such as Habeas Corpus, trial by jury and rules on double jeopardy.

Smith also includes a general point: that government should not restrict activities of individuals that do not harm others or that harm them in a way that is understood and accepted (to permit surgery, boxing and sado-masochism) or is easily avoided (so that non-smokers are understood to be able to leave the room, rather than insisting others not smoke).

The third principle is that the constitution should prevent the tyranny of the majority. While this seems obvious, this is where it gets tricky. Smith supports a second chamber to oversee and review the lower house and the executive and delay their actions. However, he opposes election, fearing that it would merely be another democratic house that would represent a majoritarian view. He therefore proposes some combination from among expert peers (selected by an independent selection committee), indirectly elected peers (nominated by local councils so that they had an indirect mandate but protected regional interests) and citizen-jurors (chosen by lot to serve, as is the case with jury duty).

He also supports the monarchy on the grounds that state occasions cannot be used to flatter politicians, there is an ultimate veto to tyranny and the armed forces are not subject to the Prime Minister. I might add that there is something inherently humbling in the fact that the very first thing a Prime Minister must do is kneel before The State and kiss hands. Finally, he suggests that some far-reaching legislation that might particularly disadvantage minorities should require a larger level of majority (others have suggested two thirds).

He does not propose a directly elected executive; he feels there are enough checks and balances. To this I might add that the popular mandate that a directly elected Chief Executive would have would appear to entrench executive power and majoritarianism rather than limit it. Smith appears to have temporarily overlooked the lesson of his own paper, that democracy can be used to argue that the executive has a mandate from the people.

Fourthly, as well as limits to what Government can do, there should also be limits to how much, so as to restrict the amount of legislation that activist politicians can create. Parliamentary terms should be fixed in length and individual laws should have “sunset clauses”.

Fifthly, government should be accountable. There should be a federal structure with clear delineation of responsibilities; parliamentary oversight should be strengthened (including proper confirmation hearings) and budgets should be transparent, including the publication of costs associated with every policy.

Interestingly, in his comment to my original piece, Bishop Hill suggested that Smith may have missed a trick in limiting parliament with a Bill of Rights. It would be better to define what government may do and – in a reverse of the logic that should apply to humans – everything should be forbidden that is not explicitly permitted. Government, unlike people, should not be born free, nor should it ever be set free.

Smith’s own verdict on his work is bleak: “The vested interests of those who hold power generally disincline them towards any reforms that will reduce their ability to act as they wish.” When he calls for a constitutional convention to discuss a liberal future, he seems to ignore the crucial lesson of his work: that people’s urge to reproach, interfere and dictate is the source of our problems, and is likely to shape a constitutional convention. Before we begin considering a such a convention, we first need to ask what kind of society we want. Do we really want to be free, if it means others are free too? Or would we rather retain the right to coerce others to make them live in a manner that we see fit, even if we must ourselves bear coercion when we find ourselves in the minority?

When the Americans drafted their constitution, they may have been naïve enough to think that it would not be twisted and mutilated by overweening centralists and activist politicians, but at least they knew what they wanted from society. They wanted the traditional British liberties which free born British men had won over centuries. I am not sure that modern Britains want the same.

A no win situation

You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.

That certainly seems to be the verdict of political pundits and illiberal elements as they pour opprobrium on the recent discussions between Gordon Brown, our next Prime Minister (acts of god permitting), and Sir Menzies Campbell about a role for Lib Dem peers in a Brown government.

My view is that Diane Abbot (one of the more pleasant socialists) got to the heart of the issue when she said that such a deal would be “electoral suicide” for the Liberal Democrats. For our party, the greatest challenge is ridding itself of the popular misconception that Labour and Liberal are different shades of the same colour (red, or red with a hint of yellow), different wings of the same centre-left family that stands in contrast to the centre-right blue(-rinse) alternative.

Such misconceptions are not helped by Sir Menzies’ persistence on referring (and proudly at that!) to the Liberal Democrats as a party of the centre-left. We are not a party of the centre-left, of the centre-right, or of the centre-anything. We are a liberal party: as opposed to socialism as we are to conservatism, both committed to fairness and distrustful of the state. As my more avid reader will recall, I have discussed this before.

Part of disabusing the public of their view of us as a Labour ginger-group (it would explain the orange!), “the social conscience of the Labour Party”, is to quash the assumption that in any coalition we would automatically side with Labour. This is not to say that we should show any eagerness to side with the Conservatives either (especially not this current shower!), but we must dispel the myth that if Labour fails to make it to the necessary 324 seats they can trust us to prop them up.

After a general election, in the event of a hung parliament (and I’m still not prepared to put my money on it happening), we should be prepared to negotiate with either and both parties – showing no favour – to identify which is prepared to put forward the more liberal policy platform. We must also be prepared to reject both parties and allow one (no matter which one) to form a minority administration, if neither are liberal enough.

That seems pretty clear to me. So why is it that some Lib Dems seem to think we have a natural ally in one of the other parties? And why is it that the pundits seem not only to agree, but to be genuinely shocked that we should reject the chance of power? After all, nobody joined the Lib Dems in the hope of enjoying the faux-leather seats in the ministerial limo.

This baleful piece in The Times is typical. According to the Editor, the Liberal Democrats ought to be more willing to collaborate than other parties (he is not clear why) and should therefore jump at any opportunity that presents itself. Strangely, the article notes that we have “declined to negotiate a coalition with either the SNP or Labour in Scotland… leaned in Labour’s direction in Wales [and] then flirted with a bizarre bargain with Plaid Cymru and the Tories before lapsing back into opposition” and also, inaccurately this time, claimed that “they also toyed with reaching an understanding with David Cameron over a common contender for mayor of London… before backing out of that accord too” (which is a crude distortion of the truth). What conclusion does the Editor draw from our apparent three bouts of discussion followed by refusal? That “This behaviour is neither consistent nor coherent.” I beg to differ. It is clearly consistent, and its coherence comes from our willingness to enter into coalition only within a broadly liberal framework.

My point is not that this is all grossly unfair, however. One would expect little else from the Murdoch press, wed as it still is to New Labour. Indeed, none of the press are impartial – that’s not really their job, despite another common misconception. My point is that had the discussions turned out differently, and were Lord Ashdown and his fellow Lib Dem peers preparing to spend less time with their families, you may rest assured that the press would have howled with derision all the same. Instead of being incoherent and not ready for power, we would be unprincipled and interested only in office; instead of Campbell being weak and indecisive, he would be weak and easily seduced; instead of talking of a missed opportunity, they would speak of our losing our identity.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the more popular our party and our ideology, the more the reactionary elements (on both sides) will attack us; the more powerful we become, the more our enemies will concentrate their fire upon us. That is the price of success. So be it.

It was daft of Brown to think that he could co-opt the Liberal Democrats at a time when they have more MPs, higher poll ratings and more persuasive policies than ever before. Sir Menzies is right: our priorities should be maximum votes; maximum seats.

Thanks, Gordon, but we’ll go it alone!

An amusing conversation

Tom and a colleague are chatting by the kettle. Tom’s colleague is complaining that she has just received a parking ticket.

Colleague: I was only there for 10 minutes.

Tom: The problem is, there’s just so many of them these days. You can’t get away with it even for a moment.

Colleague: The vultures!

Tom: Admit it – we’d be in gridlock without them.

Colleague: They’re just revenue raisers for the Council.

Tom: Maybe we should retrain them all as plumbers.

Colleague: We can’t even get a plumber round my way.

Tom: You want to find a nice Pole to do the job.

Colleague: I’d rather give the money to an English person. [As an afterthought] If they were better at the job.

Tom: Ah, but that’s the thing, you see. The Poles are excellently well trained. They’ve still got decent vocational education over there, unlike here. Polish workers are very skilled.

Colleague: Yeah, but they charge half as much as our workers.

Tom: So you get a quality plumber for half price, and they get a better income than they’d get in Poland. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Colleague: But I hear they’ve got a skills shortage over there. Nobody’s left to do the jobs.

Tom: But that’s okay, ‘cos they’re getting loads of money in remittances, as the Polish plumber sends money home to the family.

Colleague: Yeah, but they’re not getting enough taxes because all the work is being done over here and the money comes in but nobody pays tax on it.

Tom: Perhaps, but they don’t need so many public services if they have the money to provide for themselves.

Colleague: That’s Tory talk! I thought you were a Liberal.

Tom: That is liberal. Just a different kind of liberal.

So the battle goes on.

For ye have the poor always with you

Geoffrey Payne and Agent Mancuso began a debate yesterday on whether the Liberal Democrats should make the reduction of inequality (referred to by some as the issue of “relative poverty”) a matter of party policy.

Coincidentally, I have been reading some old party papers today, and have come across clear statements of support for the concept of “relative poverty” and the idea that government should counter it.

“A fair Britain is one… [that] redistributes wealth from the richest to the poorest.
“Inequalities in wealth… are widening… We are determined to reverse this trend and to remove the inequalities created by the structures of society. We are determined to create a fairer Britain.” (Trust in People: make Britain free, fair and green, Lib Dem policy paper 76)

Yet as Mancuso notes, “even the poorest people in Britain are considerably better off than the poorest were a generation ago, and they in turn were better off than the generation previous. Compared to the millions who live in genuine poverty around the world, all but the very poorest in Britain live in luxury.” The sentiments are echoed in the article by Arnold Kling to which I referred a couple of weeks ago.

The Government defines income poverty as having an income below 60 per cent of the national median income; severe poverty is below 40 per cent. Yet in a dynamic, prosperous society, vast differences in wealth are inevitable (and perhaps even functional).

It is almost as though, at the very moment that we are about to rid our country of poverty forever, we have discovered a way of ensuring that the poor will always be with us. Hmm…

Last year I read an interesting account of how the relative definition of poverty came to be adopted in the UK. It starts with the Labour Party conference in 1959. Labour were in the doldrums: they had lost three general elections in a row, and Barbara Castle lamented “the poverty and unemployment which we came into existence to fight have been largely conquered.” But three years later at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association it was proposed that the “Poverty Line” be considered to be the equivalent to the amount that the government paid in ‘Supplementary Benefit’. Harriet Wilson, an academic who was there, described the tension that resulted from this redefinition of poverty as “a mood of conspiratorial excitement.” One historian, examining this change, has referred to it as “explicitly political”.

If there is truth in this suggestion, it is indeed disturbing, for it suggests that senior Labour figures deliberately adopted and promoted a relative definition of poverty, not because it better summed up the suffering of the economically less well off, but because it gave them an inexhaustible raison d'être, a justification for a Trotskyite permanent revolution, an excuse for an eternal battle against the wealthy and successful whom socialists so fail to understand and appreciate.

Irrespective of whether the conspiracy theory is true, however, relative poverty should not be our concern. Our focus should be on ensuring that nobody suffers from absolute poverty: that no matter how dire the circumstances, everyone may be assured of food, water, clothing, shelter and warmth. To those five essentials I might add the opportunity to lift themselves back out of their desperate state, but this is best achieved through a rapidly growing economy and loose labour laws, resulting in the rapid creation of new and better job opportunities.

By comparison, the levelling sentiments (which, is might be noted, bear little resemblance to the beliefs of the original Levellers) of those who would seek to take from the rich to give to the poor (what economists would call penalising success and rewarding failure) should have no place in our party’s policies.

Particularly, we must absolutely shun the populist attraction of a “policy of extra income tax for the very rich to secure more funding for public services [which] was a net vote winner at the last general election, by a substantial margin.” As liberals we should no more discriminate against people because of their wealth or their income than we should because of their gender or race. It is easy to find unpopular minorities against which some punitive legislation can be enacted, to the delight of an unsympathetic majority – and no minority garners less sympathy than the rich. But that is not what liberalism is about. Rather, it is an affront to the rule of law.

A fair Britain does not mean that everybody has the same or a broadly similar amount of wealth. It means that everybody, no matter their wealth, is treated equally by the state.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once said, “I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealising envy.”

Response from Simon Jenkins

I have had a response from Simon Jenkins to my letter about his comment piece in the Guardian last week suggesting that it is time that the Liberal Democrats disbanded.

He actually sent it on 14 May 2007, but as my spam filter is not as discerning as the readers of the Guardian; it junked him, and I have only just come across the replay in my bulk mail.

His response is frankly shocking:

Dear Tom Papworth

Thank you for your most interesting email. I have almost no quarrel with anything the Liberals have ever said. But if they disbanded and split into their more Labour and more Tory wings, think how clear-cut each general election might be.

With best wishes

Simon Jenkins

I have a suspicion that this is a standard reply, as it shows little evidence that he has read my letter. As I explained to him, the antithesis between left and right (Labour and Conservative wings , as he calls them) is archaic and does not represent the three competing philosophies that have shaped political discourse in Britain for two centuries: conservatism, liberalism and more lately socialism.

To say that he has almost no quarrel with anything that the Liberals have ever said, but nonetheless propose their disbandment, seems positively bizarre to me. It is usual in politics to support a party with which one almost always agrees.

As for how clear cut a general election could be, he has missed an obvious solution. Why not disband both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, along with all the minor parties. Then general elections would be very clear cut indeed, with the Conservatives winning 646 seats and nobody else holding any. This is the sort of clear cut result one gets in places such as Cuba and North Korea, and leads to executive power that is in no way “diluted [and] unstable”, though one might wonder how it is to be held accountable.

Sir Simon clearly places the clarity of the outcome above the contestability of the result. I disagree. The fact that individuals may choose to demur from the cosy consensus of two-party politics (those rare “Sincere friends of freedom” to whom I referred in my letter, in homage to Lord Acton) is healthy and valuable and should be encouraged.

That a plethora of political parties should compete with one another is essential if politics is not to result in the inevitable failure of that always accompanies duopoly. Duopolies always result in the provision of identical products by identical firms: on the rare occasions when different firms ran trains between the same cities, they ran them at the same times and charged the same ticket price, leading to no discernable difference for the customer and so no real competition. As Gordon Tullock explained in The Vote Motive, political parties in duopoly act in a similar way, gravitating towards the “centre” as they seek to capture the votes of the median voter. This results in stultifying consensus of the type we saw between Conservatives and Labour in the third quarter of the last century, and (as Sir Simon himself showed) between the Thatcherites and New Labour.

Yet while Sir Simon is clearly unhappy with the Thatcherite consensus, he actively decries the one major party that would seek to undermine that consensus and return power to local authorities (a big theme of at least two of his recent books). I can only believe that this is a result of cognitive dissonance: though the evidence is before his eyes, he cannot (or does not wish to) overcome the established thought-patterns that fused in his mind in an earlier era.

That is a shame. The Liberal Democrats will continue to have a role in British politics as long as liberty is threatened by conservatives that fear progress and socialists that want to govern it; as long as the other two political parties in Britain subscribe to dirigisme and social engineering; and as long as majorities are allowed to dictate to individuals. With his strong support of localism and his having “almost no quarrel with anything the Liberals have ever said”, Sir Simon would be an ideal supporter. Instead, his talents are wasted supporting a party with which he clearly has greater disagreements. Our loss is also his.

A letter to Simon Jenkins

A cornucopia of Liberal Democrat bloggers have responded on their sites to Simon Jenkins’ comment piece in yesterday’s Guardian, in which launches a bitter but slightly confused attack on the Liberal Democrats.

I see no point in adding to James Graham’s fisking. Nor can I ever hope to match the wrath of Cicero. I have not the time to rival Mind Robber’s essay. I cannot hope for a wide a readership as Stephen Tall. I will defer to Duncan Borrowman's acidity.

The only way to add value to this debate is to take it to its source. I have therefore written an email to Sir Simon in which I point out that he has, himself, demonstrated what the Liberal Democrats are for in his most recent book.

I have also sent a truncated copy to the editor, in the hope of it being printed. Were it to be, I would have a wider readership than Stephen (for just one day). However, as I imagine Party grandees are even now formulating an official response, I suspect it is a vain hope. The full version would anyway never see the light of day, so I am reproducing it below. I hope you enjoy it.

Dear Simon,

I was surprised that you should question the role and purpose of the Liberal Democrats in your article in yesterday’s Guardian, as the answers were clearly contained within your most recent book.

Your article suggests that you continue to analyze politics through the lens of a right-left antithesis. Yet in Paradoxes of Power, on which you leant quite heavily for the first part of Thatcher and Sons, Alfred Sherman wrote that “We should long since have been liberated from shibboleths inherited from the parade of the Estates on the Versailles tennis court in 1789”. This is undoubtedly true.

As Friedrich Hayek suggested in explaining why he was not a conservative, there are in fact three distinct political traditions, each competing for space in the political arena. In answering your question, therefore, I would point out that the Liberal Democrats continue a long political tradition of liberalism, as opposed to both socialism and conservatism.

Of course the divisions between the political parties are not always as clear as ideology would suggest. There is a Social Democratic tendency within the Liberal Democrats, just as Roy Jenkins et. al. represented a liberal tendency within the socialist Labour Party. David Cameron claims to be a liberal Conservative, though in practice he seems to lean more towards a paternalistic High Tory dirigisme that shares ground with the socialists.

Ironically, Thatcher and Sons also indicates how this ideology translates to distinct policy, and further suggests that this policy is one with which you have sympathy. You note that the Thatcher government’s attempt to denationalise and deregulate the economy, to break up corporate interests and to inject market discipline into public services (the “First Revolution”) was pursued by means of a massive centralisation of authority in Whitehall, in the Treasury and within the office of the Prime Minister (the “Second Revolution”). While recognising the need for the first, you lament the second as both a failure and an encroachment on the liberty and diversity within British society. Yet as you clearly demonstrate, this centralism and arrogation of power has been the policy of both Conservative and Labour regimes for three decades.

The Liberal Democrats have consistently supported an alternative, local agenda that is in keeping with the liberal tradition that decision making should take place as near as possible to the citizen. While agreeing wholeheartedly with the First Revolution, the Liberal Democrats would seek to reverse the second, injecting greater power and autonomy into decrepit and demoralised local government. The Lib Dems would hand power to national, regional and local authorities that are more responsive to individual citizens, empowering individuals and communities and so encouraging greater political engagement.

The bulk of your article is in fact an expression of genuine concern that the outcome of a truly representative voting system may have on the unity and authority of the executive branch. This is a serious matter and deserves greater attention (though to continue with the status quo is not a satisfactory answer). However, to suggest that the difficulties presented by a system of proportional representation warrant the dismantling of one of Britain’s oldest and greatest political parties, with a distinct ideological tradition and substantial electoral success, is illogical.

Sincere friends of freedom may be rare, but no matter how the British polity is constituted, they will find a home within the Liberal Democratic Party.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Papworth

The Trap: Whatever happened to our dreams of freedom? (Conclusion)

In three previous posts I have outlined the three episodes of Adam Curtis’s television series The Trap: Whatever happened to our dreams of freedom?, in which he argued that a narrow view of freedom and a distrust of public authorities had led us into a dead-end, a morally vacuous society prey to the positive promises of tyrants and demagogues. In this post I will comment on Curtis’s conclusion that what is needed is a new form of progressive politics, the revival of the positive liberty that Isaiah Berlin and Friedrich Hayek told us would lead to tyranny.

Curtis was not shy in his conclusions. Isaiah Berlin was wrong, he said. The problem was not merely that the negative liberty that he had espoused had been mutated into its own form of positive liberty. Rather, it was Berlin’s very notion of negative liberty that was at fault. Positive liberty offers us a hopeful vision of a brighter and better future – it is a means to an end – whereas negative liberty offers no hope at all; it is nothing more than an end in itself. The world it conjured up was one without purpose. This narrow and limiting vision was a dangerous trap, offering nothing to counter the reactionary forces that would seek to sweep liberty aside by offering order and equality in place of freedom. A world of negative freedom was not inevitable, however, and Curtis ended with a paean for a rediscovery of a progressive politics, because positive freedom does not have to lead to tyranny.

It is ironic, then, that so much of this last programme demonstrated exactly the opposite. The positive liberty of the French and Algerian revolutionaries, of Sartre and his acolyte Pol Pot, of the Ayatollahs and all those other inspired revolutionaries – yes, even of Tony Blair’s attempt to marry the two kinds of liberty – had always led to tyranny. In its mildest and most Fabian form, socialism in Britain led to Government officials dictating what individuals might earn and what businesses might charge, and as a result of its mildness it was more incompetent than brutal. Where positive liberty was carried to its logical conclusion, however, absolute poverty ensued – no matter how much relative poverty was alleviated – and dissenters went to the gallows or the gulags or just disappeared during the night.

Curtis refuses to see this because of his bias towards socialism, exposed by his claim that “the redistribution of land and wealth” were essential aspects of democracy. This is nonsense. Democracy may be a means to affect social change, but social change is not integral to democracy. It is integral to positive liberty, however, for it is the vision of a better world and the use of the levers of power – be they autocratic or democratic – to achieve that better world that is at the heart of positive liberty.

In fact, Curtis is wrong on a far more fundamental level. The ideal of negative liberty is neither narrow nor limiting, and certainly does not offer a bleak vision of the future. On the contrary, it is offers the broadest and most enabling future imaginable, for what it recognises is that within each of us is the possibility of creating a better world, and that any one of us may chance upon a profound truth. Rather than be bound to follow the agreed path to progress – be it inspired by Marx or Mohammed or Mammon – we are each able to pursue a better world in our own way. If history is really the march of progress, its greatest lesson is that progress never came from societies agreeing in advance where the future lay and slavishly driving themselves to that goal. Progress came from a million tiny revolutions, from new ideas tried and new concepts espoused, from individuals free from the binding constraints of orthodoxy – or willing to risk pain and death to break those bonds. That progress is not achieved through shepherding society towards a cause, but through freeing men and women to act upon their own initiative.

Isaiah Berlin called this "negative liberty" because freedom came from the absence of something – power and constraint. It suffers from nomenclature: the two types of liberty have semantic connotations. But in fact they are counterintuitive, for it is “negative liberty” that offers a more positive image of the future: one without coercion or conformism or crushing convention. It really does "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend". But even if Curtis were right, and the best that negative liberty could offer was freedom as an end in itself, is that so terrible? By being free, thinking individuals, seeking our own truth and looking to how we can improve the world in our own way, we become better people, more aware of ourselves and of those around us than we ever need do as followers of another’s path. If in the process we enjoy “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, then so much the better. It may be negative liberty, but it is offers a more positive and more progressive image of the future than any other I have heard described.

Reviews of part 1, part 2 and part 3 are available separately.

The Trap: Whatever happened to our dreams of freedom? (Part 3)

Last night saw the third and final episode of Adam Curtis’s television series, The Trap: Whatever happened to our dreams of freedom?.

As I outlined in my reviews of the first and second episodes, this series has argued that the past thirty years has been dominated by a narrow and depressing view of freedom based on an assumption that cold rationality and a distrust of political leadership. Mr. Curtis has sought to undermine this concept. However, in doing so he has demonstrated his own failure to understand both the nature of freedom and the gulf between what has been delivered by political leaders and what individuals cry out for.

In this third post I will outline the programme for those who did not see it. I will address his conclusions in a final post, and there I will argue that he is wrong not only in his analysis but also in his fundamental call for a new type of freedom. In my writing, below, I will limit my comments (in the last and third from last paragraphs) to Curtis’s description of the experiences in Russia and in Iraq. Here Curtis was deliberately disingenuous, attempting to conjure a biased picture and so make it appear that the concept of liberty he opposes is to blame for the problems those countries experienced.

In the final episode, entitled We will force you to be free, Curtis abandoned his focus on psychology and Public Choice Theory, turning instead to the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism in the twentieth century. The leading exponent of liberty was the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin. In his essay Two Concepts of Liberty he presented two different images of freedom, which he called “Negative” and “Positive” liberty. Both were born of the French Revolution, but where the former sought freedom from constraint, the latter sought to make the world a better place. Put crudely, these have been described as “freedom to” and “freedom from”: the freedom to act as one sees fit (as long as it does not curtail the freedom of others, as Mill and others stressed), or the freedom from want that came from a progressive society.

Berlin believed that negative liberty was a great prize, freeing us from coercion by others and tyranny by governments. Positive liberty, on the other hand, was a dangerous form of absolutism, for if there was only one ideal future, only one truth, then anything was justified to achieve that goal. “I object to paternalism,” Berlin explained, “to being told what to do.” His great fear was the tyranny of the Communist regimes that were at the time dominating Eastern Europe, but as his example he took the positive liberty preached by the Jacobins of the French Revolution: that the people were too stupid to appreciate freedom, so the state must “force them to be free”, using terror to force the changes necessary to make a better society. Negative liberty would protect us from this progressive tyranny. But Berlin also cautioned that the belief in negative liberty must never itself become an absolute destiny, for if it did it would morph into a form of positive liberty, with anything justified to achieve that end.

Having set out the philosophical battlefield, Curtis began to populate it. Positive liberty was very popular in the middle of the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that freedom was shackled by society, and individuals had to break those shackles to be free. His views influenced Algerian revolutionaries who argued that the West controlled not by force of arms but of ideas, and that catharsis could be achieved by the cleansing fire of violence. Sartre also influenced Steve Biko, Che Guevara and Pol Pot. The views of these men fed back to Sartre, who advocated revolution to free society. This reached its apotheosis in the Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia, where revolutionaries sought to sweep aside the shackles that bound society by liquidating the entire middle class, even inviting the Cambodian Diaspora back to help rebuild society, only to butcher them on the runways as they stepped off the planes.

The US reaction to the spread of revolutionary fervour was to promote reactionary forces; the “Realpolitik” of Henry Kissinger. But the support of dictators such as Pinochet and Marcos disgusted others in America – later known as the Neoconservatives – who felt that America should be promoting its values abroad rather than supping with the devil. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, his Secretary of State told congress that there “are things worth fighting for”, and the administration introduced Project Democracy, a plan to promote democracy abroad using four key tools:

• Public support for democratic politics (including dropping the old, discredited allies)
• Promoting democracy abroad – but only in its electoral form, and not what Curtis referred to as the “other aspects of democracy: the redistribution of land and wealth”
• Undermining communist governments abroad (e.g. in Nicaragua)
• The creation of an Office of Public Diplomacy to spread propaganda to the American public.

The result were two scandals: one contemporary and one held over for the future. The contemporary scandal was the Iran-Contra Affair. The scandal for the future was the precedent that was set for spinning intelligence to justify wars for which there was no clear and present danger. The problem, noted Curtis (though he later seemed to conveniently forget it) was that the Neocons had reified Berlin’s fear: they were advocating forms of negative liberty in a positivist way: they would force us to be free.

Nobody noticed, however, because in 1989 Communism collapsed and history ended. Liberal democracy had triumphed. Curtis chose to dwell on the results in Russia, where President Yeltsin followed Jeffrey Sachs advice and adopted a big bang approach to liberalising the economy, destroying elite institutions and freeing the people. To Curtis this was a disaster: prices shot up as soon as price controls were removed; people were issued with vouchers with which to buy stakes in privatising utilities, but they sold them for cash to the future Oligarchs who then snapped up the utilities for a windfall profit; objections in the Duma led Yeltsin to send in troops; finally there was a run on the banks and Russia defaulted on its debt. The results, argued Curtis, was that Russians turned their backs on the anarchy that had ensued and sought sanctuary in order. They willingly gave their freedoms away to President Putin, a reactionary autocrat who promised stability at the expense of liberty.

There is always a point in Curtis’s films where his bias is exposed. In this episode it was the Russian experience. His presentation of the Russian financial crisis crudely exploited time compression, disguising the five years that elapsed between the liberalisation and the financial difficulties. Nor did he mention the low price of commodities (on which Russia was dependent) in the late 1990s, or how much money would later flow into Russia as commodity prices rose. He ignored the knock-on effects from the Asian financial crisis, to which Russia was a sequel. And he said nothing of the Chechen War, surely a more effective tool in Putin’s armoury than the economy. Lastly, Curtis ignored the very different experience in much of Eastern Europe, where liberalisation has led to massive rises in living standards and where greater freedom has been welcomed. This analysis exposes Mr. Curtis as a partial and biased analyst. It does him no credit.

In the final part, Curtis suggested that Tony Blair was quite taken with the principles of negative liberty, but lamented the loss of idealism that positive liberty conveyed. He wrote to Isaiah Berlin and asked whether it might be possible to synthesise the two, though the dying Berlin never replied. Blair went on to argue that it was the destiny of the West to spread liberty. Curtis argues that this was negative liberty as evangelism, but others might argue that it was not negative liberty at all. Blair was also aware that Public Choice Theory had undermined faith in politicians, so the only way to carry the people was – argued Curtis – to lie to them. Evidence for the Iraq war was spun, and Iraq was given a Russian-style dose of liberalising shock-therapy: everything was privatised and the Baath administrators were sacked.

The Iraq experience also encouraged distortion and bias from Curtis. He argued that the de-Baathification resulted from a liberal distrust of public officials. Not a word was said of the intellectual antecedent of this idea, the de-Nazification of Germany, or the fact that the vast majority of the Iraqi people were demanding the removal of their Baath tormentors. Even more unbelievably, Curtis claimed that it was the economic consequences of liberalisation and the lack of positive liberty at the heart of Iraqi democracy that triggered the insurgency, not a combination of Sunni ex-Baath rejectionists and Al Qaeda-inspired fanatics, as every other commentator and expert has agreed. It was fabrication on a grand scale.

He was right in one area, though. The emergence of Islamic terrorism in Western cities has been used – by both Blair and President Bush, among others – to justify massive extensions of state power in an attempt to pre-empt crime and terrorism. This has gone beyond terror, however, to seek pre-emptive powers to control possible criminal and even anti-social behaviour. The result is a return to the arbitrary power of the state and the end of the very civil liberties that the West is claiming to protect. It is a bitter irony.

I have separately reviewed part 2 and part 3. Curtis's conclusion and my analysis of it are discussed in a final post.

Mill, liberty and ID cards

On Monday night those of us not worn smooth by constant fringes over the weekend trudged our way to the National Liberal Club for an event organised by the John Stewart Mill Institute. The lecture was entitled John Stewart Mill and Actual Liberty, and was presented by the fantastically bemaned Professor A C Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, London.

Grayling sought to set our understanding of liberty and that of Mill in the context of what he saw as the emerging concept of liberty through the ages. At the end he sought to link this to “actual liberty” in our time, concentrating mostly on the excrescence that is the Government’s ID card scheme.

The bulk of the lecture was therefore a tour through the ages from Erasmus to Mill and beyond, reminiscent of Lord Acton’s History of Freedom in Christianity. Half a millennium ago liberty was the preserve of aristocrats and kings; the rest of us were serfs or at least subjects. But in the early 16th century began the first stirrings of liberal thought, as first Erasmus and later the protestant reformers began to discuss freedom of conscience. From freedom of conscience came freedom of thought more generally – if we are free to worship God in our own way, is it not also logical to look at the world in our own way. Once free to question God and nature, it was only logical that we would question our rulers, and so the Enlightenment logically led to the Glorious Revolution in England and (more belatedly) the American and French Revolutions. And once we were free it became natural to wonder why others were not, so that the 18th century saw a flourishing of emancipation movements: the campaign against slavery is currently the most germane, and triggered others such as the movement for the emancipation of women.

Having set out this context, Grayling turned to Mill and noted that one of Mill’s greatest concerns was the tyranny of the majority. Aware of the march of progress and the inevitability of an ever-expanding franchise, Mill was well aware that demos might become the greatest tyrant of all. (I have often thought about writing a posting on the inherent tension within Liberal Democracy). Mill argued that the State only had a right to limit people’s freedom where their actions might impact upon others – the State has no right to interfere in what individuals do to themselves.

What bearing does this have on “Actual liberty” – our experience of liberty today? Grayling began by noting that in 1975 just about everybody was free, and compared it to the situation in 1500 when freedom was the private preserve of the rich and powerful. However, we were now in danger of losing that liberty, giving it up in pursuit of the chimera of security. He illustrated this through the execrable ID card scheme. We are often told that ID cards will hold no more information that the dozens of cards we carry with us all the time; my loyalty cards and credit cards tell people where I shop and what I buy and so feed information to advertisers and store managers. However, these are all schemes that we choose to opt into: we are not required to have a Visa card, to carry it or to produce it. But ID cards must be compulsory or they are pointless.

The justification for them is based upon what Grayling considers the most monstrous illusion of our times (as touted by David Blunkett and two European interior ministers in an article published several years ago): that Government’s primary responsibility is to protect the security of its citizens. In fact, noted Grayling, Government’s primarily responsibility is to protect our liberty, and while our freedom to live is one key liberty, it is not the only one (and, he might have added, is worth little on its own). ID cards, rather than enhancing our liberty, will limit it, with little hope that it will deter terrorism.

Grayling also noted that when ID cards were introduced in 1939 only two Government departments had access to the information behind them. By 1945 this had expanded to 62. He added that they were introduced when “300,000 soldiers were massed across the Channel, and their associated bombers were dropping thousands of bombs on us a night”. He compared this to the present situation, where at most 3,000 enemies are massed against us and their bombers do not strike every year.

Finally, the point was made that the present scenario has echoes of George Orwell’s 1984 and the perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. The War on Terror has no defined conditions for its completion, which means that (as with the situation in 1984, and also the Cold War) it can be used to justify ongoing and in essence permanent “emergency measures”. Just as Eisenhower warned against the “Military-Industrial Complex”, so Grayling warned against what one might call (though he did not use the term) the “Security-Industrial Complex”, of which the biometric data companies are a significant part.

The full lecture is due to be published by the John Stewart Mill Institute shortly.