National Liberty

Martin Kettle writes:

As I write, highly civilised human beings living within a few miles of this office are plotting to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing what they believe their religion requires them to do. If one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his God, who has the power to absolve him from evil.

In 1941, when George Orwell wrote the passage of which the above paragraph is an only lightly altered pastiche, Britain was indisputably at war with Germany. Today, in spite of very large amounts of warlike rhetoric, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, Britain is equally indisputably not at war with anyone. We are not at war with any nation state, not at war with Islam, not at war with terrorism, and not at war with the people in our midst who are, be in no doubt about it, plotting to kill us. But it sometimes looks that way.

This week's domestic political storms over government threats to civil liberties are history repeating itself less as tragedy than as farce. The threats to liberty in the government's plans to log email records and restrict access to sensitive information in court proceedings are serious, in their way. But the threats should not be overstated, and the readiness of David Cameron to back down promptly and even gracefully are signs of how things have changed for the better since the aftermath of 2001. Both party leaders have been caught napping by events they should have anticipated. The handling of the episode reflects badly on both of them, but Britain is not about to become North Korea, or for that matter the United States.

These events have been echoes of a time when Britain was more confused than it is today about whether we are at war with terror. They are a reminder that some confusion still exists, especially and to some extent understandably, among those who are charged with protecting the rest of us against threats that are real not imaginary. But such confusion was far stronger and more widespread after 9/11, which Tony Blair in his memoirs calls an event like no other and which, in his view, meant that the world had changed. "It was, in a very real sense, a declaration of war," Blair wrote.

Except that it was not, either then or now. A monumental, generation-shaping crime, yes. A ratcheting up of the terrorist threat to national and international security, certainly. A jihadist menace requiring a wide-ranging and sometimes ruthless response, that too. But an act of war it was not. And because it was not an act of war, ordinary life here went on much as before. Advanced modern states can absorb even events like 9/11 without the everyday fundamentals for most people – work, travel, home life, material comforts – needing to alter.

And, we can now see, without the need for fundamental changes in the balance of law and liberty, either. Admittedly, the plan to extend the state's power to obtain details of your and my email and social networking traffic is not solely a response to the terrorist threat. Terrorism certainly comes into it very significantly. But it's also a response to serious organised crime of other kinds, like drugs and prostitution rings. The plan to hold secret court hearings, with specially vetted lawyers, on the other hand, is pure anti-terror reflex, imported and recycled at the behest of the Americans by the security and secret intelligence services.

Some of the civil libertarian responses to such plans can give the impression that the problems which the plans claim to address are negligible, or even nonexistent. That is foolish. Organised crime and terrorism are for real, and are here for the duration. Some 25,000-30,000 individuals in 2,800 organised crime groups, say Home Office experts. At least 2,000 terrorist-connected suspects in Britain, according to MI5, with unquantifiable numbers abroad. And they're out to get you.

Government ministers have not yet found a way of facing the problem but putting it into perspective. Well-balanced decisions remain rare. Under Blair, ministers too often abandoned their balancing role. "We believed ('we' being the security services, police, political leadership)," writes Blair. It's a revealing elision, implying, probably accurately in this case, that Blair and his ministers saw themselves as effectively indistinguishable from the police or the security services. Yet ministers, especially the prime minister, have to balance these interests along with others, like human rights and the rule of law.

The coalition has been much better at this. Yet the careless way in which David Cameron and Nick Clegg have handled the data surveillance and secret hearings issues suggests that they had begun to go native in the Blair manner. Both men had plenty of chances to slow, reopen or even abort the processes. They did not take them. On the other hand, once the political storm started, both were quick to understand that they were in the wrong place, and that retreat was needed. Blair would probably not have done this. These episodes reinforce the case for a strong counter-balance within Downing Street to prevent it happening again. Prime ministers need national liberty advisers as well as national security ones.

Blair always argued that he would never lose public support by cranking up the toughness on crime or terror. His excessive legislating has gone, but the underlying instinct remains widespread among today's politicians. Labour still believes the public votes for tough. Cameron believes it deep down too, as do most Conservatives. Clegg may be more ambivalent. But his party is the only one with consistently strong civil libertarian reflexes. It is one of the reasons why the Liberal Democrats will continue to matter more than most of us think.

This week has reinforced a key lesson of the post-9/11 decade. In the contest between state power and terrorism, the public mood is much more balanced than politicians admit. The belief in fair rules is very widespread. The Daily Mail has been as forceful against secret courts and email snooping as the Guardian. The rule of law matters to the right at least as much as to the left, perhaps more so.

Governments that want to be trusted – and all governments should – need to remember this more often than the coalition has done.