Taking Liberties

On your bike, law lords tell Met

When is a protest not a protest? The answer, according a recent judgement by the law lords, is whether it is ‘commonly or customarily held’. At least this is the case for the Critical Mass bike ride, which twelve times a year slowly rolls from London’s South Bank on the last Friday of the month, cheering cyclists, annoying some drivers, and bemusing tourists.

The ride is, as Lord Phillips stated in a ruling yesterday, a ‘customary procession’ and is exempt from the notification requirements of the Public Order Act 1986. Since the ride has no organiser, leader or preordained route, there was no need to notify the Met. The evidence also showed that the Met have been able to police the ride without difficulty. At the last ride I went on, there weren’t even any uniformed police present, and apart from a minicab of city boys annoyed that they were being delayed getting to their strip club for a bachelor party. There wasn’t much sympathy in the group I was with.

Lord Phillips also made the point that the Public Order Act was never intended to undermine the right to hold processions and protests. As an earlier blog entry suggested, laws can be applied in ways that Parliament never originally intended, particularly in terms of the right to protest and free speech. This ruling may set a precedent against such restrictions by stealth.

Of course, the ride may not even be a protest, but just a chance to ride with friends through the centre of London. Perhaps I’ll see you there.

Taxing questions

What are parliaments for? They operate as courts, deciding cases and making laws. They are spaces for debate - as Churchill quipped, the ‘object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs’.

The more cynical might argue that they are a simply a machine for raising taxes. A certain amount of consent is needed to extract money from people, which is why kings have found it useful to have a parliament to approve their money-raising schemes over the years. Of course, things sometimes go wrong, as the section of the exhibition that considers the Civil War (Parliament and People) shows. Charles I, desperate for cash, could not in the end ignore parliamentary demands, with unhappy personal consequences.

In the 18th century, it was discovered that the ship of state could sail happily, and successfully of a sea of debt. Men in the city and overseas investors were relaxed about lending money, if asked by similar sorts of people meeting in parliament and subject to public scrutiny.

More recently, the eye-watering sums of money that have recently been made available to the banks have shown how democracies, with the assistance of the bond markets and central banks, can raise massive amounts of money, without causing too many political storms (at least so far). The recent pre-budget report has brought some of these debates centre stage. The 2.5% cut in the rate of VAT is also a reminder that parliament operates within a wider, European context, as 15% is the lower limit allowed in the EU.

But even in straitened times, there is cause for optimism, as the forthcoming 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reminds us. Even at the moments of economic plight, as Europe struggled to feed itself after the Second World War, people believed that human rights were more important than ever.

You can't trust voters, but it takes two to tango

Along with missing The Devil’s Whore, I’ve also completely missed Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC programme in which C-list celebrities offer Saturday cheer by participating in a ballroom dance competition.

But now that government ministers are involved, it’s on the front of every paper. Lord Mandelson wants a go, and I can’t ignore it any more. In a complicated judicial process, the Great British Public have their say on the movers and shakers, along with a panel of experts. These two constituencies differ markedly in their views on the former political journalist John Sergeant, whose two left feet have been kept in the running thanks to the public vote. This week, at the centre of the media storm, Sergeant stepped aside, saying that he risked winning the competition. and "even for me, that would be a joke too far".

Does this mean that you can’t trust the voters (or, in this case, the phones), and that unelected experts have a greater legitimacy? Democracy sometimes leads to silly results, like the election of a ‘monkey’ as mayor of Hartlepool. Or to nastier outcomes, such as the occasional election of extremist parties; or to the seemingly counter-intuitive, such as governments elected with a minority of the popular vote.

Several sections of the exhibition look at the campaign to extend the franchise and relative increase in the power of the elected Commons over the unelected Lords. I thought that Sergeant did a mean tango, but I lack any expertise. Government is even more complicated than the tango, I’m sure, so perhaps I’d be happier to leave that the experts. These were arguments made by opponents of the extension of the franchise in the late 18th and 19th centuries: that to exercise the vote one needed a certain level of education and a real stake in society, such as property. Even John Stuart Mill thought some people, such as clergymen and lawyers, should have more votes than others, such manufacturers or farmers. The great man offers no word on ballroom dance judges, though.

God, what a terrible State to be in

A drama set during the Civil Wars, The Devil’s Whore, started on Channel 4 last night. Thanks to the attractions of the Cardinals I missed it, but heard the writer, Peter Flannery, on Start the Week.

A couple of things struck me. The first was the difficulty of cramming the historical arc into four hours; the second was the dramatist’s problem of bringing to the fore the way religion informed so much of life in the past. Making the selections for the exhibition gives me some sympathy for the former.

I also taught two classes this week at Birkbeck on the 16th-century French Wars of Religion, also known as the French Civil Wars. As it happened the two seminar groups settled on very different lines. The first concluded that the wars were about religion, and that religion cannot be separated out from the early-modern world view. The second was much more sceptical, and remained convinced that religion was a tool for political ends or class interests. Both were interested in how religion could justify violence, and how people could see the state or kingdom as something sacred, threatened or polluted by unbelief or opposition.

Looking at many of the documents from this period in the exhibition, such as the Death Warrant of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell’s oath as Lord Protector, and the slightly later Bill of Rights brings home just how similar - and how different - people of that period were to us.

But the big news this week, in terms of rights and freedoms, is the leaking of the BNP membership list. It’s the classic case of the tension between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of speech – and one, it could be argued, made redundant by the fact of the internet.

Those without whom...

The exhibition has now been open to the public for two weeks, so it may be a time for some early reflections.

A small amount of hindsight has brought one thing more clearly into focus, now that the bustle of preparations and the threat of deadlines have subsided, and that is how much of a team effort the exhibition has been. Indeed, I’m not sure if exhibition is the right word, because Taking Liberties has tried to be more than objects on display (although that is a very important part of it). There’s the interactive journey, the filmed segments, the audio recordings within the gallery itself; the books in the BL shop, including Linda Colley’s response ‘Taking Stock of Taking Liberties’ and Mike Ashley’s wonderfully illustrated book. There are the tours – private and public – for visitors, teachers and school parties, with enthusiastic, specially trained and expert guides, as well as the educational programme. There’s the events programme, the interactive journey on the web, 38 key items from the exhibition on the website, podcasts, and more – there’s even this blog.

In all these ways, Taking Liberties offers all kinds of spaces – whether real or virtual – to reflect and discuss what political rights are and what they may mean. Perhaps the there’s also something to be said on the way societies are made up, much like the figure at the beginning of Hobbes’s Leviathan (the manuscript is on show in the section on Parliament and People), constituted from many smaller individuals, but I may leave that for another day.

More importantly for now, somebody had to pull all this together. It’s sad to note that today is Heather’s last day on the project. She led it from the start, and brilliantly orchestrated several teams. I gather there is some cake on offer, so I must rush off to say goodbye and see if there is a slice left.

You have a right to privacy. Unless it sells papers

I’m not sure where I stand on the balance between the right to privacy and freedom of speech; my instinct veers towards the freedom of speech – after all, I do post to a blog.

But on the other hand, it’s unlikely that anyone will be rifling through my dustbin or hunkered down outside my widow with a telephoto lens. The clause in the Human Rights Act dealing with privacy is also hard to argue with: ‘Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence’.

In his recent speech Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, spoke in favour of the press’s ability to expose the failings of ‘crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt’. He worries that the Human Rights and the Scottish Acts, which implement the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, have introduced ‘a privacy law by the back door’.

There is a lot to debate in all of this: the balance between competing rights; the role of the judiciary and parliament; the powers of the High Court, the HRA and the common law; the politics of the HRA; whether the law should be concerned with public or private morality (a point addressed in the Wolfenden Report)... these are just some of the issues.

Many of them are helpfully investigated in Eric Barendt, Freedom of Speech, 2nd ed (Oxford, 2005; BL shelfmark YC.2007.a.10292). These matters are the meat and potatoes, I’m sure, of law and journalism courses across the land, as well as discussion in Westminster.

This balance between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression is examined in greater detail in the Taking Liberties exhibition's interactive, online as well as at St Pancras. There is also the chance to see texts and manuscripts from the battle to report on parliament during the 18th century.

What struck me as interesting in the speech was Dacre’s warning that if the press could not rummage around in the gutter in search of scandal, then newspaper circulations would fall, undermining their ability to play a role in the democratic and political process. It raises the question about the costs – or financing – of democracy. He offered France as a comparison, where the print media is subsidised and doesn’t have the same predominance in the public sphere.

It is a revealing, and somewhat obvious target. And one that may not hit the mark with much force, given the cultural importance placed on familial privacy in France, the importance of regional papers, the excellence of Le Monde, the importance of the sports papers, and, crucially, the cost of print and distribution. The latter may be more of a factor in the weakness of the French press than reluctance to snoop around the Élysée Palace.

A more interesting comparison may have been Japan, which can boast the largest circulation of quality newspapers in the world. The Yomiuri Shimbun, the pre-eminent centre-right daily, for example, has a circulation of 14 million. In a country where papers tend to be delivered to the door, rather than sold by newsagents, most people surveyed consider newspapers to be a ‘necessary’ and ‘reliable’ source of information. That said, there have been recent moves to introduce privacy laws; foreign journalists are often denied access to official ‘kinsha’ press clubs; many people admit to buying papers for just the sport and TV pages; and several big stories have been broken by the racier magazines rather than the dailies (which are often closely linked to big business or politics). The Japanese papers' Canon of Journalism (2000) is worth a read, not least the section about freedom and responsibility.

Facebook 1776: America is no longer listed as being in a relationship

A friend kindly sent me a text at 5am this morning, so I woke up to hear the US President Elect's speech on the radio, making a mix of old and new media (SMS and, well, DAB).

But up to 2am, and then from 5am, the new, social media had been buzzing. It was nerve-racking fun to sip a drink and catch up with friends en masse via IM, forums, and email in the US and across the UK as we saw pictures of people voting from NYTimes.com, debated the merits of CNN and MSNBC stream, and wondered about what it meant.

This morning, Professor Sue Thomas posted an update on Facebook that the social media – things such as Facebook, blogs and twitter – had transformed the Democrats' election machine, something the Republicans had been unable to do. It certainly helped to achieve the record amount of campaign dollars that Obama has raised.

The exhibition's interactive (which you can also do online, now) points to the challenge posed by new forms of communications technology in terms of citizenship and politics. But I also like an older – and very rare – printed document on show: the Dunlap printing of the Declaration of Independence. There are 25 known copies of this revolutionary broadside (it was 24 until a couple of years ago, when a stray copy turned up at a flea market).

It includes some of the most famous lines of any historical text: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” The language and sentiments are of course indebted to the Englishman John Locke, whose thoughts on government are on display in the same case.

The Declaration was drafted at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston, with Jefferson providing most of the text. Late on 4 July, the revised text was approved, and the 'Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled' authorised copies to be printed and 'proclaimed in each of the United States & at the head of the army'.

John Dunlap, a young printer at nearby 48 High Street and Market Street, was charged with producing these copies. He ran off 200 copies that night (making the odd mistake in the text along the way), long before the final manuscript copy of the Declaration was formally signed. The copy on display at the Library was captured by British forces and sent back to London, where they assumed the government would be interested to read the news 'that the associated Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, free and independent States, and they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.'

I doubt they would be friends on Facebook.