Taking Liberties

Citizenship and Copyright

Back from lunch with Andrea and Jamie.  To distract Andrea from the stress of the final stages of preparations for the Henry VIII exhibition, I bring up the 'Monty Hall Problem' in relation to working out which of our three coffees has the milk in it (there's a crema on all three, so we can't see).  I'm not sure that bringing some maths and cognitive dissonance is much of a distraction.  Some chocolate or a drink later may have been a better bet.

I mention this, because earlier this week, Professor James Boyle (of Duke University) kindly came to speak to us about his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind as part of the c21st curatorship project that I help to run.  It's a great talk, and may be similar to the one given at the RSA (a podcast should be available soon). The exhibition didn't have anything about copyright or even much on the need to access information in a democracy, although it was one of the unstated themes and part of the rationale for putting it on in a library (along with the associated events and discussions).  His talk about the balance between protecting the rights of the creator, the need to provide accessible source material as the raw material for new innovations, whether cultural or economic, the 'enclosing' of most of the cultural output of the c20th, and the current lack of empirical, understanding of the real economic relationship between protection and free access was fascinating. 

But, to go back to cognitive dissonance, how many of us would have thought that the uncontrolled, free Internet, with all its problems of libel, pornography and copyright breaches, was the way to go back in 1992, rather than a closed, controlled system like minitel or ceefax.  Open access, he suggested, is not always the best or the right thing, but it's the right thing more often than we think.  The complicated balance of rights, the need to discuss these things openly, and a concentration on the end result or benefit to society brought to mind one of the lonelier cases in the exhibition - J S Mill's On Liberty.

Alas Poor H.C.?

Extraordinary rendition is back in the news this week, with the announcement that in 2004 two men in Iraq were handed over by British forces to the US military and were then transported to Afghanistan. On Monday, Binyam Mohamed, who had spent four years in Guantanamo Bay returned to Britain. He alleged he had been tortured and his captors received information from British intelligence. These are issues that will not go away, not least because of President Obama's recent statement on rendition.

The exhibition places a good deal of early emphasis on these issues, displaying the 1679 Habeas Corpus act and examining occasions when it has been suspended, or defended by individuals such as the 19th-century journalist Thomas Wooler (published of the Black Dwarf, above) or Sun Yatsen, who published an account of his time 'Kidnapped in London' in 1896. States have always felt the the need to curtail people's freedoms; and we are always shocked at the abuses of the past. Yet, there are always voices saying that it's different this time. Maybe. But I'd love to read what Wooler would be writing today.

Written questions

I was looking at Hansard to check on a possible blog posting about plans to change the law to allow hereditary peers to vote in general elections (in line with the Human Rights Act), when I came across a written question from Lord Dubs about 'what travel insurance, including personal medical insurance, is provided for Members of the House travelling on Select Committee or other parliamentary business; and how that compares to the insurance arrangements provided for Members of the House of Commons'. One gets a sense that a spirit of competition between the two Houses lives on.

The full answer, Lord Brabazon of Tara replied, lies on the 'intranet', as most answers seem to be these days. In essence, the Lords are covered up until the age of 85 when on parliamentary business (including getting to work at the Palace of Westminster). However, the Commons have an advantage: their spouses are covered as well.

I mentioned the Chartists yesterday. I wonder if this allowance, which might be labelled a perk, may be read in the spirit of the fourth of the Chartists 'six points': '4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.'You can read the rest of the points in the first edition of the 'People's Charter' in the wall case opposite the entrance to the exhibition.

Speaking of travel, the Library is very handy for several train and underground stations, and there's decent cycle parking in the piazza (did I mention that the exhibition closes on 1 March?).

Snap

The Counter Terrorism Act (2008) passed into law this week, and to celebrate, 300 photographers gathered outside of Scotland Yard. In the National Union of Journalists' view, clause 76 of this act may make it a criminal offence to take a photograph of a police officer, if it is 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'. Taken along with section 44 of the Terrorism Act, the NUJ is worried that there are increasing threats to their right to report on the police. Dame Stella Rimington might agree (the Home Office doesn't).

Changing tack slightly, photography is one of those issues that divides people, not least because of the ease of digital dissemination I alluded to yesterday. It's one thing taking a snap of someone, or being snapped by them, and slowly turning yellow in an old photoalbum; it's another being plastered over somewhere like Flickr, and perhaps even being used in someone's marketing campaign. I took a photo of Regent's Canal on the weekend, and a couple were in the shot. The woman demanded to know where the picture was going (deleted, as it happens - and no, I'm not posting it here).

On the other hand, a fortnight ago, I walked by Primrose Hill in the snow with my camera, and happened to bump (almost literally) into the pop singer Lily Allen. I think she thought I was a paparazzo, and practically demanded that I take a photograph (I think she'd got to the top of the charts and was keen to milk the moment).

Some of this isn't as new as all that. Early photography was given an economic fillip by prints of the stars. And, centre stage in the exhibition section dealing with the Chartists, is a wonderful enlargement of the Great Chartist Demonstration of 1848. I think you can even spot a police officer.

Watching the detectives

Among the items exploring the origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the exhibition is a letter from René Cassin, the French lawyer, pacifist campaigner and member of the UN committee that drew up the Declaration. He later went on to serve on the French Conseil Constitutionnel, which supervises elections and scrutinises legislation to make sure that it is compatible with the French constitution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the European Convention on Human Rights.

There is no exact equivalent in the UK, although a supreme court is on its way and will fulfil some of these functions. Parliament, of course, is also the home for these activities, and there are a number of committees that are concerned with constitutional affairs. One of these, the Lords Constitution Committee, is today publishing a report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, which argues that pervasive technologies, such as CCTV and data collection, may undermine fundamental freedoms and rights to a private life.

This expansion, the report suggests, 'represents one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the Second World War'. What's the answer? Can the CCTV and DNA genie be put back in the bottle, or do we secretly find it too useful and even reassuring, as long as it's not us being hauled in for letting our pooches poop on the pavement or adding an extra bin-bag to a neighbour's pile?

The Committee proposes strengthened oversight, a culling of the national DNA database, compensation for those monitored unlawfully, and judicial scrutiny. I'm sure the timing is coincidental, but Google also announced the launch of its Latitude service this week.

New broom with a few old bristles

Many of the documents in the exhibition have had an afterlife around the world, not just in the United Kingdom. Magna Carta is one obvious beacon, used as a comparison for other documents of fundamental liberties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Another is the Bill of Rights (1689). In an executive order, the new US president has banned torture by all official personnel. As a constitutional scholar, Mr Obama will be well aware of the eighth amendment (1787) of the US Constitution, a ‘Bill of Rights’ that outlaws ‘cruel and unusual punishments’, a phrase taken from the 1689 bill.

A similar right can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948, article five) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). An echo of the past has just become louder.

Web Editor's note: Where do you stand on today's issues? Take our interactive journey now and find out

Sir John Mortimer: I rest my case

Sir John Mortimer, the barrister, writer and playwright, has died, at the age of 85.

It doesn’t seem that long since I saw him enjoying a drink in a north London pub after he had been performing ‘Mortimer’s Miscellany’. As well as creating the immortal ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’, Sir John was a resolute campaigner for liberty, particularly against literary censorship.

Initially, however, his legal practice flourished on the back of his talent for winning divorce cases. But following divorce law reform, he reinvented himself as a criminal barrister, with a great ability to undermine ‘expert’ witnesses, particularly when it came to the macabre evidence of blood stains.

This could not have prepared him for the furore of the Oz trial in 1971. He defended the three editors of the satirical hippy magazine who had allowed a lewdly adulterated comic strip of Rupert Bear to appear in their pages. Recordings of the trial and campaign material are on display in the exhibition.

In this, and other cases, such as his defence of the Sex Pistols, he was a great defender of free speech, and of the idea that lawyers should act as guardians of freedom.

While being interviewed about ‘Mortimer’s Miscellany’, Sir John worried that our civil liberties had been ‘eroded to about 20 years before Magna Carta’. Again, something else that’s on display...

Politicians engage with the man in the Clapham internet cafe

I received an email from Anthony Barnett, who kindly loaned to the exhibition the first printing of Charter 88, reminding me that the ‘Convention on Modern Liberty’ is not far away (28 February to be exact).

This has no formal connection with the exhibition, but it is clearly dealing with many of the issues it considers, not least what are our ‘fundamental freedoms’, and where do we stand on them today.

I note that the challenges listed on their website include not only counter-terrorism and the ‘database state’, but also ‘financial breakdown’, surely something that wasn’t on the convention’s planners’ minds at the start of the process.

It’s also an interesting website, with lots of Web 2.0 elements that are integrated quite elegantly (and also include a YouTube clip of Hancock’s famous Magna Carta ‘did she die in vain?’ clip – something I wanted in the show, but copyright and costs prevailed).

The relationship between the web and politics was something that we thought about including in the exhibition, but space and time ruled out. And, of course, the web makes a better home for that sort of discussion. It has come up during tours, though, and the petitions from the Civil War have led several visitors to remark on the current version, the Number 10 e-petition site.

Politicians such as David Cameron and political parties seem to be getting better at making decent-looking sites, and campaign groups and citizen journalists have also been using them to turn politics, if not on its head, then at least to glance in a different direction.

None have proved as web-savvy as the Obama campaign, and it will be interesting to see how the president-elect uses the web once he is actually president. It even looks like he may get to hold onto his Blackberry (‘They’re going to pry it out of my hands’).

Hearteningly, I was speaking to Jacob in the press office today, and he mentioned that the Taking Liberties interactive has had over 100,000 responses, the majority of which have been online, rather than in the St Pancras exhibition alone.

The fundamental human right to call table tennis any name you like

Happy New Year. A friend has reminded me of my responsibilities to this blog, so here is the first post of 2009.

I helped on a tour of the exhibition this morning by groups from the Home Office and the Mayor of London’s office. On the way round I point out the horrible suffragette doll, which was apparently shoved through a Welsh suffragette’s door by an anti-suffrage protester in the 1910s.

I wondered if we should now think of it as constructed not from a ping-pong ball but a ‘whiff-whaff’ ball – although this Johnsonian name for table tennis has been contested.

As the tour ended, a discussion about rights and responsibilities – two current political buzzwords – began. Should the two be linked, or are rights inalienable? Some, such as those staked out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act are certainly not contingent on good behaviour, but are qualities inherent in being human.

But other aspects seem more contractual, especially those that relate to the social contracts set out by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others. John Stuart Mill has another, more practical, view altogether.

I had planned to talk for 30 minutes, but the tour had lasted an hour, and I worried that I had bored for England. But as it was only just 9.30 in the morning, perhaps this was a sign that the exhibition had sparked our interest?

Charter flight

The exhibition contains at least four charters – Magna Carta; the Charter of the Forests; the People’s Charter; and Charter 88. There are probably more that I’ve missed out.

A statement of agreed principles is a common, and often powerful, way of making political change (and, of course, for resisting it). A curatorial colleague passed me this link from the New York Review of Books: along with Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia) and the local Charter 88, there is now ‘Charter 08’.

Signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals, Charter 08 calls for the introduction of democracy and human rights in China. It was published on 10 December, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.