It is generally accepted that this government has stripped away a good number of the basic rights we have traditionally enjoyed.

Tonight we will look at:

• the nature and basis of these rights;
• how socialists have seen bourgeois rights;
• the Tories and rights;
• New Labour and rights;
• capitalism today and rights and
• what is to be done?

The nature and basis of these rights

It has been argued that our rights have come in distinct waves. The first wave is based in the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We gained the right to freedom of expression, equal treatment before the courts, some degree of press freedom, limited rights to organise.

As these rights became established most people did not have the right to vote. The right to vote was mainly established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The right to social welfare comes later. Some minimal forms of welfare have a long history and most countries had welfare services by World War I. However, a right was not really established until after World War II.

All this can give the impression that such rights dropped from heaven. None did. They were locked into law and practice as a result of long hard battles.

However, there was a certain logic to the establishment of rights under capitalism. Capitalism forms a society in which the main way of creating wealth is to free individuals to set up businesses and to free workers from ties to the land. This all pushes towards the general establishment of individual rights. Thus, early pro-capitalist campaigns battled for liberty against the reactionary establishment. Adam Smith, John Locke and their co-thinkers were on the left (even before the term had come into use).

The battle for voting rights took on the radical form of Chartism from the 1830s. The point was for working men to take over Parliament and legislate radical social change. By the time any significant number of working men gained the vote in the 1867 Reform Act it seemed clear that the working class was not going to take over Parliament and remake it in its class interest.

The next wave of rights came in the early post-war years. It was argued by social democrats that a range of welfare rights formed a necessary platform for the exercise of other rights. We could not, for example, effectively vote if we were illiterate and too worried about the next meal to pay attention to the politicians. Likewise legal aid is needed for an effective equality in court.

Most of these rights have long been established. However, governments have always tried to undermine them. For example, I cannot remember a time which they were not trying to restrict jury trial.

How socialists have seen bourgeois rights.

Typically socialists disagree with each other. On these issues there seem to have been two views from early on. One suggested that socialism was about freeing humanity from the ties of capitalist society. Socialist society would be made by the people who lived in it, not planned according some blueprint. According to this line of thinking bourgeois rights are limited and imperfect. In this view the fraud of bourgeois rights is that they are partial and half-hearted.

The other side says is that socialism is about equality. We need a powerful government to impose equality. The government is the conscious head of society in this mode of thinking. Only intelligent leaders can take us forward to a better future. This way of thinking suggests that there is a different fraud involved in rights. It is to pretend that these rights will make us free. They are illusions and we need a strong state not woolly liberal rights.

This division is reflected within all socialist movements. The Soviet Union quickly emphasised the need for a strong state and minimal rights. In Britain the Fabian Society has long been a centre for authoritarian socialism. It is notable that while the rhetoric talks of equality it does not really mean it. The Soviet Union and Britain under old Labour were less unequal than their countries' previous regimes but that is all. Neither of them moved towards equality in a serious way.

None of the rights discussed here is sufficient for human freedom. They treat us as formally equal in an unequal society. They assume that life is divided between the state taking care of our public role and a private sphere which is principally there for private profit. Society needs to overcome the public/private breach. Only then can people relate to each other on a human basis.

The Tories and rights

Historically the main thrust of the Tories has been authoritarian. However, they were generally split between old fashioned elitists who wanted to govern on behalf of the poor simple folk of our land and the free marketers who wanted freedom to make money. Some of the free marketeers have extended this to a minimum state and extreme laissez faire.

Thatcher, of course, tied the trade unions up in knots. She also banned Sinn Fein from the broadcast media. She was the first of the new brand in the way in which she combined authoritarianism and free markets. She freed up conditions for capitalism while restricting rights in other areas. Stuart Hall refers to her authoritarian populism.

New Labour and rights

However, the great rights destruction really gets going under New Labour.

Yet it all started so well. The European Convention on Human Rights was largely put into British law through the 1998 Human Rights Act. This made it easier to obtain those rights under British law and created difficulties for governments intent on destroying rights. Devolution gave limited powers to Scotland and Wales and to some degree brought government closer to the people of those countries. In 2000 the Freedom of Information Act was passed. Notably it took 5 years before it came into force.

However, most of the traffic has been the other way.

Some examples will help to make the point:

1. Snooping:

• The collection of DNA from anybody who is either investigated as a possible criminal or as a witness to a crime. The European Court of Human Rights rejected this policy in Dec. 2008. The government is now trying to decide what to do with a database of about 200,000 samples.

• ID cards are on the way. They are being introduced slowly so that firstly special and vulnerable groups get them. Soon we will all end up with them. They will be different from any in the western world in that they will link information from a variety of data bases and offer a way that the government can map us through its mass of data bases (for details see: <http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/whyNot.php> http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/whyNot.php)

• A mass of NHS data is being collected about us. This will in future be shared across the NHS.

• Anti-terror legislation enables the state to spy as never before. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 deals with the internet and other means of information. Its most outrageous use has been by Poole Borough Council used the Act to spy on a family in 2008 to see if they really lived at their given address. The point was that they had put their three years old child down for a popular nursery. The 2006 Terrorism Act enables the government to make internet service providers keep files for national security reasons.

• The Damian Green case was important. The idea that an MP is just an ordinary person whose work is just an ordinary job was clearly the one that led in this debate. It followed a curious path in which it seemed that MPs ask for special privileges for themselves for some weird reason. If we see them as the spokespersons of their electors their role is special and needs privileges. The erosion of Parliament is only partially relevant here but it does mark out the way that the state is building a new authoritarian position.

2. Suppressing free speech:

• The 2006 Terrorism Act criminalised rather vague statements deemed to directly or indirectly encourage terrorism. 'Glorifying terrorism' is a very loose phrase and it could include statement merely supporting the political goals rather than the methods of terrorists. It also meant that people could be held for 28 days while they were being questioned.

• Official secrets legislation means that anything that the government deems to be a security matter cannot be exposed.

• Older stuff could also be effective - sedition restricts the right to be radically critical in all sorts of ways. Incitement to disaffection means that attempts to stop the armed forces or police from obeying orders are illegal.

• Civil law can also be used to keep us quiet. British defamation laws are tougher than those in most western countries. This means that the press can be kept quiet when they want to expose the rich and powerful.

3. Organisation

• Anti-union legislation is the key here.

• To stand for Parliament organisations have to meet certain public criteria which the Socialist Alliance found to be intrusive.

4. Protest

• The right to demonstrate is severely restricted by law. The 1986 Public Order Act is they key measure here. Under the Act any group preparing a demonstration should name an organiser of the event, whether it is static or a march. The organiser is required to give the police at least 7 days notice of the planned activity. This should include details of timings, routes, etc. If the named organiser does not keep to these details s/he may be liable to a £400 fine.

• The 7 day rule is not absolute. If it is not practical to give 7 days notice the organisers should submit written notice as soon as possible - it is accepted that sometimes spontaneous protests happen. If such a demonstration takes place then it can be for the magistrates to decide if notice should have been given.

• If the police believe that a demonstration will result in public disorder they can ban it. Anybody participating in a banned march would be committing an offence. If the police do not ban a demonstration they can place specific restrictions on it. A senior police officer can even make such regulations at the time of the event.

• Under This power has been used to stop NF demonstrations in the 1970s, however, since whole classes of demonstration are involved (eg. political marches) many other bodies have been affected by such bans.

• Recently demonstrations have been harshly dealt with - penned in to particular places for hours, etc.

• Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 prevents demonstrations close to Parliament - the government says it will repeal this section of the Act.

5. Arrest

• At one time the right of the police to arrest people and hold them without trial was very limited. They needed reasonable suspicion that an offence had been committed and could hold you for questioning for 24 hours (48 at weekends).

6. Other restrictions on freedom

• A concern here is the rise of the ASBO. This is a court order that restricts behaviour. You do not need to have committed an offence to be made subject to one. Once an ASBO has been issued, breaking its terms is a criminal offence. Injunctions have a similar impact, however, this is a massive extension of this use of this sort of power.

• Another worry is the massive rise in the use of prison. We have seen a sharp rise in the number of people locked up under New Labour at a time when they admit that the level of crime is falling off. We have around 80,000 people locked up in the UK, roughly double the 1991 figure.

• Legal aid has recently become much harder to obtain.

Capitalism today and rights

This is not just a British issue. Throughout the western world the state has used the issues of terror and crime to justify the removal of rights. The media have encouraged a disproportionate fear of crime to push through the changes. Fear of terror attacks has been used to promote the culture of extensive spying and long periods of detention without trial. The state has worked to move to a more powerful position than in the post-war years.

Despite the setbacks for working class organisation over recent decades the fear in ruling circles has grown. The key areas seem to have been snooping, the use of prison and detailed control over behaviour. This detailed control has spread far beyond the traditional concerns of civil rights. It includes areas like the control over education and health. Thirty years ago what was taught and how it is taught were in the hands of the education system. Today ministers tell teachers exactly how and for how long to teach things like literacy. The target culture and tight finances have transformed the atmosphere in education. A parallel process has occurred in health.

Thus a state which has privatised and formally reduced its power has actually raised itself to considerable heights.

An interesting twist to the story is the way in which how we are represented is changing. The undermining of the role MPs was highlighted by the Damian Green affair.

I have not really discussed Europe but the EU is important. It is creating a whole web of restrictions about how things are done. Some are petty and intrusive but others are concerned with environmental and labour issues. As recent strikes have shown the EU is no friend of the working class. Against this it has often offered more protection for workers than Britain has done.

What is to be Done?

Firstly, we need to properly analyse the situation. Something new is happening and I have only glanced at some aspects of it. The way that the state relates to the rest of society is changing and we need to grasp it. Groups like Liberty and No2ID and individual like Henry Porter offer a defence of traditional positions. What they are unable to do is examine the way that the state is intervening in a new manner as its leaders are conscious that there is a growing hostility to the system. This hostility is still at a low level of consciousness but is clearly around as recent strikes testify.

Secondly, we should be offering our support to the movements that battle for liberty. Although some defenders of civil liberties like David Davis are Tories the defence of rights can only be coherent as part of a socialist project. This is because socialism is about humanity liberating itself.

I think that we need to give a higher profile to the issues around rights. At the same time we should be pointing out the limits of rights in a capitalist society and the fact that only a transition to a new way of living can create a society of real freedom.

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