Ed Miliband in his leader’s speech called for the party to reclaim the tradition of liberty. He disowned lengthy detention without trial and ID cards, but praised the spread of use of CCTV and the DNA database. This points to a twin-track on policy on liberty and justice which should be fleshed out both to put the ‘welcome mat’ out for the 1.5 million or so previous Labour voters who voted Lib Dem this time and to attract those who voted elsewhere in despair of Labour no longer standing up for them in their community.
There are two levels to this proposed policy development. Policy at the high level of legal and constitutional principle which, though it affects only a limited number of people, tends to characterise a government and its legacy and the second level being the policy affecting day-to-day fighting of crime and antisocial behaviour and how it affects individuals’ quality of life.
At the high level of legal principle there were a number of illiberal measures which undoubtedly pushed the soft or liberal left out of support for the party: the use of anti-terrorism measures for purposes for which they were not intended; control orders; 90 or 42 days’ detention without trial are among those that can be cited. After the first term and the landmark Human Rights Act Labour seemed to cease to champion civil liberties. There was a rhetorical surrender to the Michael Howard right with successive home secretaries sabre-rattling even for the abolition of the same Human Rights Act. Rehabilitative measures were implemented but, as Mark Davies recently revealed in these pages in Jack Straw’s terms, they were brought in ‘by osmosis’. In other words, progressive measures were brought in stealthily with no credit claimed. All of this pushed some on the liberal left to abandon Labour and into the arms of a very eager Liberal Democrats declaiming their purity on issues of liberty at home and abroad.
The cause of civil liberties should now come back loud and proud. Labour, through campaigning organisations including the Society of Labour Lawyers, justice, trade unions, and other civil society groups can work with a new generation frontbench team to pull together a policy platform of high principle with broad intellectual support and loud acclaim. Much, it is to be hoped, to Guardian and Independent readers’ delight.
This principled ‘high level’ approach must, however, be coupled with a realism and practical approach to everyday concerns and fears. Crime, antisocial behaviour and the fear of crime remains a hot political topic. Anyone who came campaigning with me in Bristol North West would have heard it. Despite the introduction of antisocial behaviour and ABCs, the massive increase in the numbers of police officers, the introduction of ward-based community policing with teams of PCSOs, despite the increase in the numbers imprisoned and, importantly, despite being less likely to be a victim of crime than at any time since the early 1980s, the view on the doorstep in swing neighbourhoods and estates was that the government was too soft on criminals and was letting down people who had voted for it at previous elections. This manifested itself in frustration and, in some, anger when being asked for their commitment to vote Labour again and this disillusionment pushed some of the ‘squeezed middle’, those on national average earnings of £20-30,000, away from voting Labour into voting Conservative or not at all.
The new government is setting itself up for a fall. ASBOs are being junked by the coalition. Graffiti removal orders, dog control orders and crack-house closure orders are regarded as too complex and bureaucratic (despite the former, in my view, being one of the more effective and visible of interventions into troubled estates). They are all to be replaced with ‘community safety orders’ which are said to include a rehabilitative element requiring individuals to attend treatment for drug addiction or alcohol abuse or to seek help for mental health problems. The ‘golden egg’ of reducing crime, recidivism and the fear of crime has been firmly offered. The bar is set high indeed.
The problem for the coalition government is that at the same time it is cutting massively the back room staff and the community police officers who would need to coordinate and enforce community safety orders, closing the local courts that would monitor and sanction any rehabilitative elements, and starving resources from probation and other agencies who would have to implement any such measures. The laudable aims of matching treatment with punishment are not being met with anything like the sort of resources that would be required. As things currently stand the coalition government’s rehabilitative measures will go straight down David Cameron’s ‘big society’ black hole. Sooner or later I fear the downward march of the crime statistics under Labour will slow or reverse. Then the voices that cried Labour had let down ordinary people facing daily crimes will turn against the coalition to say that they too have not solved the local crime problem.
It is at this point that we must be able to say: here, this is what we would do better to tackle crime in your neighbourhood and to allay your fears of crime and antisocial behaviour. Reinstatement of neighbourhood policing with officers and PCSOs holding surgeries, often with local councillors, attending amenity and residents’ meetings and regular reassuring patrols must, I think play a part towards plugging policing into communities and to responding to specific crimes and the threats posed by identifiable individuals.
Yes, we should take back the mantle of liberty from the coalition parties who wrongly claimed it for themselves last May. But if we are to tackle ‘Southern discomfort’ with the Labour party that reasserted itself in the election of 2010 we have to ensure that we also have something positive to offer residents whose liberty to live at peace in their neighbourhood is threatened night after night.
This is bang on.
Excellent post. I think as time goes on we may be progressing away from the term “Southern Discomfort” for Labour. As was pointed out in the Fabians’ meeting with Lord Radice earlier this week on ‘Southern Discomfort’, you could go from London to Grimsby without ever hitting a Labour seat. Maybe the term ‘middle-class suburban discomfort’, whilst lengthier, is more accurate. Soon, as someone senior in the Fabians said, Liverpool may be soon be ‘southern’ for Labour. Dr Shibley Rahman Member of Progress and the Fabians @shibleylondon http://shibleyrahman.com
If there are 1.5 million former Labour voters who voted Lib Dem its not neccesarily because of ID cards or 42 days, Iraq tution fees, not having a higher rate of tax are possible reasons,As for saying labours attitude on liberty changed after 2001, 911 and 7/7 happened, Immigration and asylum became issues too.
This is almost bang on. Unfortunately as someone who has been campaigning on Anti-social behaviour for over a decade, seen the positives and sadly far to many more negatives caused by the lack of implementation of policy in place, largely by the simple failure to fulfil commitments made in community safety strategies, I do worry about how any message on what we will do will now be taken. What we can’t do is anything seen as just to appease a section of voters lost, with the aim of purely winning them back. ‘Southern Discomfort’ exists all over the UK and in far to many cases it is down to people just not doing the job and or taking responsibility for the role they were given. The Tories are rather stupidly ignoring that fact (for example our local Tory councillors don’t even attend PACT meetings to know what is happening in their so-called communities) and instead blaming systems and cutting them, with big media noises and unfortunate ‘celebrity victims’ in tow, while the making the announcements so if we do get ‘proper thinking’ back into the equation we still stand a chance but it needs to be meaningful as as mentioned not sound-bites which will just be seen for what they are.
Agree with this entirely. If we are not the party of all the people we are not the party that deserves power. Confusing equality with fairness by appearing to place the civil rights of the oppressor above those of the oppressed is a recipe for perpetual opposition.
By unreservedly putting his weight behind the National DNA database, without observing that the previous Labour government actually was convicted in the European Court of Human Rights for putting, by stealth, the records of over a million innocent UK citizens on a crime data base; David Milliband shows he is as deluded as Brown, Jacqui Smith, Caroline Flint, Alan Johnson and others who think it’s ok to shamelessly break the 1988 data Protection Principles that others in society have to follow. Please don’t talk about community policing, when the routine in UK streets is to take a DNA swab first, and ask questions later. Then if the police are obliged to admit they have got the wrong end of the stick again, the citizen in question has zero redress, even though the Court of Human Rights is squarely on their side. A Labour party that cannot admit they got the balance wrong here; that by putting 7 out of 10 young black males on this data base the Police are showing their institutionalised racial prejudice; is a party that is not ready to address people who value civil liberties as much as personal safety.
If ever there was an example of all things wrong with the civil liberties debate it can be found in the above rant of Marcus Lasance. Although the choosing to ignore the very simple fact that there are people now convicted of crimes, who simply would not have been if their DNA hadn’t been taken, should in itself be sufficient to ignore such a deluded message, on that particular aspect of so-called civil liberties, the bile spouted relating to ‘institutionalised racial prejudice’ is as much sickening as it is annoying. In my late teens I worked long hours, a lot on overtime, so that I could afford the car I wanted. The car was an XR2 and sadly by its style, speed available, condition etc it wasn’t just the car I wanted it was also a car that thieves wanted. Driving home from work in the early hours, in my new car, I was often stopped by the police, for this reason. It was early in the morning (prime time for car thieves) I was a young, single male and as such fitted the profile of most of those doing the ‘nicking of XR2’s’. If it were men dressed as clowns, with big noses and pink hair stealing the XR2’s I would either not have been stopped or stopped and checked to see if I fitted that profile. Mr Lasance and others who pontificate on this subject with similar style and vigour need to realise this and more importantly put their efforts into sorting out those within our communities who are making so many young people fit the profile they simply do not merit. Finally, to close and before anyone carps the innocent until proved guilty message. Yes it is true but the bulk of any investigations need a starting point and common sense profiling is the best way, my own experience showed me it isn’t nice but if you have no guilt then you really have nothing to fear.
Definition of ‘rant’ ‘To speak or write in an angry or violent manner’. No guilt then you really have nothing to fear? How about the recently documented cases where the DNA labs swapped or cross contaminated DNA samples getting people nicked for crimes in towns they have never even visited in their lives?