Whose civil liberties?
George Gale
The National Council for Civil Liberties has a grand-sounding name, a title with a ring to it. It sounds like an organisation which all right-thinking people would wish to join or at the least support. After all, are not civil liberties those precious rights which dis tinguish well-run representative systems of liberal government from the various forms of oppressive, illiberal and unrepresentative rule which exist in states not based upon the western model? And even in model western states, do we not have to be constantly on guard against the erosion by government departments, private Companies and agencies and local authorities of those civil liberties? If the NCCL were what it says it is, then I, for one, would think most seriously of accepting its invitation to join and to subscribe. I would also consider supporting its affiliated bodies, such as the • Council for Academic Freedom and Democracy. Which sensible fellow would decline to defend academic freedom although he might jibe a bit at its association, as if the two went as automatically together as Adam and Eve, with democracy? I would even join the Cobden Trust, which describes itself as the research and education charity associated with the NCCL. Was not Cobden, after all, a fine fellow, a reforming manufacturer and merchant, a liberal free trader?
But I do not find myself eagerly subscribing to and supporting these most excellent-sounding organisations. Why is this? In truth, it is in part my natural inertia, which prevents me from joining and supporting practically anything at all in the way of organisations. However, were I one of the joining and supporting kind, one of that select band of people forever signing round-robin letters written by somebody else, an instinctive do-gooder and minder of other people's business, I still wouldn't touch the NCCL and its fellow-travellers with a barge-pole. On second thoughts, I might: for were I such a do-gooding busybody endeavouring to put the world to rights, I could well be gullible enough to swallow the arguments of the socialists and be daft enough to believe that socialism and civil liberties were not necessarily incompatible. I could imagine a communist utopia in which men and women without possessions lived happily alongside each other enjoying perfect liberty; but I cannot imagine such a society ever actually coming
about. And in the real world we inhabit it seems to me that, in broad terms, you can pursue equality at the expense of liberty, or liberty at the expense of equality, but you cannot pursue them both at the same time. This is because egalitarian measures can only be carried out through coercive methods. The natural inequalities of men mean that equality has to be forcibly imposed; and in that forcible imposition, the more egalitarian measures are imposed the more liberties are removed. You cannot have it both ways.
But the National Council for Civil Liberties, and its equally fine-sounding affiliates, affect to believe that you can. I am not so sure they really believe it: some councillors doubtless do, but there will be other council members, committee members and supporters who know perfectly well that the titles are fraudulent — in the sense that the NCCL is an essentially left-wing organisation purporting to pursue essentially lib eral policies. It is easy enough to understand how this has come about, since the Council 'was created in 1934 as a result of clashes between police and the hunger marchers.' This is one of the reasons the NCCL gives to explain why trade unions should affiliate to it.
'The NCCL,' it says, 'has always had a close working partnership with the trade union movement.' It 'defends the freedom to organise pickets', and claims to have 'provided important legal back-up in the campaign against the Industrial Relations Act and during the miners' strike of 1972.' I have learnt about the manifold activities of the NCCL from a whole batch of leaflets, pamphlets and 'fact sheets' which I have received, along with the Council's annual report from its very pretty young general secretary, Patricia Hewitt. She may object to the phrase 'very pretty', not on account of its untruth but because she may feel it smacks of sexism or male chauvinism or something or other, so let me say at once, to preserve the balance, that I think blond Michael Heseltine to be a very handsome chap indeed. But statements may be irrelevant; I happen to think it is interesting that Ms Hewitt is young and pretty and not old and dowdy. Be that as it may, I recall once arguing with Tony Smythe, one of her predecessors, along much the lines I have been shunting along here, and didn't get very far, although I think he conceded that there might be something in what I was saying. Certainly I was ready enough to allow that quite a lot of the work the NCCL was doing did need doing; and this remains so today. It would, however, be better able to do what its name suggests it is doing if it forgot how it was formed, if it stopped having 'a close working arrangement with the trade union movement', and if it stopped seeking affiliation fees from the unions.
Mass picketings by union hooligans are oppressive and illiberal: far from protecting
civil liberties they offend against them. The closed shop is an offence against civil liberties in itself, and in addition imposes a threat to press freedom which, itself, is the guarantor of freedom of speech, which, along with freedom from arbitrary arrest, forms the foundation of all other civil liberties. The National Union of Railwaymen's decision to expel National Front members from the union and thus, because of the closed shop on the railways, from their employment is a scandalous abuse of union power and itself a denial of that 'right to work' which is one of the more recent rallying-cries of the left. Does Ms .Hewitt and her NCCL want to take money from the NUR, after such behaviour? Does it want to have anything whatever to do with the NUR, other than to condemn it and (if it is , at present an affiliate) expel it for its gross ' denial of civil liberties to some of itts members?
I look through Ms Hewitt's annual report and observe that she and her NCCL have done some sensible and helpful things. They 'welcomed and lobbied for George Cunningham MP's [Ms Hewitt's English, fortunately, not mine] amendment to give a person in police custody the right to have someone notified of his arrest'. I go along with its, and others', campaign against the Official Secrets Act, for the Consumer Credit Act and for the introduction of an independent element in complaints procedure against the police contained in the Police Act.
Last year the NCCL's report bravely 'regretted the fact that many local authorities were denying right-wing organisations' access `to publicly-owned halls'; but Ms Hewitt and her NCCL are in tricky water here, as can be seen in this year's report: 'Serious discussion of the ways in which the law should protect the rights of our ethnic minority groups, while respecting the principles of freedom of speech and association, became increasingly difficult last year' — it always does, trying to have things both ways — . . . not only because of the violent and vicious efforts of the National Front and their supporters, but also because of the response of a minority of their opponents who have decided to fight in the streets where they cannot per-, suade the authorities to resort to a ban. Here we observe double-talk: the National Front's efforts are 'violent and vicious' yet, although they may be held to have provoked violence, they have not in fact initiated it: the real violence, as Ms Hewitt knows perfectly well, but cannOt bring herself to say, comes from what she calls 'a minority of their opponents', who are, in observable fact, a good deal more violent and vicious than members of the National Front. Why does Ms Hewitt not name the Socialist Workers Party, for example? The NCCL stand by 'our view that those in authority should not have the power of censoring protest or dissent, however obnoxious the protesters' views' but in the very next sentence she writes of 'our efforts to
get the law against incitement to racial hatred enforced and our work on the new Race Relations Act'. On the one hand, no Power of censoring, however obnoxious the view: on the other hand, censoring if the topic is racial.
We see the same double-think, or maybe It is non-think, in the affiliated Council for Academic Freedom and Democracy. It was launched in 1970 following 'disputes and incidents involving the academic freedom of teachers in universities, polytechnics and colleges' in the late 'sixties. The main threat here, it seemed to me at the time — and I have seen no reason to alter that opinion since — came from students occupying university premises and often vandalising them in the process, preventing academic work from proceeding and very often denying free speech and free assembly to those with Whose views they disagreed. The CAFD declares: The case for academic freedom rests on the critical functions of education and research at every level. Academic institutions must be free to re-examine accepted knowledge and assumptions, and must constantly question accepted practices and the present order of things.' Quite so. We would therefore expect the Council for Academic Freedom to express outrage at the barring of Jewish bodies from student unions but it does not do so.
The NCCL's annual report includes a section: 'Civil Liberties in 1977. A Chronology.' It opens, '11 January: Philip Agee appears before the three-man Home Office-appointed advisory committee to argue against Home Secretary Merlyn Rees's attempts to deport him on grounds of national security.' Its last entry is, '20 December: In Holland, the government announces that Philip Agee will not be allowed an extension of his residence visa.' In between, the name Agee also crops up. It is somehow characteristic of the NCCL that they get very excited over the deportation of Agee, former spy, betrayer of former colleagues. The NCCL also is always getting excited about immigrants being expelled. It dislikes the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Generally, it is hostile towards the police, and it has produced, in a neat plastic wallet, eight neat little pamphlets to help people in trouble with the police. 'Know Your Rights', these 'fact sheets' are generally entitled. It is difficult to know for whom they are intended. They will not reach the common criminal. The law-abiding man has no need of them. Are they, then, a pocket guide to demonstrators and pickets, that 'minority' of opponents of the National Front 'who have decided to fight in the streets', and to students violently seeking 'Democracy' and 'Academic Freedom' at one and the same time (not realising that academic discipline is the basis of academic freedom)? Ms Hewitt must not be surprised if I suspect as much.
We need a National Council for Civil Liberties, and Ms Hewitt, to her credit, rec ognises 'the present Government's indif ference to civil liberties.' She does not realise, or if she does she is disingenuous about doing so, that her political allies and the trade unions from which she seeks funds are even more indifferent to those liberties. Its allies and its affiliates prevent the NCCL from being what it says it is and from doing what we all know is necessary to do. It is really a great pity.
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