The State of Freedom in Britain

LSE: Public Lectures and Events
Date: June 3, 2014
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team
Main Guests:

• Shami Chakrabarti – Director of Liberty
• Nicola ("Nicky") Lacey – Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy, LSE

Overview

This episode explores the evolving landscape of freedom in Britain, focusing on the complex relationship between criminal law, state power, and civil liberties. Professors Shami Chakrabarti and Nicola Lacey critically examine trends in criminalization, the expansion of state authority, the erosion of universality in rights, and the increasing threats to equality and privacy—particularly in a post-9/11 context. The panel discusses legal reforms, political culture, human rights, social inequality, and the future of democracy, before engaging with questions from both the live audience and Twitter.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Criminalization and the Scope of Freedom

Speaker: Nicky Lacey | Timestamp: 03:50–32:07

Growth of Criminal Law and Its Effects

• Nicky Lacey describes the significant expansion in both the number and types of criminal offences in Britain over the past 25–30 years, especially since the late 1990s.
• The proliferation isn't just in the number of laws ("formal criminalization") but also their scope, including regulatory and delegated legislation that may not initially appear criminal in the conventional sense.
• Quote:

  "We can be pretty sure that what we might call formal criminalization, in other words, that the technical boundaries of criminal law have been increasing very fast over the last 25 or 30 years." (12:47)

Complexity and Discretion

• The rise in offences gives enormous discretionary power to authorities—police, prosecutors, local bodies, even housing associations—enabling selective or strategic enforcement.
• Not all criminalization is visible in prosecutions; it often provides leverage or a threat rather than actual punishment.

Qualitative Changes in Criminalization

• Temporal expansion: Offences now attach to preparatory acts, not just completed crimes (preemptive criminalization, particularly in terrorism law).
• Hybrid orders: Growth in "anti-social behaviour orders" (ASBOs) and similar civil/criminal hybrids, skewing due process and often targeting socially marginalized groups.
• De facto criminalization in civil spheres: Particularly pronounced in immigration law and in targeting "bad character"/group-based status.

Social Distribution and Inequality

• The expansion disproportionately affects less privileged social groups.
• Quote:

  "My worry is that they will really contribute to kind of polarising dynamics. And that's why I emphasize the question of the distribution of freedom." (23:42)

Drivers Behind Increased Criminalization

• Economic globalization has reduced traditional levers of government, pushing politicians to signal authority and responsiveness through criminal justice.
• Policies often reflect and exploit insecurity and fear, targeting "undesirable" groups.
• Inequality: Growing social and economic inequality erodes a sense of shared fate, making polarizing policies politically viable.

Potential Remedies

• Law Commission efforts to stem unnecessary regulatory offences.
• Human rights challenges as a key tool.
• The need for better research on implementation and impact of new laws.
• Depth of the problem suggests that social and economic policy must be part of the solution.

2. Freedom, Universality, and Human Rights

Speaker: Shami Chakrabarti | Timestamp: 32:16–62:43

The Demise of Freedom: Criminalization and Beyond

• Shami supports Nicola’s analysis and further underscores the dangers of excessive, preemptive, and "mutant" criminalization (e.g., ASBOs as backdoors into custodial criminalization).
• Explains how what started as innovative alternatives to criminal prosecution often mutates into mechanisms of exclusion and incarceration, especially when combined with diluted due process.

Universality vs. Hypocrisy

• The most insidious erosion of freedom happens when rights stop being universal.
• Quote:

  "People do actually love human rights. Their own. Seriously, they do… We love our own rights and freedoms and those of people like us. Right. Your kids should have the ASBO. My kids should have the extra cello lessons and maths tuition." (40:54)

• Human Rights Act/European Convention on Human Rights is under threat precisely because it protects everyone, including non-citizens.
• Politicians push for rights only for "citizens", not "others":

  "The beef with the Human Rights act is it protects everybody. And so any Bill of Rights that will come in its place will not be a progressive human rights document. It will be reductive and it will be divisive." (42:47)

Danger of Division: From Foreigners to Everyone

• Incursions on rights nearly always begin with an ‘out group’ and creep to broader society—evident in extradition, anti-terrorism measures, removal of due process, and torture.
• Notable Analogy:
  Referencing the Holocaust poem: first targeting others, then ultimately yourself—if not everyone’s rights are protected, eventually no one’s are.

Privacy in the Digital Age

• Technological advancements and political rhetoric have justified intrusions (mass surveillance) as necessary for security.
• Challenges to privacy are not less important than more "serious" rights violations—privacy is foundational to free elections, fair trials, autonomy, and dignity.
• Quote:

  "A state without privacy is a place without intimacy, dignity, or trust between human beings. It's not a very nice place to live." (54:12)

Mass Surveillance and the Snowden Revelations

• The PRISM/Tempora programs and "Snoopers' Charter" were deployed without public debate or consent, illustrating erosion of both democratic process and privacy.
• The disproportionate surveillance on non-nationals highlights the danger when rights are only held by citizens, not all humans.

Call to Defend Universal Conceptions of Rights

• Nationalist, parochial approaches to rights undermine democracy and security rather than protect them.
• Human rights must be universal, not conditional privileges of citizenship.

Q&A Highlights and Notable Exchanges

Balancing Liberty, Equality, and Security

• Question (Audience, Nazreen): How to reconcile that parties such as Labour, seen as combating inequality, have also eroded freedoms?

  • Shami:

    "If you think there is a straight choice between equality and liberty, tell that to a slave....all these rights, the social and economic and the civil and political, are part of what it is to respect a human being." (66:14)

• National Security vs. Human Rights?

  • Host (reading Tweet): How should judiciary balance deference to government with protecting rights in the context of national security?
  • Shami:

    "Liberty and security is as false a choice as liberty and equality." (68:34)

  • Nicola:

    "That word deference...we've really been talking about here is deference to the executive. And that, I think, is a really dangerous thing." (69:12)

Press Freedom and State Power

• Will Duffield (Audience): Government destruction of Guardian hard drives containing NSA files: just security state posturing?
  • Shami:

    "They want no privacy for us and no scrutiny for them, and that is a really, really dangerous cocktail." (67:43)

Trust, Social Solidarity, and the State

• Mejiki Cavalio (Audience): Need for trust to underpin universality in rights—how to resolve trust deficits?
  • Nicola:

    "Societies with low trust tend to be also the societies that have high inequality, high crime, high punishment, a whole lot of other things. So I think, you know, trying to rebuild that sense of universality and trust...is terribly important." (76:20)

  • Shami:

    "We've lost trust in great institutions of power and elites in this country...and yet we need these institutions because democracy does need these institutions. So we actually need to rebuild trust in institutions that are reformed and that have checks and balances." (79:01)

Decriminalization Successes and Social Progress

• Amy (Audience): Acknowledges gains: decriminalization of homosexuality etc.
  • Nicola:

    "Of course, it's quite wrong to feel… when one thinks about these issues… it's very tempting to sort of look back...But of course, you know, that's ridiculous because there have been a lot of important decriminalization...progress on sexuality, progress on abortion...so there have been gains." (75:30)

  • Shami:

    "...it was litigation in the infamous Court of Human Rights. Thank you very much. It wasn't just because these nice Tory and New Labour boys woke up one day and thought, 'Oh I believe in gay equality'...these were people struggles and they were legal struggles. And let's never forget that." (81:20)

Mental Health and Preemptive Powers

• Liz Sais (Audience): Detention and treatment of people with mental health issues—scope of preventive power?
  • Shami:

    "There are prisoners, including unlikely prisoners everywhere in domestic homes, in residential care. And they need the convention and they need the Human Rights Act." (85:02)

  • Nicola:

    "Mentally ill people ... have been very much subject... to these preventive measures and caught up in the increasingly sophisticated and arcane processes of risk assessment." (86:39)

Privacy vs. Transparency

• Katie Key (Audience): Should politicians also have privacy, e.g., over Blair/Bush Iraq emails?
  • Shami:

    "There's a difference between privacy and secrecy...this was their work in our name on our behalf. This information belongs to us. We have a right to know. This is not their intimate lives." (84:45)

Media Fairness and Political Phenomena (UKIP)

• Twitter: Should the BBC be required to grant equal prominence to parties like UKIP over the Greens?
  • Shami:

    "I think they've got certain rules that kind of work about when people get a certain percentage of the vote and they have to be dealt with...I don't think [no platforming] works in the internet age. People need to be taken on." (77:59)

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Human Rights and Universality:

  "I'm not interested in the word citizen anymore. I'm interested in the word human being." (49:22, Shami)

• On Government Secrecy:

  "They want no privacy for us and no scrutiny for them." (67:46, Shami)

• On Discretion of Criminalization:

  "It doesn't tell us about the enormous discretionary power that this great miasma of formal criminal law has given to prosecuting authorities..." (14:56, Nicky)

• Reflections on Civil Liberties Battles:

  "When the bad guys do it, it's spin. When we do it, it's Defense against the Dark Arts." (37:18, Shami)

• On the Need to Rebuild Institutions:

  "We actually need to rebuild trust in institutions that are reformed and that have checks and balances." (79:12, Shami)

Notable Timestamps

• [03:50–32:07] – Professor Nicky Lacey's comprehensive overview of the expansion and changing nature of criminal law in Britain.
• [32:16–62:43] – Shami Chakrabarti’s reflection on universality, the Human Rights Act, surveillance, and post-9/11 political culture.
• [63:59–70:50] – Diverse audience and Twitter Q&A: trust, press freedom, equality/liberty tension, judicial deference.
• [71:17–88:04] – Deeper Q&A: state power, progress in decriminalization, trust, mental health, privacy vs. transparency.
• [84:45–86:39] – Privacy for citizens vs. politicians; rights of the mentally ill.

Summary

This event gathered two leading voices to reflect on the legal, political, and social dynamics shaping freedom in Britain. Their lively, frank, and accessible dialogue highlighted the risks of expanding criminalization, the corrosive effects of inequality, the imperative of universality in rights, and the mounting threats to privacy and trust. The panel made clear that legal safeguards, transparency, and social solidarity are never automatic or guaranteed, but must be continually defended—by citizens, institutions, and movements alike.

For further action:

• Visit Liberty’s website to join campaigns defending civil liberties.
• Engage with LSE’s Constitution UK project for democratic debate on constitutional reform.