Wikipedia defines civil liberties in the following way:
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the right to life, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery and forced labour, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one’s self, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to marry and have a family.
Traditionally when we think about civil liberties we think about how freedom can be taken away from the individual by the state.
So what are we to make about the current phone hacking scandal? It is not the state that is responsible for hacking people’s phones and then making public conversations that are intended to be private to millions of people. It is of course News International, a private corporation motivated by the desire to sell newspapers and make a larger profit.
They know that the more embarrassing the revelations, the more they can humiliate their intended victim, the more newspapers they can sell. This is a shocking violation of civil liberties.
The style of management of News International is utterly ruthless and therefore illiberal. In this it has something in common with what is currently the most important role model in corporate management today, Sir Alan Sugar. I am not suggesting that Alan Sugar has ever broken the law, but in all other respects it is clear that the drive for profits means everything. Anything or anyone who gets in the way of maximising profits has to be taken out. Even if those profits are short term gains that obscure long term difficulties that might lie ahead, no one is meant to think about that.
It is often the case that to be ruthless means to break the law. It is not just News International, consider also Conrad Black and Robert Maxwell. The problem is that if you start losing sales to a competitor who is breaking the law, then to win back those sales then you have to do likewise. What else can you do? Of course if you break the law you do not tell anyone, so it is hard to know who else in the media world is breaking the law, but it would be very surprising if some of the other papers are not also getting rid of the evidence at this moment in time.
The same issues cropped up in the banking sector. Bankers were motivated by big bonuses to maximise short term profit regardless of the long term consequences of what they were doing. Tragically it is other people who are losing their jobs and having their benefits cuts who are paying the price for that.
This of course raises questions about capitalism. It is not surprising that groups like UK Uncut are attracted to a Marxist analysis of what is wrong with capitalism today. Marxism of course is a nice idea in theory but does not work in practice. You do not have to like capitalism – and I do not like it myself – to recognise that it is the only viable economic system. However it comes in different varieties and as Liberals we have to calibrate a relationship between the state and to capital that results in modus operandi that is closest to our liberal values.
Given the failure of light touch regulation in both banking and now the media it is clear that the state has to be more interventionist and have the resources to do so to prevent abuses. There may be better alternatives, but to crudely reduce of the role of the state in itself would be an absurd response to what has happened as in time the same mistakes will be repeated.
Not all companies follow the Alan Sugar school of management. There is a distinction to be made between enlightened self interest and naked self interest. Sometimes the pursuit of profit is in the public interest and there are many companies that can happily focus on that and not have to pressure staff into breaking the law.
What we have to recognise is that the economy is a complicated system and it is often wrong to apply universal rules to all sectors. The current penchant for marketising public services seems to fall into that trap and Liberal Democrats need to watch out that they do not get damaged by supporting reckless Tory policies for which we will get the blame when things go wrong, as they will.
In other words “Liberalism” is not an economic ideology. Liberalism does not equal free market capitalism or state socialism. As Liberals we want an economic system that produces wealth which can fund decent public services. We also want an economic system that is ecologically sustainable and is non-exploitive in relationship to the workforce. People should not be expected to work long hours and neglect their relationships and families, or get paid so little that they cannot afford the basics in life, or have their health put at risk by bad working conditions, or be stressed out by an authoritarian management style.
Instead we want a democratic form of management and industrial democracy, with worker participation over the decisions that affect them. If socialism could fit that criteria, it would deserve to be called liberalism. But in reality, whether we are Tory, Lib Dem or Labour, we are looking at an economy with both a public and a private sector to varying degrees. Whenever I am asked about socialism I say tell me what you mean and I will tell you if I agree with it.
We have a long way to travel to achieve what I would call a Social Liberal economy. We are in coalition with a party that does not share our vision. Indeed not all Liberal Democrats will share this vision. And we are in competition with countries which seek to be more competitive who wish to exploit the short term advantages for profit-making from light touch or no touch regulation, that will exploit workers and damage the environment. Otherwise known as the race to the bottom. We cannot compete with that whether we want to or not.
The narrative of the Left on the Liberal Democrats is that because of what they see as the “Orange Book” ideology, we are really no different to the Tories. Liberal Democrats need to make the case for putting values such as civil liberties, worker participation and ecological sustainability ahead of economic dogma if we want to show that they are wrong. I do not think the party leadership has done a good job on that so far.
Geoff Payne is events organiser for Hackney Liberal Democrats.
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13 Comments
Well said.
Civil Liberties? I thought LibDems had forgotten about those, especially considering the LibDems in Westminster support the DWP’s plan to allow “ex-police” and “ex-military” to enter and search benefit claimants’ houses if they have a “suspicion” about said peoples’ claims.
I think that’s Lord Sugar to you sunshine.
It’s strange, a few weeks ago on here I was told in no uncertain terms that privacy was nothing, and that the media’s pursuit of CTB was all entirely of a piece with a need for openness, and it was entirely legit for MPs to disregard concerns about privacy in cases where the media wanted to publish.
With respect Mr Payne, you are looking at this too hard. We – society – or at least a preponderance of it have decided that privacy does not matter. We sluice details of our lives, and those of others onto facebook. We lap up stories in the press about celebrity private lives. We demand background checks on those who come into contact with us and our family, the ludicrous, ‘Calre’s Law,’ being the latest monstrosity. We turn FoI into a personal partizan witch-hunt. Internet sites make our home addresses freely available and no one bats an eyelid. Is it really a shock that the media declares us all targets?
We are getting the media we deserve, nothing more, nothing less.
Until we get some idea of privacy on its own terms – not as a part of some hazy civil liberty debate – and what it means we will just go around in circles here. I want to keep myself to myself, simple as that – there is no question of societal management here, my business is my own,
@Duncan, where you refer to “we” I assume you mean the general public? The Liberal Democrats opposed national ID cards so we feel strongly about this, although you are right that opinion polls suggested that the majority of people supported them, albeit not the cost for paying for them.
There is an inconsistency here where the attitude is that celebrities are fair game but “ordinary people” are not. In my opinion celebrities are entitled to civil liberties too. Some are happy to play to the gallery at great financial reward and appear on Hello magazine, but just because some do does not mean they all do.
I think we are all entitled not to have our phones hacked into. If the state did it, it would be a national scandal. It is only right the same applies to news international, albeit it has taken far too long before the correct action has been taken.
I am not clear how you are separating privacy from civil liberties, privacy is a civil liberty.
Geoff – I think that your article is spot on and articulates the nagging doubts that many of us have about leadership of the Lib-Dems and their performance in coalition.
The current phone-hacking scandal gives Nick Clegg the ideal opportunity to reassert himself and the party as a credible mouthpiece for those who want a better politics free from the excessive influence of vested interests.
Sadly, his performance throughout this crisis has been woeful. Where is he? And where for that matter is Vince Cable who a few months ago was declaring war on Murdoch – surely he is now in a position to be rightly vindicated!
I’ve written this article for Allthatsleft – on what Nick Clegg should do now. I commend it to you and the readers of Lib-Dem voice:
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2011/07/phone-hacking-what-should-nick-clegg-do/
Geoffrey, I’ll confess to being a little confused as to what you’re driving at here. You seem to be drawing a parallel between phone hacking and a ‘ruthless’ variant of capitalism. Fair enough, although I would remind you that phone hacking remains illegal. I think what you’re driving at is that the sysyemic use of phone hacking by NOTW and others as a result of the necessity of competing under this ‘ruthless’ capitalism constiues an infringement upon our liberties as a by-product of the system. This is slightly unfair; all it really implies is that the institution charged with overseeing the sector, the PCC, failed to do its job and should be replaced with something more effective.
‘Ruthlessness’ doesn’t necessarily mean breaking the law; all it means is a willingness to transgress social mores to acheive a given result, and that those transgressions may impact on other people. It is corrosive, but claiming that it’s illiberal to be ruthless raises some awkward questions. For example, one is inevitably going to hurt someone else when one breaks up with them – but it clearly can’t be illiberal to break up with people.
@Adam, I think you are making a false dichotemy.
Light touch regulation makes it easier for those being regulated to be ruthless and break the law because they think they wont be caught. And if your competitors are doing it and you are not, then you risk losing your market share. So the pressure is on you to follow suit or go out of business. In other words market forces.
So yes in this case we need stronger regulation, curious at a time when the government is more generally deregulating – although of course each regulation has to be judged on it’s merits and no doubt some should be scrapped.
Regulation is needed to stop market forces from doing more harm than good.
Generally speaking ruthlessness is associated with authoritarianism, which of course is the antithesis of lliberalism. It is not always wrong however. A child runs towards a busy road, then you stop it physically. You could say the means are illiberal, but the ends are liberal. It is a dangerous course, but justified in an emergency where there are no other realistic alternatives.
The etiquette with spitting up a relationship that you allude to is very complex and the best way for one person might not work with another. A liberal way to split up is to try and consider and be respectful of the feelings of the other person. Whether that works OK or not, well that is another question.
@Ray_North I think that Nick Clegg gave a good speech on the matter recently, and previous to that Vince Cable “declared war” on Murdoch. Unfortunately he mentioned it to the wrong person and got into trouble.
It has never been in the interests of the Liberal Democrats under any leader to see Murdoch prosper.
I notice in your article that you are suggesting that Nick Clegg should use this affair to end the coalition. But the logic does not stack up because Andy Coulson has gone and the pressure from News International has been weakened. I am not a coalition supporter myself, but looking at it from his point of view he should recognise the opportunity to assert the Liberal Democrats more within this coalition.
If Dave Cameron is forced to resign, then that is a game changer.
Bear in mind that relations between Labour and the Lib Dems are poor at the moment. That needs to change because if the Lib Dems do benefit from ending the coalition enough to hold the balance of power, doing a deal with Labour which has become very tribalist recently (Ed Miliband excepted) looks to be something that would be very hard to pull off, even if it is in the national interest.
Something seems to have snapped in this discussion of the semantics of “ruthlessness”. How is stopping a child from running into traffic “ruthless”? “Ruthless” means almost the same as “pitiless”, you know…
“Traditionally when we think about civil liberties we think about how freedom can be taken away from the individual by the state.”
That is because when we talk about things being taken away from individuals by someone other than the state, we are talking about crimes. Theft, kidnapping, assault, and so on.
Frankly, I think there is something more than a little ridiculous, not to mention orwellian, in the idea of restricting the press in defense of “civil liberties”.
This is a civil liberties issue: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8544025/The-real-scandal-hidden-by-gags-is-what-goes-on-in-family-courts.html
Newspapers spying on important people is not. As a matter of fact, spying on important people is a pretty good definition of investigative journalism.
@ad, freedom of the press does not mean freedom to do whatever they like.
Are you saying that the press should be free to hack phones and bribe the police? I stick by my story, this is an attack on civil liberties.
The News of the World had to break the law in order to attack our civil liberties – the government changes the law in order to erode them.
I’ve no problem with the press being ruthless as long as it is within the law. Phone hacking and bribing the police aren’t.
It is also worth noting that it is market forces that brought an end to the news of the world, not the actions of a media regulator.