The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights - Softcover

Dominic Raab

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007293399 ISBN 13: 9780007293391

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2009

Synopsis

Since 1997 the government has launched an unprecedented assault on our most basic rights.

Liberty protected?

Under the false pretext of protecting the public, New Labour has pawned off our fundamental freedoms, turning Britain into a surveillance state which now boasts the largest number of CCTV cameras in the world. Extensions to pre-charge detention mean that suspects can be locked up for longer in Britain than Zimbabwe.

In the name of security?

Yet in the past eleven years, the terrorist threat has risen, police-recorded violent crime has increased by 80 per cent and Britain today has the worst anti-social behaviour record in Europe. This is now a country set for the largest and most expensive ID database in the world looked after by people incapable of keeping records safe.

Democracy defended?

At the same time, a myriad of novel human rights have been conjured up in court rooms, far from the control of elected law-makers, fuelling a growing compensation culture and undermining social responsibility. The state now persecutes shop keepers who sell in pounds and ounces, but the Human Rights Act lets dangerous criminals negotiate their release from prison to go on to kill.

In a country where common sense has been turned on its head, The Assault on Liberty is an exceptional and necessary polemic that asks one of the most urgent questions of our time:

What Went Wrong With Rights?

 ‘With literary verve and philosophical insight, Dominic Raab tears into a justice system which has turned Britain’s liberal values upside down. A book that could make Gordon Brown vote Tory.’ Nick Cohen

About this title

From the Back Cover

From 42 days detention to ASBOs, as citizens of modern Britain we are seeing some of our fundamental freedoms being pawned off cheaply in the name of security. At the same time, a whole range of novel, and comparatively trivial, rights are being handed out like sweets. Why? In the last 10 years the government has launched an unprecedented assault on our civil liberties. The loss of basic liberties has been replaced by a litany of new rights and the emergence of a new rights culture without any meaningful democratic oversight. This assault, and the parallel proliferation of rights, has warped the moral compass that guided the idea of fundamental rights throughout British history. But in whose name and to what end? In The Assault on Liberty, a radical polemic on the state of the nation, Dominic Raab, Chief of Staff to the Shadow Home Secretary, asks whether we can really defend our freedom by sacrificing it. The risks to Britain are real and likely to grow unless unchecked. Raab argues that the long-term risk is that the current approach will undermine the credibility of, and public support for, the very idea of fundamental rights in this country. He concludes that it is only a modern Bill of Rights that would offer a precious opportunity to review and repair our approach to rights, one of the pillars of our liberal democracy and would place these fundamental liberties in the correct context of the challenges facing Britain and its citizens in the 21st century.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007293399
• ISBN 13: 9780007293391
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 276