Liberties taken?

Up flashes news footage of a protestor wrestled from a crowd of party activists, whilst a younger Blair quips, ‘Isn’t it good we have a democracy and free speech in this country so this man can speak’. The delivery is without a sense of irony. ‘Taking Liberties’, directed by Chris Atkins, then moves forward to 2005 as Labour party goons drag 83 year old peace activist Walter Wolfgang from the party conference. Was there a difference between the two sequences? 2005 was uglier, by virtue of Wolfgang’s frailty and the fact that a fellow party member who protested against this was also dragged out to a stairwell and received injuries. However, what seemed to have really changed was that he was then arrested under new terrorism laws; criminalised for shouting ‘nonsense’ at a politician.

In ‘Taking Liberties’, director Chris Atkins charts the serious erosion of civil liberties in Blair’s Britain during the ‘war on terror’. Following the now populist format of docu-film, ‘Taking Liberties’ adeptly navigates between the new terror legislation, the extradition treaty, ID cards and the assault on freedom of speech. Atkins has created a collection of candid interviews with very human people, grounded in real footage. Interviewees of all shapes and sizes describe their experiences of protest – at Fairford, Menwith Air Base, against arms producers, and in Parliament Square, or airports. The common thread throughout is that of a paranoid state and the use of new draconian legislation to frustrate dissent.

Should we care about these lost freedoms? The restriction on our freedoms has occurred as a response to terrorism, and in a climate of fear exploited by the government. The political currency of fear is also adopted by Atkins, who advances a rationale for the protection of civil liberties based upon the fear of the state: loss of civil liberties is a precursor to dictatorship, atrocity and war. Whilst I do not contest that dictatorships are characterised by such restrictions, it is a shame that the film only justifies protection of freedoms by way of reference to the lowest common denominator. Arguably it is fear over rationality which has got us into this mess, something which Atkins acknowledges. It would have been of real benefit to the debate to include a brief discussion of the positive qualities of civil liberties.

Freedom of speech is valuable not only because it permits protest against undesirable state actions but also because it can lead to positive, substantive action by the state or other groups. An opportunity was missed in this film to stress that social growth and improvement only occur where all have freedom of speech, and all innocent people are free. When images of the Stop the War march were shown, the conclusion offered was that whilst it did not stop the war, it at least said ‘we told you so’. Might there also have been space for the thought that the march actually demonstrated to people that apathy did not reign? Or that the march has informed the debate in ways we may not yet have fully appreciated?

This is a well-paced film which covers a lot of ground and gives a frank account of ordinary citizens on the front line, fighting the good fight. Of real value is the fact that the film is ultimately more than a stock-taking exercise for it aims to motivate the audience to stand up for freedom.

Andrew Gilbert

Sweet Jesus!

America’s Catholic League, which describes itself as the country’s ‘leading Catholic civil rights organisation’, is up in arms over ‘one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.’ Could it be something like the use of a crucifix as a dildo in The Exorcist? The suppression of the Christian right to worship and organise churches in countries like China? No, it turns out that this ‘assault’ is that an artist has created a 6-foot naked model of Jesus out of milk chocolate.

Quite how anyone’s civil rights are being violated by this strange creation, due to be exhibited at a New York gallery during Easter Week, is hard to tell, but still the Catholic League has denounced it and called for a boycott of the gallery and the hotel that houses it. The gallery’s curator has received angry emails and phone calls and says he is ‘in the process of trying to figure out what we’re going to do next’ – hinting that the exhibition might be cancelled, and emphasising that the timing of the exhibition is ‘just a coincidence’.

The Catholic League, despite being a ‘civil rights’ group, has effectively launched an attack on the First Amendment of the American Constitution protecting freedom of expression, which traditionally encompasses artistic expression. Catholic League president Bill Donohue branded the chocolate Christ ‘hate speech’, a ‘direct, in your face assault on Christians’, and warned that ‘[a]ll those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended - otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off’.

So, making a chocolate sculpture is ‘hate speech’, but veiled threats of violence are fine. Despite the supposedly favourable comparison to ‘extremist Muslims’, the Catholic League is no more respectful of civil rights and basic liberties than are the Muslins Donohue disparages. Criticise ‘Sweet Lord’ for being bad art all you like, but trying to subordinate artistic expression to the moral outrage and offended ‘sensibilities’ of hyper-sensitive religious types is a sure way to stifle the creativity, inventiveness and free-thinking necessary for any vibrant society. We’ve seen this in the UK time and time again – be it Christians wanting to ban Jerry Springer - The Opera on TV and in theatres, Muslims trying to stop the filming of Brick Lane, or Sikhs attacking the theatre that staged the controversial play, Bezhti. In almost all these cases, we saw institutions caving-in (kudos to the BBC for resisting): supermarkets refusing to stock the Jerry Springer DVD, the Birmingham Rep suspending Bezhti, Brick Lane being filmed elsewhere.

Here’s hoping that the New York gallery defends America’s First Amendment tradition, defies the protests, and attract more visitors than ever – the likeliest and best possible outcome of the Catholic League’s outraged spluttering.

Lee Jones