29/08/2007 I HEART LONDON. ONE DAY YOU’RE WRITING FILMS WITH A SPY, THE NEXT YOU’RE STEALING FROM TRAMPS. MAN, THINKS I, THIS IS FREEDOM! EVERYONE KNOWS IT; ANY THING CAN HAPPEN IF YOU PURSUE IT - AND GRASP IT. WE DO, EVERYTIME. SO IT’S DIFFICULT TO LISTEN TO THOSE WHO CLAIM YOUR LIBERTY IS UNDER THREAT - JOYLESS, SEXLESS PEDANTS THAT THEY ARE!
“Of course you aren’t going to consider abstractions like safety and liberty when you walk down the street,” Shami Chakrabarti tells me. “One young man might walk through the street and fear being mugged – but another is going to worry about the police. Is either fear entirely justified? And is either fear wholly unjustified? We must consider both men, have compassion for both – that’s at the root of human rights.”
Usually, Notion would pause here to tell you about Shami, but it’s impossible to halt this fierce intelligence in righteous mid-stream. “Most people know what respecting each others’ human rights is. A heavy hand can only make things worse. If you respect yourself, you can respect others; but if someone feels thrown aside by society, you can’t expect them to feel the same compassion. To me, any young person getting into trouble is a young person in trouble.”
For every law passed by this government granting police extraordinary new powers or quickly condemning young people to jail, Shami Chakrabarti has protested in the media and on the streets. Director of the pressure group Liberty since 2003, Chakrabarti has been our most prominent defender against those acting on our behalf during this “exceptional era of threats” – those mean streets.
“Like the Government’s approach to the unfortunately-named “War on Terror”, their approach to crime and to young people has left a hole in public discourse, opposition parties have not been vociferous enough. Pressure groups provide
a voice at certain moments in history when required, and right now someone needs to talk about human rights.”
It is very easy to believe that we face deadly new enemies: look at a bus without a roof, look at limbs scattered and blood spread. It’s convincing. To consider those responsible for such acts deserving of the same dignity as friends and neighbours requires a much greater leap. I – somewhat foolishly – suggest to Shami that to quibble over rights weakens us all when we’re facing such extremism bent on our evisceration; “Absolutely not!” she cries. “There was a magical moment for me, after World War II, when people of the centre, the right, left and all the great religions shared a consensus on human dignity.
You talk about extremism – I’ve spoken with all kinds of leaders and they share that consensus even now. That Rights framework is a unifying force, not a divisive one. In fact, it is the hypocritical use of that framework by democracies that has led us to “conflict” – the Guantanamos, Belmarshes and Iraqs are examples where our society has shown that it won’t extend its own morality to those opposed to it and so has massively increased that opposition. That’s why Liberty have attacked “our own” – because if we show that the democratic perspective, the notion of human dignity, should be shared equally by all, then we will unite people.” Human rights, then, are something we must uphold as a definition of democracy, regardless of how exceptional the times: “If you encounter a new disease, the first response is not to simply discard science and start again. If we treated home and world affairs that way, we’d stumble blindly from revolution to revolution.” It’s a valid point: the French, of course, did that for centuries and look at them. Sarkozy. Ha! Rights do not preclude heavy-handed action; they are not synonymous with weakness. They simply demand that compassion be universal, that the same measures be taken to ensure everyone’s freedoms. The difficulty naturally comes when we presume that other people’s must be intact because ours are, when actually others shiver at every siren and we ourselves are blind to the possibilities already lost . Rights are difficult to recognise until they’re gone.
“We’ve never said that there’s a giant conspiracy; that we live in a police state – because the reality is when you walk along the street, you aren’t in a police state. What I do,” Shami Chakrabar ti tells me, “is very much like being an environmentalist – I ask people to think what might things be like thirty, or a hundred years hence.” To protect our liber ties, our rights, our freedom, requires concentration, effort. “I’m optimistic but ever vigilant . That sums up Liberty, really. We care about people, so we have to hope. But we must always remain watchful and cautious.” If that post-war consensus becomes unable to deal with the new threats we supposedly face, then we’d better not assume we’re ok and sleep-walk through the meetings where it is decided what rights we should have. So, y’know, GIVE A SHIT. FOR ONCE.
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