State Power

The Problem

We have been here before. ‘Law and Order’ politics is almost a political cliché. Rhetoric against it even more so – ‘crackdown’, ‘clampdown’, ‘state overreach’, and of course: ‘draconian’. One of the strategic hurdles anyone involved in civil libertarian politics confronts is how to make new or forthcoming restrictions have an urgency which gains popular relevancy. This proves difficult (in part) because every restriction is invariably described as ‘draconian’ – the overall effect being that outrage is muted and limited. This is a chronic problem with civil libertarian politics.

Another issue is that there isn’t necessarily a coherent movement in the UK against police and state excesses. This is not to say there are no activist groups – but they are small, or single issue, or largely concentrated in London, or essentially legal-activist groups, or entirely defensive in orientation.

If you were to summarise a standard UK left-wing economic platform off the top of your head, you could probably do so very quickly. We all know the script: “Nationalise mail, rail, water, electricity, gas; reverse NHS privatisation; Green New Deal; abolish zero-hour contracts” etc. It is much trickier to do this with civil libertarian politics. This is for numerous reasons:

(1) Civil libertarianism, whilst a broad spectrum of issues (opposition to police violence, state surveillance, detention centres, etc), is still something of a ‘niche’ issue (though one that is gaining saliency).

(2) Much civil libertarian politics is extremely short-termist. It is often concerned with reversing recent bits of legislation. i.e. A nasty Home Secretary wants to do XYZ ‘draconian thing’…six months later, everyone has forgotten about it and concerns shift to another piece of ‘draconian’ law-making. For instance, much time was spent arguing for abolishing the Official Secrets Act. This no longer really happens – it is now firmly embedded within the British State.

(3) The second point creates another issue. The perpetual ‘salami slicing’ character of liberty restrictions generates confusion. It becomes difficult to calculate where specifically to start, and which liberty restrictions to urgently prioritise.

(4) Many people are perhaps embarrassed by their own politics due to the sheer rhetorical power of ‘common sense’ law and order arguments. They don’t want to be seen as ‘terrorist sympathisers’ or ‘defending criminals and antisocial behaviour’.

(5) As already noted, much civil libertarian politics is negative. It is often about abolishing or halting the implementation of certain laws and powers. This is important. However, this defensive position means that the potential to achieve gains is rarely contemplated.

What then would a platform of sorts look like? If it were possible to give people a common sense ‘what do you want’ platform, what could be included?

Such a platform could have a broad usage: a big broad coalition of people and groups doing direct action; prospective ideas for the new party founded by Sultana and Corbyn, or ideas for people who hate being in political parties pushing said parties to adopt, etc; it could just be the kind of thing that becomes the generalised common sense of people who have a civil libertarian instinct.

A Basic Platform

[Brief introductory note: The below is a non-exhaustive list, categorised into issues. I recognise that some items may belong in numerous categories, but for ease of reading have not included the same item in numerous categories. Items are not listed in any order of preference or importance. Economic policy is included in the list due to its strong relation with a civil libertarian platform – the poorest are over-policed, as is working-class dissent. Some items have a ‘soft’ vs a ‘hard’ version of the policy (i.e. legalise cannabis vs legalise all drugs). Where relevant, I have explained the importance of the policy – these comments are non-exhaustive.]

Reduction of ‘Day to Day’ Police Powers

1. Abolish ‘suspicionless’ stop and search (soft). Abolish stop and search outright (hard).

Some forms of stop and search require the officer to provide ‘reasonable suspicion’ over why he thinks you are carrying XYZ contraband. A ‘suspicionless search’ (i.e. under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) does not require the officer to provide a reason. It facilitates profiling and arbitrary liberty-restrictions.

2. Immediately end the practice of strip-searching children.

Following the case of ‘Child Q’ – a child who was strip searched on her period during exam season – the issue of how the police use strip searching against children has gained prominence. Statistics have been released noting the prominence of its use against black kids.

3. Legalise cannabis (soft). Legalise all drugs (hard).

Legalising drugs has several effects: (1) it reduces the stop and search powers of the police; (2) it destroys the business model of organised crime groups, meaning people coerced by them are freed from their grip; (3) it reduces police-power more generally – home-raids, drug operations, police drug departments will be unnecessary, and opens up the possibility of reducing police man-power, funding and resources (rather than simply re-directing it); (4) individuals with addiction problems will no longer be cyclically in and out of prison or subjected to police harassment (or the fear of this), making it easier for them to fix their lives; (5) the regulation of drugs means that individuals who consume them will be guaranteed that the substances they take will be of a knowable dosage and not cut with unknown substances, rendering consumption safer; (6) it will abolish the moral panics around drugs outright, meaning that drugs cannot be used as a useful vehicle for Law and Order politicians to use as an excuse to ramp up the coercive powers of the state.

4. End police usage of facial recognition technology.

5. End the police’s usage of ‘predictive policing’ technology.

‘Predictive policing’ technology is a cluster of data-analytic tools that rely on profiling certain areas or people as being ‘high’ or ‘low’ risk. Its scientific and technological appearance masks it as neutral, but it essentially creates a feedback loop: i.e. this area has a high proportion of unemployed and/or black people, therefore it is historically highly policed…therefore the data categorises it as high risk…therefore it needs to be policed. A recent Amnesty International report goes into great depth about the usage of predictive policing tech via various forces in the UK, including in my home turf of Norfolk.

Reduction of Police Anti-Protest Powers

6. Abolish the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022).

7. Stop the Crime and Policing Bill (2025); if passed, abolish it.

The Crime and Policing Bill seeks to do several things, some highlights: (1) Criminalise masking at protests; (2) Grant the police powers to conduct warrantless searches for theft of technology that can be tracked (granting the police the power to conduct warrantless searches by definition creates the possibility of excessive police-power); (3) Creates a new police-power, ‘Respect Orders’ to tackle ‘anti-social behaviour’ (a legal category so broad that it always ends up with cases such as the policing of teenagers for committing the crime of loitering by shops, i.e. existing in public space).

Constitutional/Broader Rights

8. A Constitutional Bill of Rights.

The Human Rights Act is the UK’s equivalent of a codified set of legal rights protections. However, its position is unstable due to the constant murmurings of hard reactionary radicals within the Conservative Party who wish to abolish it and withdraw us from the European Convention. Securing our rights in the longer term requires a constitutional shift – a set of legal rights that would require a high super-majority in Parliament to overturn them.

9. A Bill of Digital Rights.

The logic of Point 8 should further be expanded to the digital sphere – especially given the clampdowns on the internet: privacy-rights, rights to information, rights to the digital equivalent of free association, etc., should be guaranteed.

10. Abolish the Online Safety Act 2025.

Much attention has been spent on analysing how this act requires age-verification to access porn sites – this is useful for the government, i.e. ‘if you oppose this act, you are a pervert’, etc. The restrictions go further. Age-verification will now be required on social media sites such as Bluesky, Telegram, X (formally Twitter), Discord. In forcing companies to create age-verification systems, i.e. by making users scan their face or hand over their passport, opportunities for major data-breaches are now a structural feature of the digital space. Further, age-verification tech such as face scanning software is not always accurate, and many people due to poverty, coercive control or migration status, do not have identity documents. The act excludes these people from the digital public sphere – a major violation of assembly and speech rights. Certain content online has been blocked, such as footage of the Gaza war, or reddit forums for victims of sexual assault to discuss their trauma.

11. No Central Bank Digital Currency.

A Central Bank Digital Currency (‘CBDC’) allows for increased state-surveillance on spending as well as the potential for the government to control what money is spent on. Currently, the government says they will not limit spending-power in this way – but this does not limit a future government doing so. A future government could create a moral panic around social security recipients, and then prevent individuals receiving Universal Credit from purchasing alcohol, small luxury goods, etc. The creation of a CBDC would further require the creation of Digital ID Cards – this would allow the government to have a centralised data system where each person’s online data and spending data existed side by side, allowing the government to form a ‘profile’ of each citizen. This is terrifying.

12. No ID-Cards or ‘Digital ID Cards’.

Immigration

13. Create safe and legal routes for asylum seekers.

14. No more immigration raids.

15. Shut down immigration detention centres.

Economics

16. Fund and invest in: mental health, housing, education, youth centres, rehabilitation facilities, domestic violence facilities. (i.e. Reverse the effects of austerity).

17. Immediately rehouse all homeless people.

18. Abolish Cameron-era and Thatcher-era trade union restrictions.

Making a Civil Libertarian ‘Common Sense’

The above is a basic platform. It can be added to, cut down, revised, etc. The purpose of a political platform is to diagnose the most urgent/high stakes/high priority political questions and offer emergency solutions to them.

I have selected issues via prioritising the following considerations: intensity of rights-violations; broadness of who it effects; protection of minority-rights; its importance within the overall rights-violating ‘structure’ of the UK; likelihood of political relevancy (i.e. I myself am opposed to the Official Secrets Act, but its abolition probably won’t gain much traction).

This platform is not meant as a ‘final word’, but as an experiment in forming priorities. My aim here is to modestly contribute to the production of a civil libertarian ‘common sense’.

The next step requires further prioritisation – cutting down the list to a Top 5 or Top 3.

Earlier, I spoke about a standard ‘off the cuff’ answer to how a left-winger would answer the question “how would you fix the economy?” We all know the drill: nationalisation, social housing, abolish trade union laws, etc. An equivalent is required for a civil libertarian politics.

What kind of thing do we want average Joe Bloggs to say in the smoking area when he’s setting the world to rights? What is our version of “nationalise the railways” or the good old-fashioned “tax the rich”?

The reactionary right already have their common sense ‘off the cuff’ demand list, it’s something like:

1. Stop the boats.
2. Deport all ‘illegals’.
3. Bring back the death penalty.

The civil libertarian ‘off the cuff’ list must do the following: (a) include policies that substantially reshape the UK, (b) contain ideas that could form a broad coalition to expand our base by containing themes that the left and right can agree to, (c) contains a single policy that the right don’t necessarily back, but which they could be persuaded to because the other policies act as a ‘bridge’ for further conversation.

It could look something like this:

1. Legalise cannabis.

Everyone either smokes or knows someone who smokes this. Its legalisation would massively reduce a core part of police-power. This demand has also been included because it acts as the singular ‘positive’ demand in comparison to the two others which are about abolishing certain state functions/powers.

2. Abolish police use of facial recognition technology.

Opposition to facial recognition tech is something which cuts across ideological lines. Its inclusion in this list is due to its strategic centrality for the future of state-surveillance.

3. Abolish stop and search.

This is the policy only really backed by the left. Its inclusion is due to stop and search’s primacy within the day to day arsenal of police power, and its symbolic resonance – of all the police powers that is hated by policed populations, this one is perhaps the most obvious.