Why I'm Not Writing About Liberty And The Police

I'm a Liberal Democrat, though I detest this coalition. I'm on the liberal left - I accept the Labour critique of capitalism's excesses but dislike its authoritarianism. That means I oppose over-weaning spying powers, ID cards, 42 day detention, Trident, and the rest of it. What worries me though, is a niggling feeling I should be more concerned about these things. Given that it's the dividing line between myself and another strain of leftism, and is the main reason to keep supporting the party, shouldn't it be one of my main concerns?

I was genuinely disturbed though not shocked by the Snowden revelations. The recent news that Cambridgeshire police have been offering money to those willing to inform on "student uniony stuff" (the idea that CUSU does anything at all would surprise many Cantabs, let alone that they were doing criminal stuff) outraged me. And yet I still don't get very exercised by it except out of duty. Why not?

Primarily, I think, because I still feel safe. I have the provincial Englishman's faith in the police force that hasn't been shaken by a lifetime diet of left wing reading. Orwell sums this up rather nicely along with many other things about Englishness in The Lion and the Unicorn:

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in ‘the law’ as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.

It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like ‘They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong’, or ’They can’t do that; it’s against the law’, are part of the atmosphere of England...  Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered.

It is probably a blind spot of the British that they are insufficiently alive to the possibility of true corruption. They grumble about MPs being crooks and cheats, they tell us that they're all in it to fill their pockets or serve corporations or dictate their PC worldview. But it's rarely particularly heartfelt, which is probably something to do with hundreds of years of being ruled over by a corrupt aristocratic elite that was slowly losing its power anyway, so was only ever worth grumbling about. 

We've never had Nazis or Vichy or gulags or the mafia routinely murdering judges. The true possibility of power's corruption is largely unformed in our collective consciousness, except in those Englishmen who have immigrated from other less forgiving climes. The police force doesn't scare me because I see it as something relatable. A film like Hot Fuzz works because the implied power of an American policeman - sharp uniform, powerful cars, powerful guns - contrasts tellingly with a police force with a penchant for jumpers and hi vis jackets. We're basically you, says the English policeman, but we're in these silly clothes and we have a job to do and just behave, please? Then there are videos like this:  

All of which masks the truth that for many in the UK whose lives I have no contact with, relations with the police remain fraught and policemen do abuse their power. They are also corrupt enough to accept bribes from the press, possibly shoot innocent people, punch protesters in the face, spy on democratic activists, and have children with activists while spying on them.

The reason why I still fail to get annoyed with the police is because I can see how in large institutions things get out of hand. In any organisation where you need results, people do stupid things. Mass surveillance is very helpful to the police, and for one or two jobs, essential, and if you're in a position of power where your job is to stop something that's come to define your job, restraint on arbitrary grounds would indeed seem annoying. I have no idea why they keep going for activists. My left wing friends insist it's because they're the tool of corporate interests, but this doesn't really convince me. It seems more likely that there's a long standing suspicion of activists in the police refreshed every few years when they have to go and monitor a demonstration where people smash things. 

Should I be worried about this? I still find it hard to be. The fact is that police forces all over the world are considerably worse, and police trust even after the last few battering years is holding up well. So the rather uncomfortable position must be held between the authoritarians who see criminality everywhere and want to hit it and the anti-authoritarians for whom the police are and always will be the enemy. There has to be a place for people who see the police force as very easily corruptible, and will criticise it as such, but believe it's doing okayish just about.

That's probably the best I can do for now, but my concern for civil liberties will need a good kick up the arse by an actual large-scale and suitably impressive breach of liberty before I get on this horse again.