Progress summer reading

Sadie Smith reviews A. C. Grayling’s ‘Liberty in the Age of Terror’

The principle of Porter’s Law, named after the great Henry, holds that the sooner a reference to how Orwell would have been ashamed of whatever latest policy is inducing apoplexy in the Independent editorials appears in an article, the less likely it is the piece will deal in a thought-provoking or intelligent way about liberty and its detractors. It does A.C. Grayling great credit, therefore, that he manages to hold out for a full 59 pages before he finally cracks and mentions St George, and has managed to produce a book that discusses liberty and identity in the 21st century which covers new ground beyond that barren earth already well-trodden by the rent-a-clichés in the ‘liberty lobby’. 

But before we start chalking up Grayling’s name next to John Stuart Mill and the sainted Orwell, I feel bound to say that I felt ‘Liberty in the Age of Terror’ was a flawed book. In part, it suffers from the way it’s divided into two sections: part one which comprises the main substance of Grayling’s argument, and part two in which he takes issue with some of the holy cows of the liberty movement. The first part is further subdivided into a series of short chapters, each of which canter quickly through ‘equality and justice’, ‘combating terrorism’ and many, many more. Some of these are just a few pages long, and there is a sense upon reaching the end of them that the subject hasn’t quite been dealt with and dispatched in the manner which the author’s frequent penchant for declaring that he had demonstrated some infallible truth in the previous chapter would attempt to suggest. At best it reads like a series of articles hastily cobbled together with linking phrases such as the ‘as I have demonstrated’ tactic; at worst it feels like an elongated prompt-card for addressing a Liberal Democrat conference fringe.

So much for the narrative style, here comes the philosophy bit: concentrate! Grayling’s argument is that ‘civil liberties’ - a phrase, incidentally, that could have done with some explanation or definition - have been eroded since 1997 by a government desperate to prove it is ‘tough on terror’ via the use of oppressive legislation; this is turning the free Britain of an almost certainly mythical past into one of the rogue states they say they are attempting to protect us from. So far, so every-episode-you’ve-ever-seen-of-Question-Time, right? Where, however, Grayling is really interesting is in his analysis of what he terms ‘the politics of the singular identity’ which in one argument manages to fell political and religious extremism and provide a coherent humanist argument against identity cards and the national identity register. Not bad going.

The politics of the singular identity, argues Grayling, eschews pluralism for a single overriding identity: one is no longer a (say) feminist, Labour party supporter, mother, or closet Hollyoaks fan. Rather, all these facets to a person’s personality and individuality are superseded and then eliminated by one primary identity that allows no variation from the narrow philosophy which it proscribes. Grayling uses the example of alienated immigrants who adopt the singular identity offered by Islam as ‘a shield and staff’, but goes on to contend that if such a tactic is essentially dehumanising because it reduces the plurality of each individual into a unit of whatever movement they’ve embraced and nothing more, so too is the identity card scheme. Because it plans to similarly distil everything from medical records to employment records into a single place, the subject loses his plurality and becomes a unit of the state rather than a person, in the same way the Islamic extremist is merely a component of a religious faction instead of a unique autonomous human being.

This aside, there is plenty to take issue with. One of the things that really sticks in the craw is the thinly veiled contempt ‘Liberty in the Age of Terror’ holds post-1997 politicians in and his frequent lamentations that there are no decent ‘statesmen’ (they were the chaps who came pre-1997, one assumes) to stand up for civil liberties. His disapproval of dubious actions of quick-fix politicians doesn’t extend to the Fourth Estate, however. In fact, he manifests an indulgence for the excesses of the media, which he argues are unavoidable by-products of the otherwise noble work of a free press; this being necessary for holding the state and the people’s inherently rubbish representatives to account, you understand. Crotch-shots of celebrities are the price of liberty.

Perhaps worst of all, the much vaunted ‘alternative’ way of dealing with the threat of terrorism, the acceleration of modernity, and the threat posed to Enlightenment values appears to be nothing more than an occasional exhortation for NGOs and governments to get those crazy extremist kids talking. Well, it worked on the West Wing I suppose, but that had the advantage of not being real.

That said, the critique of identity thinking is worth buying the book for alone, it’s just a pity that there was not more of that, and less words expended harking back to pre-1997 ‘Golden Age’ of civil liberties which our brethren in the trade union movement (amongst others) might not recognise. At one point he quotes Amin Maalouf as saying that everyone should seek to ‘identify to some degree with what he sees emerging in the world around him, instead of seeking refuge in an idealised past.’ Grayling responds, apparently without irony, ‘amen to that.’

Well, quite.

Sadie Smith

Comments

Posted by A. C. Grayling on 15 August 2009, 12:27:05 PM
I enjoyed Ms Smith's bracing review of my "Liberty in the Age of Terror" and thank her for it, though one small point I'd like to mention - speaking as a long-standing (but profoundly disappointed & troubled) Labour supporter - is that I identified the contemporary aspects of the rot as having started with Tory Home Secretary Howard's love of CCTV surveillance back in '92, and the Tory-Labour rhetorical arms race before 1997 on who could be toughest on crime and terrorism. If Ms Smith thinks that golden age thinking is a mere cliché, she might consider the Labour record in the Home Office of Roy Jenkins and Herbert Morrison, very different animals indeed from their more recent successors. Also, a point Ms Smith does not mention, but which is tremendously important: the mere existence of technologies of surveillance and control is not a reason (though the government seems to think it is) for those technologies to be used. The nakedness to view that email and mobile telephony exposes us is a reason not for their exploitation by agencies public or private, but our protection against their misuse by those agencies. In the endeavour to make us safe from ourselves and everyone else by watching and eavesdropping upon us all, and marshalling us all into corrals for greater convenience of doing so, this government, more empowered than its predecessors by new technologies apt for this task (but if the Tories get in will they be any different unless we keep resisting?), has sold our privacy and an uncomfortable slice of our autonomy for the potage of "security" - in other words, something genuinely important for something that can never be guaranteed, something of permanent value for something that is a temporary problem only, even if "temporary" means 20 years.

Posted by angela pinter on 24 August 2009, 7:59:17 PM
Sadie Smith is such a fawning supporter of New Labour that she seems to have forgotten what liberty means in teh British tradition. THe hyper legalisms of New Labour has produced over three thousand new criminal offences. Every offence no matter how trivial is arrestable. Etc Etc Presumly Sadie supports this assault on freedom on the basis of empty slogans about 'renewing the country'' (sic) New labour has seriously damaged and destablisied society. When it is defeated as it soon will be one of the main reasons will be its inability to reduce crime and disorder. It has instead created crime by passing too many laws which make no sense. What is most shameful is that the loss of freedom under Labour is closely connected to the organisation LIberty. Patricia Hewitt, Harriet Harman and Vera Baird, Sadiq Khan John Lyons and Fiona McTaggart are all closely linked to LIberty which has betrayed its supporters. Liberty as an organisation has also become totally undemocratic and the chair of Liberty , Louise Christian, threatened to call police when challenged by a questioner. This was at the recent AGM. In addition direct personalised attacks have come from Liberty against individual members of the judiciary. Presumably Smith has no comment What a pointless review.

Posted by Sadie Smith on 31 August 2009, 9:49:55 AM
There is a scene in Dante's "Inferno" in which the wise Virgil, representing Human Reason, walks past the grotesque giant Nimrod who is condemned to an eternity waving his arms around all day shouting "OOGABOOGALOO!" or similar. In a similar manner are Mr Grayling and Miss Pinter's comments juxtaposed. Well, Angela, you're right - I don't have a comment to make. Let me explain why. First of all, I do not take kindly to personal attacks ("new Labour toady") from people who choose not to engage in the substance of the argument but, instead post random shouting on the understanding that it's critical comment. And how do you know what my politics are from that review? I mean, I could easily have said of your review "Angela Pinter is so weird that she couldn't get a screw in a DIY shop". However, unlike you, I tend to find debates on liberty too fascinating to make myself look like an utter idiot by posting after - say - a highly intelligent riposte from A. C. Grayling, a comment that more or less says "SMITH: YOUR MUM. PWNED! LOLZ!" Secondly, I would ask you to explain what "liberty means in teh [sic] British tradition" but I rather fancy you would just ramble about the Magna Carta ... Henry Porter ... George Orwell would be ashamed etc instead of producing a critique - as Grayling does in his book - of various theories of liberty by a series of philosophers, in which he challenges certain conceptions of what that term constitutes. I mean, if you have come up with a cast-iron definition of what "liberty means in teh [sic] British tradition" than I suggest you let him know, because debates on what liberty actually means, for whom, and how it is protected have been the obsession of philosophers for thousands of years. The second half of Grayling's book respectfully continues this tradition but, according to you, you've cracked it definitively and conclusively. Which either makes you a genius or a self-important internet troll with delusions of grandeur. Also, I don't tend to answer contentions such as "it has instead created crime by passing too many laws which make no sense" because, in addition to the fact it reads like it's been penned by Yoda on crystal meth, is just a random charge you've clearly heard repeated by someone but have no idea what it means. Which laws, specifically, make no sense? Which would you repeal? And why? I also have no interest in the AGM of Liberty, as you probably have no interest in the AGM of the Ealing North Labour Party, so I won't respond to that fascinating rundown of the agenda debated at the last one, as crucial to the national interest as you seem to feel it. And I don't really have anything to say about Liberty issuing "direct personal attacks against the judiciary" because I don't know anything about it, and it is about as relevant to A. C. Grayling's new book as your comment is to civil liberties, the politics of the singular identity , and my review. Oh, and you also are confusing "liberty" with the much more closely defined "civil liberties", which are the subject of most of Grayling's book. I'll let you off that one, though, as it's probably a mental leap too far for you. Presumably Pinter has no comment. And if she does it's proof that she's, like, thick. And, in that spirit and because according to Pinter this is how it works, unless Keira Knightly comes on here RIGHT NOW, I am officially hotter than she is. What a pointless troll.

Posted by Guido Fawkes on 03 September 2009, 11:22:56 AM

I think you are hotter than Keira - intellectually I mean.