An overview of Civil Liberties legislation since 1900

by Matthew Robb

This overview is far from comprehensive, but I hope will be continually updated.

[Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and have no technical knowledge of civil liberties. However, maintaining civil liberties is, in my opinion, the responsibility of all citizens, and should not be, must not be, left to technicians (like so much else). However, I would welcome comments and feedback on this essay from all sources. MR]

Index

Bibliography and sources

Why should anyone care?

One needs to be careful in assuming that there was ever a romantic, ‘golden age’ of civil liberties in this country [Link to ref 1]. Nonetheless, in important ways, civil liberties and the supporting democratic infrastructure of the UK have been gradually undermined over the course of the last century. Despite recent headline-grabbing advances in civil liberties (for example, incorporation of European Human Rights legislation), these attacks have accelerated.

The purpose of this document is to chart these attacks, with the main pieces of legislation.

What are civil liberties?

There is always a discussion about what ‘liberties’ or ‘rights’ are. They almost always include the basic provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but can include more ‘political’ rights’. For (my) convenience, I have loosely followed the characterisation of civil liberties used in Freedom Under Thatcher: Civil Liberties in Modern Britain, by K.D. Ewing and C.A. Gearty. I have added a couple more from Freedom, the Individual and the Law, by Geoffrey Robertson.

These give roughly the following four major clusters:

The table below includes the history of the steady, continual disarming of the UK population.

Timeline of Civil Liberties legislation

Increased the penalties that could be imposed on offenders under the SPA (imprisonment from a maximum of 2 years to 14 and/or fines from a maximum of £100 to £500). [1]

Questioning
Representation

[Full notes]

• Banned semiautomatic and pump-action centrefire rifles, military weapons firing explosive ammunition, and short shotguns that had magazines.
• Lifted pump-action and self-loading rifles into the Prohibited category.
• Registration and secure storage of weapons held on shotgun certificates required, and
• shotguns with more than a 2+1 capacity now require a Firearms certificate.
• The law also introduced new restrictions on shotguns, although rifles in .22 rimfire and semi-automatic pistols were unaffected.
[Hungerford massacre used as an excuse.]

Proscribed organisations
Exclusion
Arrest and detention.

[Full notes]

• Part IV, Sections 34-39, substantially changed the right to silence of an accused person, allowing for inferences to be drawn from their silence.
• Part IV, Sections 54-59, gave the police greater rights to take and retain intimate body samples.
• Part IV, Section 60, which increased police powers of unsupervised “stop and search”, including in sub-section (6), “If in the course of a search under this section a constable discovers a dangerous instrument or an article which he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be an offensive weapon, he may seize it.” This has been interpreted to include knives or many other items, including walking sticks, or other vaguely pointy items.
• In Part 5, the Act also criminalised previously civil offences such as trespass and nuisance on land.

Handguns almost completely banned for private ownership. Exceptions to the ban include muzzle-loading "blackpowder" guns, pistols produced before 1917, pistols of historical interest (such as pistols used in notable crimes, rare prototypes, unusual serial numbers and so on), starting pistols, pistols that are of particular aesthetic interest (such as engraved or jewelled guns) and shot pistols for pest control. Even Britain's Olympic shooters fall under this ban; as a result of this law, the British pistol shooting team must train outside the country
[Dunblane massacre used as an excuse.]

Football (Disorder) Act, 2000

The Football (Disorder) Act 2000 represents a significant restriction of the civil liberties of all citizens, not just football hooligans. The Act has a number of deficiencies, explained in this commentary.
summary and commentary

full text of the Act

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Bibliography and sources

Almost all the information in this essay comes from four sources:

OUP, 0198256655
UK: £59.02, USA: $85.00
(Available May 2000)

Freedom, the individual and the law

Pity the Nation : The Abduction of Lebanon

3rd revised ed., Oxford Paperbacks, 0192801309 £7.99
(Available September 2001)
Out of print in the USA

I am (perhaps naively) surprised at how little literature there is on these subjects that is not arcane legal stuff. Even the first four references continually refer to each other.

Matthew Robb

email feedback@magnacartaplus.org

© magnacartaplus.org 13 May, 2001

the address for this document is http:/www.magnacartaplus.org/civil-liberties/index.htm

4150 words
prints as 12 A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)