Conor Gearty will be delivering a public lecture at the LSE tomorrow to promote his new book; Liberty and Security. In this post he explores the main tenets of the book and argues that we should recover the universal dimensions of liberty and security, restoring the egalitarian thrust that drove the turn to democracy and was such an important feature of the evolution of universal freedom

Gearty, Conor

LSE Research Online

2/18/2013Liberty and Security: we must recover the finest meaningsof these termsblogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/liberty-and-security-we-must-recover-the-finest-meanings-of-these-terms/Conor Gearty will be delivering a public lecture at the LSE tomorrow to promote his new book; Liberty andSecurity. In this post he explores the main tenets of the book and argues that we should recoverthe universal dimensions of liberty and security, restoring the egalitarian thrust that drove theturn to democracy and was such an important feature of the evolution of universal freedom.The contemporary discussion about secret trials in the UK echoes earlier controversies aboutTerrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs), control orders, detention withoutcharge, special advocates, the use of torture – the list seems depressingly endless. Defenders ofthe rule of law and of human rights appear permanently on the back foot these days, desperatejust to stay in the game and having long given up any notion of making the running themselves. For most of thoseworking in the field (whether as lawyers, activists or scholars), the goal is survival not success.Why should this be the case? What has made it so difficult to argue positions that – until really quite recently – weretaken largely for granted?I have been thinking hard about this over the past few months as I have been finalising Liberty and Security, a bookto be published later this year (or early next) by Polity Press. It is about the shape that these words ‘liberty’ and‘security’ have taken through time and from place to place, how much they have been realised and for how many,and what their standing is today. In reflecting on these questions I have, I believe, stumbled upon an unattractiveglobal trend, which in the book I call ‘neo-democracy’.I want to use this short post to explain what I mean by this and – hopefully – start a discussion. The key tounderstanding ‘liberty’ and ‘security’-  and therefore to identifying how these words work today – is to see that whiletheir core meaning is not hard to work out, it is the reach of the benefits that each word so powerfully evokes thattruly matters.–       It is the ‘for how many’ issue that mainly concerns me: to whom are liberty and security to be extended?–       Is it to be to all or just the few?–       If it is to be to all, is it to be through community, state, non-state, regional or international action?–        If guaranteed for all, how practical in their reach do these theoretical commitments prove themselves to be?I think that the central arguments over liberty and security have really always been about this issue of remit ratherthan of meaning. My book argues for a particular approach, one that regards the benefits of liberty and security asbeing rightfully available to all, and thereby capable of reaching (being required to reach) the many rather than thefew. It does not argue the ethic of such a perspective from first principles. Instead it rather takes the moraldesirability of universality for granted – as most societies now say they do (whatever about how they truly act).Viewing liberty and security in this all-inclusive way shapes how I approach both the past work these words havedone and the present-day reach that (I say) should be consistently accorded to them.This is not as easy as it looks. Saying is not doing. A different approach is reflected in the growing presence of wallsin divided societies, blatant efforts by the ’haves’  to shut out not only the sight of the ‘have-nots’ but also anyopportunity the unlucky many might have to glimpse what a better future would look like. Israel’s ‘partition fence’might be the most well-known of these but it is by no means the only one: see a list of separation barriers here. And1/3where there are no physical walls, our neo-liberal society has increasingly embraced metaphorical walls even whileit has ostentatiously embraced the virtues of the level playing field. And important bits of our shared history might beon the side of the neo-democrats.If we look to the past, neither ‘liberty’ nor ‘security’ has been routinely understood in the broad terms for which Iargue. Indeed the primary understanding of liberty and security in the pre-democratic era was always narrowlyselective as to who was to benefit from the opportunities afforded the one and the safety delivered by the other. Itwas only when the radically egalitarian idea of community self-government took hold on a national scale that libertyand security found themselves open to being wrenched out of their elitist corrals and offered to all.Democracy gave the universalist reading of liberty and security an entry point and strong support but it could not byitself deliver effortless supremacy for the reach that this approach affords these words. This was because (as Iargue in the book) the democratic victory was itself incomplete, a freedom for all that was invariably not forgedafresh but rather tentatively grafted onto a pre-existing society that had been designed for the few. Old elite readingsof liberty and security persisted into the democratic era, jostling for space with their egalitarian interlopers.This takes me to the central argument in the book, the one that I wanted to flag up in this post. Around the world weare drifting towards a post-democratic (‘neo-democratic’) model of government. This is a polity that increasinglywears democratic clothes as a disguise rather than a proud necessity. So we see these old, pre-democraticmeanings of the terms returning into popular use, underpinning and explaining readings of liberty and security whichremain apparently universal but are now falsely so – words that hide inequality and unfairness by seeming to reachall when in fact in their practical impact they are tailored to the few.It is not just the so-called emerging democracies that are in reality neo-democratic in this sense: increasingly it isplaces like the US, the UK and even the UN itself. Former authoritarian states are reaching up to neo-democracywhile the old democracies are stooping down. They are meeting in the middle, in virtual democracy: this is the worldof secret trials, special advocates and so on. My book argues that we should recover the universal in liberty andsecurity, restoring the egalitarian thrust that drove the turn to democracy and that was such an important feature ofthe evolution of universal freedom.  Such a move has two important allies in its quest to impose its version of thetruth, two large-scale movements that have had a beneficial impact across the world.The first, the rule of law, pre-dates the democratic turn but complements it, maintaining that everyone must besubject to the same laws and (just as critically) that the maker of any given law should not at one and the same timebe its authoritative interpreter.The second, the human rights movement, is of more recent origin (at least insofar as we understand the ideatoday); the very way that its self-description dedicates itself to all humans reveals the commitment shown by humanrights to an egalitarian vision of the world, one in which we all should have a right to the freedoms that were onceassumed to be the privilege of the few. And human rights today also reaches beyond the protection of liberty(narrowly defined) to encompass rich readings of human security, the sort which democratic government once madepopular. It is about much more than this or that law, just as it is not about selfish choices masquerading asentitlements – it is about universal freedom.The neo-democratic turn in contrast wants us to regard democracy, the rule of law and human rights in this sense asoutmoded. It wants us to see these ideas as ‘old hat’, incapable of coping with the challenges of the modern globalworld, the rise of extremism, climate change, the movement of capital, population growth, refugees, etc. Theproponents of neo-democracy (conscious and unconscious) are happy to see the terms ‘liberty’ and ‘security’contaminated by misuse, forsaken by those who should love them most as creatures of illusion and hypocrisy.True liberty and security – that is liberty and security for all and not just the already empowered few – depends onrecovering the finest meanings of these terms and then using them as offensive weapons against the onward surgeof the over-privileged minority whose ideal world would see liberty and security as their exclusive preserve alone.2/3They must be resisted. It is time to get back on the front foot.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.About the AuthorConor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law, LSE, and a Barrister at Matrix Chambers.3/3

Liberty and Security: we must recover the finest meanings of these terms

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