John H August 6th, 2007
Henry Porter in the Observer has been indefatigable in recording and protesting the gradual encroachment of the power of the state since 1997, with measures ranging from restrictions on the right to protest through to the now almost-inevitable introduction of ID cards.
The latest proposal is for the police to be given the power to take DNA samples in the street, and in his latest column Porter warns that:
…before we all shut up shop for the holidays, it is worth underlining one sentence that needs to be written in neon across every town centre: Britain is on the way to becoming a police state.
He continues:
Writing about the crisis of liberty in Britain, I have been careful not to use these words, but today I see no other conclusion to draw. Taken in the context of the ID card database, the national surveillance of vehicles and retention of information about every individual motorway journey, the huge number of new criminal offences, the half million intercepts of private communications every year, the proposed measures to take 53 pieces of information from everyone wishing to go abroad, which will include powers to prevent travel, this widening of the DNA database for minor misdemeanours confirms the pattern of attack on us all.
The authoritarian instincts of Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown on “security” issues is one of the most troubling features of this government, a government that in many other respects I continue to support. Reading Ellul recently has helped me understand the nature of the tension I feel about the Labour government, especially his comments on the nature of Christian “realism” and the application of the “pessimism of hope” in the area of politics.
Ellul identifies “three possible levels” at which “the social group and its history” can be understood:
One is the superficial level. Here the emphasis is on happenings, on current events, on personalities. (Hope in Time of Abandonment, p.280)
Events occur, governments and leaders rise and fall, elections are held and speeches delivered. This is the stuff of daily news reports, and while “undeniably exciting”, it is also “a distraction from the more profound and decisive reality”.
At the opposite extreme is the third level, that of abstract concepts of power that underlie all systems of government without exception, and that are really unavoidable in any human group. But between these two levels there is “an intermediate territory” consisting of:
…the structures, the movements and the temporary regularities which go up to make the actual history, and which produce an epoch or a regime with its characteristic features. So, beneath the public current events and elections, but above the constant of the phenomenon of power, there is the State…
Ellul uses the ocean as an analogy:
On the surface are the waves and the splash brought about by the wind … In the depths there is a sepulchral stillness. Between the two are the currents, the tides, modifications in the ocean floor, the formation and the shifting of sandbars.
It is this middle region “which is decisive and the most interesting”, and the area in which “one should apply Christian realism”.
And here we see the source of my ambivalence about this government. Labour’s most conspicuous successes have largely taken place on the surface level of “happenings… current events [and] personalities”. This isn’t to talk these achievements down: the hospital at which our second child was born was unrecognisably better than that at which our first child was born; genuine advances have been made in redistributing wealth without frightening the horses; civilising measures such as free museum entry have made a great impact for good; and so on.
But beneath these there have been more disturbing trends at the level of the “ocean currents”: an ongoing transformation in the power of the State, coupled with what Porter describes as the “alarming disappearance of the liberal reflex in British political life”.
That said, I’m not convinced any government would have handled matters at those levels in a radically different way. When Labour was in opposition, it was the Conservative government that was talking about introducing ID cards, and Labour that was opposing it in the name of liberty.
Again, Ellul probably has the right analysis: the encroaching of state power is largely driven by “technique” rather than the positive decisions of any particular political party. Hence this encroachment can only be resisted by resisting “technique” itself – and no mainstream political party is going to stand up and oppose the technological advancement that is technique’s most obvious manifestation. (Indeed, I wouldn’t say that I have reached, or even want to reach, Ellul’s position on this issue.)
Update: Joel makes the following point in the comments concerning the role of technique in eroding freedom:
Technique not only drives the expansion of state power over liberty, it makes it possible for the policing to be inconspicuous. The populace is informed that additional surveillance of everyday activities will occur and reassured that it will be unobtrusive. Technique delivers on that promise. No one complains; therefore, the public consents to a degree of intrusiveness, which if made plain, would horrify anyone with even one functionally liberal neuron in their brain.
As Joel continues: “Technique is the Commissar for the new police state”.
