Taking Liberties

Well this is not about hiding, but about becoming cognescent of the draconian creep taking away personal privacy, and public freedoms and liberties. It is not about terrorism, but about the misuse of the terrorism act to surveille the population. It is about agenda, opaque to public perception and concern.

Non-professor Stahlman would have you believe it is all bunkum, even though it is unfolding right before his and your eyes. He would seek to curtail your curiosity in seeing this movie, with petty innuendo and obsfucation. You have your mind to decide what you see and don't see. It is for you to decide the importance of the film...whether the film is crap or not, it carries a very important message, and it is one you should at least be aware of.

Some reviewers have called the film entertaining and humorous, it is neither, Its subject matter is neither entertaining or humorous, it is serious and downright scary. Sometime in the future you will face the very thing this film discusses. No matter how hard you try to keep yourself and your family out of it (as if it is someone else's problem, someone else's fear), it will come calling. The question you need to ask is...What will you do when it does? How will you be able to deal with it, and what resources will there be at hand to help you? Well, if you do not prime yourself before hand, you will perceive there to be none.

I found myself getting extremely angry whilst watching the film, because it reminded me all too starkly that what was defeated with Hitler, is now winning with Blair and the current imbecilic incumbent of No 10. It is winning through a series of gradual unfoldments, incremental tightenings of the noose around each of our necks. You already feel it in your personal economy, the means by which you are enchained to repeatable patterns of behaviour, day in and day out.

Generally the media will not report it. When they do, they will sing the constriction of your liberty as beneficial to you. They will make it sound like a good idea; but like all good ideas, they are open to abuse sometime in the future. Freedom and liberty has to be constantly guarded and fought for. You cannot expect government to be benign, and for your good to safeguard your liberty. It will not do that, it will safeguard its own, and you being freedom and liberty-loving, are a threat to that.

If you've nothing to hide, and have nothing to fear, why then the systematic reduction in your freedom, liberty and personal privacy? Simply because, your government considers you to be a potential terrorist, and will misuse the terrorist act to defend, not you, but itself. Individually, you are expendable, collectively, you are a mob. See Naomi Wolf - From Freedom to Fascism ( A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot). This is not just happening in Britain, but around the world. See the movie and discern for yourself, it just might open your eyes.

A sort of 'Michael Moore goes to England' documentary about the gradual leaching away of civil rights under Tony Blair.

Always interesting and entertaining, and occasionally deeply disturbing.

Yet for me it just misses greatness through it's one-sided arguments that sometimes feel a bit forced, without the human voice that Moore puts on his films.

The difference between someone blatantly, admitting 'this is my perspective', as a film- maker like Moore does, and this film's pretense at 'objectivity' makes it a bit harder to take, and somehow less affecting than films that are more honest that they are stating (in this case quite effectively) a specific point-of-view.

None-the-less, I'd re-watch this, and I'm sure enjoy it again. But here in the States, the 'Daily Show' does it better, and a lot more succinctly.

Many films need to be made to inform a wider audience of a crucial issue that is being largely ignored. In the UK, one issue being deftly swept under the carpet by the authorities is that of identity registration and our rapidly eroding civil liberties.

If I was to deduct points from Chris Atkins for any aspect of this film, it would be one of timing. Where was this film when these draconian reductions in our powers to decide for ourselves were passed into law? The fact is, Atkins has used every last minute of news up until the film's release as source material. This issue is ongoing; it must have been difficult to know when to stop reporting and when to finish editing, so it is no wonder that this film took so long to arrive.

Politics, and in particular liberal politics, is never very easy to force down the throats of a nationwide audience. In a fairly successful move to sex up and illustrate certain points, the film gives way to more of Simon Robson's (of Knife Party fame) beautiful polemic motion graphics. These (although sometimes hard to read) add to the sense of revolution, that dissent and caring about politics could one day be considered 'cool'.

The serious journalism comes into play in several case studies involving several cases where anti-terrorism laws have been abused by police forces to indiscriminately break up peaceful protests. One shocking section reveals how a weapons guidance manufacturer on the South coast effectively 'hired' the local police force to arrest people attending the weekly protest outside the EDO factory.

The examples of police brutality, recording of the public, and general ignorance are not simply garnering antipathy for police officers. The film's makers clearly understand the need to blame not the police but those that equip them with unmitigated authority.

This film manages to weave between pretty much all of the concerns surrounding UK liberty, legal issues, our rights (as guaranteed by Churchill, apparently) without getting too heavy or legalese, or mentioning Orwell a million times like other idiot journalists who write about civil liberties.

It seems longer than it really is, because it, like many of its long-form docufeature bedfellows, it manages to cram in a lot of relevant and scary imagery and info without always resorting to the dreary voice-over-and-stock-footage formula that is tempting when writing a documentary.

Obviously Chami Chakrabarti was in the film - as director of Liberty, the charity trying to save us from pseudofascists, she acted, as always, as the voice of cool, calm reason.

The one line I was waiting to hear was a rebuttal to: "If I've done nothing wrong, I've got nothing to hide". Maybe I'll put that one in my film:

POLICE STORMTROOPER: Everyone get down on the floor! We can see you all and we have guns pointed at you!

TERRIFIED CIVILIANS: Leave us alone! Get out of my house!

POLICE STORMTROOPER: If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide from us, no?

Edmund Brown

Postscript: Brian Haw, the only man in Britain allowed to legally protest outside Parliament, went to my screening tonight at the Ritzy Brixton and was sat in front of me. He got an ovation after the screening. What a guy. At several points, I guffawed out loud, right into Brian's left ear. Everyone else in the screening was being polite and quiet and reserved, and there, to the chagrin of the whole audience, I found myself unable to keep from laughing at little quips about our right-wing government.

It is probably best that I hold my hands up from the start and say that, in regards this film I am a member of choir. I am pretty liberal but on the subject of terrorism legislation I do think I have a right to an opinion because of my experiences as a Northern Irish man in England. I note that some critics of this film have criticised it for the way that it does paint things in a very bad light and, while I agree to a point, I do also think that there is a certain amount of "it'll never happen to me" thinking, similar to the "if you have nothing to hide what is the problem" school of thought. However having been arrested and held for being on the same street as Prince Charles would later visit that same day (after several court appearances, the charges were thrown out). So I do have a certain amount of sympathy with those that fear being wrongly targeted by those given the powers to do so if they wish.

However I must be careful not to let me agreeing with the politics of the film totally cloud my view on it because, as much as I agree with it, it is not that great a documentary. It is too simplistic in some regards and it just seems to throw examples at the screen in the aim of hitting the audience with so much stuff it has no time to digest, consider or reflect. The strongest documentaries build their case and let you come along with them to the point where you find it hard to disagree; those films that simply dollop it out are doing the audience a disservice and tend to be those that fail to win over anyone other than those who already agree with the message. So it is here and it is a real shame because moment by moment it is compelling stuff. While nowhere near the degree where we cower in our homes after curfew, liberties are being squeezed and the many examples make it hard to ignore as an issue. However it doesn't pull it together in a focused fashion and ultimately seems to think the point will just make itself. The rather rebellious tone suits some of the material but at times goes too far and again makes this a film "for the audience" – the closing song is the most extreme example of this and quite unnecessary.

It is a shame it is not better because it is an important topic but, while it is compelling stuff, the failure to really deliver a killer argument or a strong structure is its undoing in regards winning the hearts of the undecided viewer. Goes without saying that, for the choir, it is great stuff, but I wanted it to do more than just tick the target audience box.

Chris Atkins Documentary carrys some interesting accounts of the erosion of civil liberty's in great Britain, some of it I've seen before, such as the use of control orders on entirely innocent people and also the banning of protests outside the house of commons, though there is certainly a lot to focus on and even get you angry in certain parts. Taking a Michael Moore esquire approach with the use of archive footage, from silent films and also a cynical yet witty narration (provided by actors David Morrisey and Ashley Jensen), some have described the film as our version of Fahrenheit 9/11, which it is'nt as that film set out to show the incompetence of George W Bush, TAKING LIBERTIES exposes the fundamentally flawed and fear mongering policy of the British government led under Blair, to slowly erode civil liberty's and bring in new laws and change existing laws, that eventually let pensioners on peaceful protests become arrested under the terrorism act, putting them in the same league as Taliban extremists, destroying the right to protest outside of military basis', weapons factory's and the house of commons itself, and causing the police to swoop in vast numbers on anyone even thinking of waving a placard and most disturbingly of all putting control orders on Muslims who have been convicted in a court of law, as innocent and forcing them to remain in a designated area and effectively making them prisoners in there own home. The film approaches this in light hearted at times yet essentially serious manner, and my only criticism of it is that I would have liked to have more views on the other side of the coin, from the politicians who implement these laws, to at least argue there point, though in retrospect, probably no politician would want to appear in front of the camera for this film for fear of embarrassing themselves. Will civil liberty's change under Gordon Brown now that Blair has left, it's hard to tell and if your like me, i'm cynical and think, no, nothing will probably change, if you have a threat of terror, the best way to assure the public is to keep this threat up and then the public will be behind any change in law as long as it stops the extremists from blowing us up (see Adam Curtis' documentary series THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES to get a full picture on the use of terror and fear). Though one thing we can do, and in many respects the one prevailing factor in LIBERTIES is to keep a chin up and laugh at the absurdity of it all.