150 years On Liberty

Next year (2009) is the 150th anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s landmark “essay”, On Liberty. Much credit, perhaps the majority, should go to his wife, Harriet Taylor, so please take that as read throughout the rest of this deposit.

I have to admit to have been 149 years behind the time in reading On Liberty, but I do have the excuse of not being born for 110 of those. But this isn’t such a bad time to catch up.

The basic principle that everyone should be free to do whatever, say whatever and think whatever does no harm to others is often forgotten in politics, even and sometimes by those that call themselves liberal.

Green Party politics (in England and Wales but also in much of the world) is quite akin to traditional Liberalism and its policies are stacked with ideas that would impose the Green “opinion” (to use Mill’s vocabulary) on the rest of society. Education, healthcare and animal rights, for examples, would all have national guidelines and rules to ensure that the “right” sort of education, healthcare and animals rights were being supplied nationwide.

In fact, nationhood was something Mill never questioned, as far as I can tell, but he did have a sense that the national level was not always the most appropriate one for running society’s affairs. He was greatly impressed by the way ordinary Americans could establish order in remote townships, without help or hindrance from a central bureaucracy, and thought it a model for England.

If anything, On Liberty is more applicable today than it was on its publication. I say this because, although we have gone through a century of clashing ideologies and many would now have us believe that politics has been reduced to the perfection of societal management, opinions are still being thrust upon us and withheld from us.

The most notable opinions that it is not considered suitable to hold and express are those of Jihad and theocracy. Like Mill I am merely advocating the right to hold and express these views, or to establish consensual communities that follows their ideals, while also considering these opinions to be deeply flawed.

Again, as Mill would have it, it is only when someone’s actions negatively affect others that society has the right to react. A theocracy established by military coup is obviously not OK, let alone killing others to “promote” your cause.

Where we draw the line, however, is an important part of how we win the argument. The Terrorism Act 2006 gets it very wrong, by making it illegal to disseminate a publication which is either: a) likely to be understood as directly or indirectly encouraging terrorism; or b) includes information which is likely to be understood as being useful in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism.

The main focus at the time of the legislation was on periods of detention, which is also deplorable, but the first conviction (although subsequently successfully appealed) was on possession of records likely to be useful in terrorism. Samina Malik had, it seems, some dangerous books and wrote some dangerous poems.

In some ways this is farcical: who can handle dangerous books? A licensed librarian? Worse, it is counter-productive: removing people’s right to read, associate, discuss and disseminate as they please weakens our own position. Society, as Mill was saying, is stronger when everyone freely forms their own opinions.