Pubdate: Wed, 20 Dec 2006
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Simon Jenkins

IPSWICH PROVES HOW BADLY WE NEED TORY LIBERTARIANS

If the Conservatives Want a Free Society, They Could Start by Getting 
Rid of Counter-Productive Bans on Drugs and Prostitution Simon 
Jenkins Wednesday December 20, 2006

Guardian What is the matter with the Conservative party? It once 
claimed a nodding acquaintance with the cause of liberty. Now it runs 
with the corporatist pack. If there is anything to be banned, 
regulated or computerised, it howls from the dispatch box for 
"something to be done". Be it prostitutes, drugs, prisons, NHS 
computers, data protection or civil rights, the Tories are desperate 
not to be seen as out of the action. Libertarians in Britain are a 
disenfranchised class.

The Ipswich murders will be a textbook case of modern British 
government, reform only in response to headlines. They have revealed 
the full squalor and danger of a law that "allows" prostitution but 
"bans" soliciting and brothels, and which is light years behind the 
law in most tolerant and civilised European countries.

The Home Office knows this. A former adviser, Katharine Raymond, 
revealed at the weekend that her report on the subject was suppressed 
last year by Downing Street for fear of enraging the rightwing press. 
All that emerged was a meek measure that women be allowed to work in 
pairs for their own safety and be helped with any drugs problem. Even 
this was never implemented.

"It took a riot" was the laconic headline on Michael Heseltine's 1981 
report on social conditions in Liverpool after the Toxteth riots. Now 
it will have taken a serial killing to address the law on 
prostitution, a typical "consensual crime" in which the greatest harm 
is caused by the manner in which the state tries to suppress it. 
Change will probably take the form of tolerated red light districts 
and small brothels.

This will have to fight a predictable wave of British cant that 
anything people disapprove of must be banned "to send a signal". 
There will be talk of evil men and tragic women, of not giving in to 
vice, of "why understand when you should just condemn?". As usual, 
Britons will find every tiny fault in more sensible regimes in 
France, Germany and the Netherlands.

The root cause of the appalling risk run by prostitutes on the 
streets is hard drugs. The law ignores "nicer" women who rely on 
clubs and phone numbers. All those involved in the Ipswich tragedy 
cited their need for quick money to get expensive drugs. Papers and 
politicians telling them to "find a proper job" are as stupid as 
suggesting that a heroin dealer switch to burgundy or an Afghan poppy 
farmer "grow something else".

The Tories know that Britain's laws on drugs and prostitution make no 
sense. They can read multitudinous reports on how other countries are 
trying, unhysterically, to handle the menace of heroin and crack 
cocaine, and with greater success than Britain. They know that drugs 
prohibition has failed, while the more thoughtful ones know that the 
market must be legalised to reduce harm. Yet they are silent, while 
their spokesman, David Davis, castigates libertarians who want 
"prostitution and drugs reform".

One of many reasons for not subsidising national parties is that it 
will further encourage them to ignore the public and live in the lap 
of the national press. The press, especially the popular tabloids, is 
institutionally illiberal. But it comes round to reform in the end. 
The tabloids no longer scream against homosexuality and divorce, 
indeed they celebrate both. They no longer demand capital punishment 
and a ban on abortion. They occasionally show a grain of human 
sympathy. A feature of the Ipswich murders has been the portrayal of 
the victims as real people trapped in appalling predicaments. The 
Mirror, Express and News of the World have penetrated beyond "it's 
all their fault" to accept that their horror is a direct result of 
failed laws on drugs and prostitution.

A combination of Blair's war on terror and the mechanisation of 
central government has made the past decade a dreadful one for civil 
liberty. The one libertarian cause David Cameron has espoused, 
opposition to identity cards, was dismissed by Blair as led by "civil 
liberties lobbyists". He prefers different lobbyists for his one true 
liberalising measure, easier access to alcohol.

This week the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was forced to 
concede that intimate medical records will not be compulsorily 
entered on her UKP6bn national computer. She tried to claim that only 
a certified madman could want to keep his records private from a 
machine she knows will be open to every hacker (and insurer). When a 
computer salesman tells me, "Oh, my system is secure," I feel like 
betting him a million pounds against a Bangalore teenager. The French 
health computer is purely voluntary and cost UKP600m.

Where in all this are the Tories? They could have killed both the NHS 
and the Home Office computer projects, along with a dozen other 
crashing wastes of money, by declaring that they would cancel the 
contracts on taking office. They could have exposed the government's 
emasculation of National Audit Office reports on the computers.

The Tories could tell us exactly what a modern Conservative means by 
a free society, and list the regulations and restrictions they intend 
to repeal in their bonfire of controls. They could seize the moment 
of the Ipswich headlines by declaring their determination to end 
counter-productive bans on consensual crime. Merely preaching an end 
to government interference in the private affairs of citizens is 
hypocritical if, when case after case comes along, Cameron funks 
mentioning it for fear of the press.

The control freak always has the best tunes. Murmur a relaxation and 
some regulator will howl that "hundreds will die" if he loses his 
job. I am sure many will say of the Ipswich murders that they show 
how right Britain was to crack down on hard drugs and prostitution. 
They will cry with Oscar Wilde, "I don't like principles: I prefer 
prejudices," unless a prejudice affects them personally (as it did 
him). Margaret Thatcher voted for corporal and capital punishment but 
for legalising homosexuality and abortion because of "my own 
experience of other people's suffering". Thus whimsically are we ruled.

If the Tories spend every day dancing attendance on the tabloids, 
they will get absolutely nowhere with wavering voters. If 
oppositions, especially those professing an aversion to an 
overwhelming state, cannot see how specifically to curb it, who will? 
Changing laws on prostitution and drugs in response to the Ipswich 
murders might be a headline-grabbing, kneejerk response. Libertarian 
beggars can't always be choosers.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine