Britons Worry About Civil Rights

...for instance, the gardener at Buckingham Palace would no longer risk going to jail for confiding to a friend how he nurses his roses along...

...Trade unions are now required to hold secret ballots for major decisions, giving union members rights that were previously denied them by ideologically driven leaders...

...Dissenting publications of all kinds circulate...

...And, in fact, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd has already suggested the possibility of issuing a national identity card to all Britons who want one...

...Nonetheless, there remains a nagging doubt about the inviolability of civil liberties...

...But Thatcher believes questions of national security (involving, say, the Soviet Union or the IRA) may sometimes have to take precedence over the niceties of civil liberties...

...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Meanwhile, the recent disclosure that two prominent figures in the British Committee for Nuclear Disarmament arranged the escape from prison and flight to the USSR 20 years ago of Soviet master spy George Blake has to some degree undermined outrage at long-term snooping on the ban-the-bomb movement by Whitehall's security services...

...The proposed modifications would remove many absurdities...

...The rights of all British subjects, she insists, are well protected by her government and have in fact been enhanced by its policies...

...The sanctity of an individual's civil liberties was recognized in England long before the American Bill of Rights was formulated...

...It has called for Parliament to enact a written Bill of Rights that would supplement Britain's unwritten constitution...

...Dissenting opinions on all possible subjects are freely expressed...

...Still, there areat present no limits to what the British government may deem questions of national security, or simply prerogatives of state, and it is this that has produced the current demand for a written Bill of Rights...

...It would indeed be absurd to think the situation in Northern Ireland is anything other than a war between the IRA and the government, and that extraordinary measures are less than justified...

...Over the last few years a number of cases have shown that Britain's security services are not above resorting to methods of seriously questionable legality in pursuing investigations and, more dramatically, in countering the activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA...

...Particularly because the political opposition in Parliament and local government is so fragmented and ineffectual, a case can be made for a written Bill of Rights in Britain, the country from which the American colonies first learned what civil liberties were all about...

...The proverbial man-in-the-street in Great Britain, who often expresses his unhappiness with the performance of governmental authorities, does not generally fear them...

...Whatever the validity of the warnings issued by the Prime Minister's critics, though, Britain is not on the verge of being turned into a tyranny...

...Many from the far Left who unqualifiedly oppose any Tory government or proposal are among Charter 88's founding members...

...Several specific issues are currently arousing Britons who are convinced that the Thatcher government is embarked on a campaign to erode civil liberties...

...The proposed requirement, which has aroused much controversy, was prompted by a persistence of violence at soccer games...

...Many therefore agree with the London Times that the new identity card legislation is simply meant "to cleanse Europe of British football [soccer] violence and restore Britain's good name as a nation of sporting glory and fair play.' Critics of the measure, however, say not only that it wouldn't work but that the expense and bureaucratic complications involved would drive the smaller soccer teams—usually not plagued by violence—out of business...

...Today they resignedly stay at home with a six-pack of beer and settle for whatever soccer contest television deigns to show on a Saturday afternoon during the winter season...

...After soccer ID cards, according to this view, the government will find a reason for every British citizen to carry identification...

...This has turned the country's favorite spectator sport into an often disagreeable, sometimes dangerous spectacle and men are afraid to take along their girlfriends, wives or children...

...Of concern, too, is the government's decision—now being appealed—to prohibit television and radio from broadcasting the comments of terrorists or those who support terrorism—a measure directed against glamorizing the IRA...

...Despite persisting pockets of poverty, the country's economic transformation during the Thatcher years has enabled most Britons to enjoy a much higher standard of living than they had previously...

...But Charter 88 fears that they are now being nibbled away...

...To curb the government's ability to violate civil liberties, an organization named Charter 88 has been formed...

...But the new Official Secrets Act would still leave whistle blowers who leak information about government improprieties (and there are undeniably a good many here) subject to prosecution and imprisonment without the right to appeal on the basis that he or she acted for the public good...

...But other founders include such distinguished Britons as the philosopher Sir Alfred Ayer, historian Bernard Crick, novelist Margaret Drabble, the Bishops of Birmingham and Oxford, senior jurist Lord Leslie George Scarman, Observer editor Donald Trelford, and former government scientific adviser Lord Solly Zuckerman...

...In her vision liberty extends to "a man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, and to own property"— and by that yardstick the Thatcherite Revolution has unquestionably been libertarian...

...A more serious criticism is that the scheme is another example of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's creeping destruction of fundamental individual liberties...

...The organization's name was chosen to indicate dissatisfaction with the "complacency" that marked last year's tercentenary celebration of the Revolution of 1688, the source of a significant number of the rights British subjects enjoy...

...Countless British fans once donned scarves exhibiting the distinctive colors of their favorite team and devotedly went to all of its games, occasionally traveling across the country or even to the Continent (before English clubs were banned from playing there over three and a half years ago...

...Prime Minister Thatcher maintains that such worries are unwarranted or at most trivial...

...Also under attack is the government's modification of theOfficial Secrets Act decreeing that no public servant, regardless how innocent his job, may legally reveal information about it without authorization...

...Contrasts are repeatedly drawn here with American sporting events, attended by entire families without fear of finding themselves in the midst of rampaging, fist swinging, howling hooligans...

...The complaints of civil libertarians here are often exaggerated and overstated...

...It wants precise written constraints that could not be fudged or evaded by ministerial devices, and would" provide legal remedies for all abuses of power by the state...

...The comments can be read by news broadcasters or actors, but the actual voices of terrorists or their apologists may not be heard...

...THE ID CARD CONTROVERSY Britons Worry About Civil Rights BY NORMAN GELB London If the British government has its way—and it invariably does on legislative matters—soccer fans in this country will soon need identification cards to attend a match...

...This is seen as, in effect, violating the long established accused person's right to silence...

...Again, critics say this is merely the sharp edge of the wedge, holding open the door to wider censorship of the broadcast media by the government...

...Still, the recent revelation that small gangs of roughnecks have been going to the matches of certain teams for the specific purpose of causing riots, and that some gang members actually kept diaries describing the way they set about each foray, as well as how successful they were in causing injury and creating mayhem, has shocked the general public...

...Home Secretary Hurd, for example, has declared that defendants in criminal trials may continue to remain silent when confronted with accusations of wrongdoing, but inferences as to their guilt or innocence may now be drawn by juries from their silence...

...Far more people own their homes, and millions own shares in what were formerly nationalized industries...

...In addition, of course, it was intended to evoke the struggle by members of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia to gain basic freedoms—although it is conceded that "conditions here are so much better than in Eastern Europe as to bear no comparison...