The view from Wycombe: Big Brother or the Big Society?

Here at Big Brother Watch we try to be even-handed. We praised Wycombe District Council several times for at least offering residents an opportunity to give their views on the area's (extensive) CCTV network, but were saddened by their apparent lack of interest in views the residents have expressed. Our most recent contact with the authorities there generated some heat as one of our volunteers stickered an omnibanning pole in the area as part of our Naming and Shaming campaign. Strangely and foolishly, "someone" from the Council gave a comment to the Bucks Free Press threatening us with prosecution, a threat that has yet to have any basis in reality – despite the pole being promptly re-stickered the next day.

In response, Steve Baker, the Conservative PPC for Wycombe, got in touch with Big Brother Watch with an article he's written about the issue. The article is below.

If you'd like to write a guest post for us, get in touch. Particularly, as we've given a Tory a free kick here (in response to us kicking the Tory Council), any comment from any other party in Wycombe would be looked at with interest.

In the last few days, we have had a round of guerrilla stickering in Wycombe. There was the sticker of the week. Then there was talk of prosecution at the Bucks Free Press. Finally, the sticker returned.

Now, it is a good photograph. As a totem for the surveillance society, it is superb. Perhaps some even find it superficially funny to see all-round "CCTV in operation" signs, a draconian alcohol prohibition, an exhortation not to urinate or defecate in the street and, as if in some final act of absurdity, a restriction on feeding the birds.

But why? Why was it thought necessary to watch, to prohibit and to spell out a requirement of common decency?

I have learned that this area of the town, Frogmoor, once accommodated an outreach to those with drinking problems and related issues. As a result, people from a wide area came to Frogmoor to drink rowdily. Intoxicated people terrorised the area and, as you might expect from the sign, urinated and defecated in the street. Feeding the large flock of pigeons surely finished off the job horribly.

If you actually had to live with that, it wouldn't be funny.

So imagine then, that the councillors are faced with this problem. Their beloved town has a foul no-go area in its centre. Personal responsibility and simple human dignity have broken down, causing tangible misery to local residents. Routine law enforcement is found ineffective. The people involved suffer addictions, mental health issues, homelessness, worklessness, poor education and lack of family support. Right across the board, a range of government interventions and overly bureaucratic public services have fallen short.

So here is one end of the spectrum of debate: a justifiable resort to what technology and authority are available in an attempt to compensate for significant social problems and to deliver a decent town.

At the other end of the spectrum is a reasonable demand for the dignity of going about one's lawful business privately and an awareness of a growing surveillance society in which our liberties are undermined.

When an ex-head of MI5 warns of a growing police state, is there perhaps cause for concern? Ought we to be mindful when a conference is held by the UK's leading civil liberties organisations at which the following is declared?

Laws that fundamentally challenged our traditions of rights and liberty and flew in the face of the Human Rights Act were passed with relatively little debate. Few grasped the impact they would have on our society and Ministers were able to brush aside protests with assurances that their desire to protect us was equal to their respect for civil liberties.

Moreover, maybe we should pay attention when one of the country's senior opposition politicians responds to a challenge about the relative importance of civil liberties in the face of economic difficulty by asking, "When was the last time liberty collapsed in Europe?" He refers to the 1930s.

That was a serious remark by a serious politician but it is an unfortunate fact of human history that even hysterical opposition to surveillance technology finds support in the past. Consider the testimony of a man named Albert Speer:

The nightmare shared by many people that some day the nations of the world may be dominated by technology–that nightmare was very nearly made a reality under [that] authoritarian system. Every country in the world today faces the danger of being terrorized by technology; but in a modern dictatorship this seems to me to be unavoidable. Therefore, the more technological the world becomes, the more essential will be the demand for individual freedom and the self-awareness of the individual human being as a counterpoise to the technology.

This testimony was of course given at Nuremberg.

I well understand the concerns of Big Brother Watch, but here is our dilemma. On the one hand, failure of government public policy for those most in need. We find human beings living not in liberty, for liberty rests on personal responsibility and self-control, but in libertine misery, generating misery for those around them. On the other, justifiable concerns for reasonable privacy and dignity in what must remain a free society.

When I see this particular photograph, I am mindful of the difficult position of local councillors – responsible people I know and admire – coping with a broken segment of society in the context of the failure of a range of public services. Ultimately, public services and the shape of our society are guided in this country by Parliament and central government. Like all sound Conservatives, I have not the slightest difficulty in laying the blame for both our broken society and our collapsing liberties firmly at the door of this government and its ineffective and obsessive interventionism.

If we want to live in a free society then, away from mere stickers, we must complement increased personal responsibility with more effective services. If we want individual freedom to thrive then we must heed David Cameron's core message. Today, more than ever, we have to replace the dangerous politics of big government with the practical solutions of a big society.

It will be noted of course that Steve Baker writes here on his own behalf and does not represent the views of Big Brother Watch.