Why I’m supporting the scrapping of the database state

The Manifesto Club is supporting the Power 2010 proposal to roll back the database state. We believe that civil liberty is the most important issue of our age - and the basis for the political alliance for the future.

The expansion of the state into most intimate aspects of everyday life is one of the strangest and most worrying developments of our times. Who would have thought that a grandmother would have to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) before she was cleared to help out at her grandchildren's nursery? Or that an artist could be twice interrogated by the police for painting a watercolour near City Airport? That several councils could draw up regulations for queuing at the bar in pubs? Or that peaceful picnickers could have their bottles of wine confiscated by police, in the name of preventing ‘anti-social behaviour'? 

More and more, we are allowed to act only after we have gained the state's permission first. We need official permission to have a singalong in a pub (we must apply for a council live music license), to volunteer at our local nursery or football club, to photograph near Parliament, to have a demonstration in the street (apply to the police weeks in advance), or even to hand out leaflets in a town square (several councils charge a ‘leafleting tax' or ban it altogether).

This growth of the state undermines the principle of politics itself: the very principle that the state acts only at the behest at the citizens, and expresses our will, our views and opinions. Instead, now, it is we who must act only at the behest of the state.

If we cannot have a singalong without the council's permission, how can we have the right to decide on economic and social policy? The eclipse of the free citizen calls into question every aspect of democracy and civil society. Without the free citizen, nothing else in democracy works.

At the Manifesto Club, we believe that the politics of Labour versus Tory distracts from the real political issues of today. Underlying these old political frameworks is a new, real and vibrant political division: between those who are for and against freedom. Supporters of freedom - those of us who are against all aspects of the hyper-regulatory state - are currently distributed across all political parties and none. We say that we should be on the same side, in a broad-based alliance for civic freedoms. Libertarians of all parties unite!

Josie Appleton is the convenor of the Manifesto Club.