Taking Liberties (2007)

Directed by Chris Atkins

Luckily this doc begins and ends with a darkly humorous look at the pathetic police state the U.K. is slowly becoming, otherwise it would be extremely troubling to witness how our civil liberties are being stripped away one by one.

Grannies held on terrorism charges, old age pensioners assaulted by security men for daring to speak the truth, peaceful protestors held in solitary confinement for 36 hours before being dumped in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night with their money and mobile phones stripped from them. People arrested for wearing shirts proclaiming Bollocks to Blair.

Lets not even mention the Ricin case where despite being found completely innocent of all charges, Mouloud Sihali has been tagged and held under house arrest for the last two years, the whole issue of Guantanamo Bay or the cold blooded police sanctioned murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The list of political and police ineptness goes on and on as the same type of paranoia that swept the U.S. during the cold war era hits the U.K. big time. Security firms love it, the tabloids love it, but every single person should question it, before we lose the right to even do that. 

The government has forgotten its role, forgotten that it is there to serve the people, instead it has made decisions very much against public opinion, made us complicit in fighting a wholly illegal war and has turned George Orwells Big Brother vision into a reality.

Blair, Straw and all their cronies can be truly thankful that U.K. citizens have such an absurd sense of humour, even so, theres a limit to how far people can be pushed. Unfortunately its already clear that Blairs successor is more than happy to carry on with exactly the same mentality. 

In 1997 the Labour party swept into power capturing the need of the nation to believe that Things can only get better, something went wrong somewhere along the line and you have to wonder just how much worse things will get!

A must see doc for anyone who cares about civil rights.

Cheers Trev.

BBFC rated 12a.

Find out more from the official site - noliberties.com