 Seminol, dystiol nesaf ydym ni, rhai. Maen nhw'n brofiwyr yn y dyfodol arfodsgol cyflasgol, ac mae'r unrhyw yma i'ch cael ei wneud uwch i'r Fynghoro David Williams'r leir. Yr Fynghoro David Williams'r leir erbydd y cyflasgol cyflosodau wedi'u ddweud o'r cyflosodau arweiaid o'r cynnidig cyflosodau mewn gyfrifiwyr ac mae'r cyfnodd y ffordd o fawr y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth yn y Rhywodraeth Llywodraeth, ac mae'r gael yn ymddangos yn y Llywodraeth, yn y Llywodraeth, rwy'n cael ei ddiwedd o'r Ffacolwydau Llywodraeth, ac mae'n ddim yn ddod am ffunoedd o'r Llywodraeth Sir David Williams. Ffyn yw'r profisiol yma, ac yw'r profisiol ymdangosol yw'r Wolffs ym Mhwladau, Sir David mwg yw ydw i'n ddweud yma'r ffynolau yma, byddwch chi'n ffordd o bryd yn ymgyrchol, ac yn yw'n mynd i'r rhannu, mae'n unigeticau – ac yn mynd, yna, unigeticau – i gweithio y bydd y defnyddio, i gwybod, ac i'r Gwyl term Aberin. Ond mae ni'n gweithio'r unigeticau yn bwysig wel ydym ni'n gweithio o'n bwysig i gael ysgolwyr. And mae'n ffobi'n gweithio ar gyfer gael astiwn i wneud gan thalw i fy ngai rhoi, ac mae'n bwysig i miljicking ondog Michael Russ and Mr John Nolan who, through their generosity, have sponsored this lecture, but who are unfortunately unable to be with us this evening. Our lecturer tonight is Professor Connor Gearty from the London School of Economics. Connor Gearty is a leading academic, barrister and public intellectual. Connor studied law at University College Dublin and took the LLM at Walson College and then took his PhD in environmental law under the supervision of Sir David Williams. He became a fellow of Emmanuel College before moving to King's College London and in 2002 he moved to his present institution, the London School of Economics. First then as a rousing director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and then more recently as not only as professor of human rights law but also the director of the Institute of Public Affairs. He's a fellow of the British Academy and has published numerous books and articles predominantly in the field of human rights. Before the topic became fashionable he co-authored an influential study of freedom under Thatcher and in particular gave the Hamelin lectures in 2000 on FAO on Can Human Rights Survive even before Chris Gaeper, Grayling and Theresa May were conceivable members of the government from Bench. As a barrister he practices in human rights, he was a founder member of Matrix Chambers and has appeared before UK courts, European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He is a bencher of the Middle Temple. Through his personal website in his blog he's transparent about his publications and a sought to influence opinion on a wide range of subjects. He's not afraid of controversy and has given lectures in the past year on Michael Collins' terrorist or human rights worker and on imagining a Catholic future. He's chosen as his title one of Sir David Williams' influential books not in the public interest. That book demonstrated Sir David's passion for the accountable use of public power. He wrote that the ultimate danger of executive secrecy in a much-governed country is that it denies the knowledge essential for an informed public opinion. He concluded that it is important that secrecy and security do not become ends in themselves. Though conditions have changed since 1965, Sir David's values remain inspirational and we will hear from our speaker how those values among others apply in today's context. So it's with great pleasure that I invite Professor Conagherty to give his Sir David Williams lecture on not in the public interest. Thank you very much John for that lovely, lovely welcome. It's great to be back here in Cambridge. It really is. It's a year since I was here. It's amazing how time flies. I mean I've been here a lot but since I was probably here and Sally it's lovely to see you here in Rhyanon and Rhys you'll be going off as well shortly to watch the runner-up battle. David was from Wales. He took the country very seriously and there's a match for the wooden spoon in the rugby championship between some other country called France and Wales because Wales were hammered by another country. Can you remember? What was the score? I've had one of those mental blocks. Maybe this can come into the Q&A. It is great to see you all here. It's fantastic. And Mr Ross and Mr Nolan, if they're watching in some, I was going to be rude about the luxurious life they lead but probably watching in the midst of helping clients. Thank you very much for continuing to sustain this lecture series. I've been at many of these lectures before and they're with the exception of 2014 usually really excellent. There is also a quirk to this year which I think is rather humorous. I am the warm-up act from Mr Justice John Laws. I came in. I came in. Looking forward and I'll admit to a degree of vanity to seeing my own picture with directions as to where to go and I found a much larger and if I may say so marginally more attractive picture of Lord Justice John Laws and it looked briefly as though he was going to be over there and there would be a sort of I don't know what television program popularity contest but he starts at 6.40 in another room and I'm glad we started five minutes late and that John took an unwarrantably but for me delightfully long time to explain all my credentials because we're already at a quarter to six and if we extend the Q&A and bring into account the drinks I have the idea that John will be talking and we'll be outside getting enjoying ourselves. So here we go it'll take I should think about 40 minutes or so and I I think we start with Dave Williams actually I would I think I might be the first student of his to do this so I think I need to I need to do this because I first met him in the autumn of 1980 I was a refugee from legal practice in the midlands of Ireland hoping to extend my studies as a way of avoiding the legal practice to which I had dangerously exposed myself by qualifying as a solicitor and David was the new president of a newish college a place without a high table or any of those superior attitudes which I had assumed would be rife into which I had so carefully prepared myself to be hostile dinner in hall was Tuesdays and Thursdays no high table junior members mocking him with senior a joyous democratic noise presided over by a man to whom as it turned out I was to all my career it's great that the what he called on the vice president of Woodson College is present good to see I don't mean when I say I owe David my career in a conventional Cambridge sense though it was I am sure David's interest in having a lawyer at Wolfson that helped me to stay on to do a PhD under his supervision and certainly it was David's support that allowed me to negotiate what was a tricky job interview for a fellowship at Emmanuel Cambridge the panel being chaired by Edward Sands whom some of us will recall with a diffident smile the not not to be fair to say David's boson pal and there have been a general election the night before I'd forgotten I was doing an interview had a party in my rooms and at three in the morning remembered I was to everybody and turned up at this interview where both they didn't give me a rostrum and offered me a cup of tea in what turned out to be a saucer and a cup and I rattled my way through it with Edward Sands asking why do we need a lawyer at Emmanuel so I owe David that particular career and also actually giving me an opportunity to think about the bar because it was through him I was introduced to David Calcott who became master of modelling and he was then chair of the bar to the point of all of this David was constantly looking to give opportunities to his students actually always on the look out for the opportunity but that wasn't his his legacy actually important though it all was the one I learned from from his this first significant influence in my professional life was an attitude and I David grew to be the most influential academic administrator in the Cambridge of his day and those we didn't know him he professionalised the post of vice chancellor served in that post office at a crucial transitional phase he sat on all sorts of large scale government inquiries entertained royalty foreign dignitaries but throughout it all he never changed from the man whom I first met already important in 1980 all was eager to know you make you feel at home interested no matter who you are or more often weren't David loved young people and you know what young people can tell they can tell if you're a teacher you know David loved young people he taught them brilliantly he surrounded himself with them gave them chances to flourish with the kind of abandonment that suggested that generosity was at his very core now he was also the most networked man as we call it today I ever knew I mean the 13 previous lecturers in this series are a roll call of distinction and a testimony to the fact great judges from around the world philosophers of world class John I think has given one himself my rival this evening David knew them all even I don't know if this is true Sally bolstered of playing tennis with the Supreme Court judge a lady judge of which he was very proud a woman judge and they knew him you know this is important thing I've got the training about from London they traveled when I was out here John Roberts David's last one actually this Chief Justice United States Supreme Court they traveled they lectured and they did this you know they get a lot of offers on account of David Williams I'm not in his memory and I do the same proudly not occupying the space in the league of these predecessors but I present myself emblematically and symbolically as a student of his one of the many whose life has been touched so powerfully by his energetic warmth I should say because it's right to say it that this was also true of my late wife Diane and I say it because this was the very last event she attended three years ago and came to the dinner afterwards because she was then very ill and became very ill afterwards and subsequently very sadly died but she actually came as the last thing she did so there's this tremendous memory we have about this event for that reason too the attitude that David showed wasn't just as a teacher it was as a scholar and the mark here has been profound on me too and it frames the lecture it frames the lecture he wrote two books in the second half of the 1960s which opened up a space for the kind of historical writing about law and civil liberties that was fresh and innovative for its day and which still reads so well today I was just talking with Tony Bradley about it outside how well these books read and they read so well nearly 50 years ago because they're not theoretical they're not trying to impose a grid of meaning on stuff they are rather books that go with the flow of humanity but Kevin Gray who's here one's called real people in a book titled rather oddly David's law was messy uncertain incomplete packed full of the sorts of loose ends which theoreticians hate but lovers of humanity adore David was an historian at heart did two years history before he changed to law and in his hands book law came alive as a series of stories about power politics people so as John has said I've taken the title of this lecture is it up there not in the public interest published in 1965 and concerned he described it at the time as the passion for secrecy in government and then it manifested this is David writing in 1965 manifested in the official secrets act the 50 year rule as it then was the security service the press and executive secrecy the ombudsman crown privilege de notices and the nuclear disarmament now the book had the kind of impact that if it were around today would have turned David into a sort of iconic ref case study because but many of his subjects have not remotely dated the final sentence in the introduction will be what any of us would be proud of today and I'm sure if we wrote it we'd write it with pride and it's this the ultimate danger of executive secrecy in a much governed country is that it denies the knowledge essential for an informed public opinion and that it inhibits effective scrutiny and criticism of the government and the administration that's David writing in 1965 and it is a sub theme of today's lecture at the subtitle of his book was the problem of security and democracy what would David have made of the Snowden revelations of the phenomenon of Edward Snow a legal opinion released last month commissioned by Tom Watson MP as chair of the all party parliamentary group on drones and written by Jemima Stratford QC and Tim Johnson of Brick Court chambers has painted a picture of disturbing levels of surveillance and possible data transfer all of which is in their view of dubious legality and I want to just stop there and reflect as we all do on the Snowden revelations and remind you of that word dubious this ought to be surprising what ought to be surprising is that it's even arguable that such activity is lawful alleged activity because as Stratford and Johnson made clear the government has quote refused to confirm or deny the existence of the program but what I wanted to think about is how could such a thing not be self evidently on law it may be lawful and moreover as they point out lawful not in some peculiar prerogative kind of way pseudo legal dictate by a minister of the sort that David Williams used to delight in exposing but rather lawful on account of impowing legislation enacted by parliament in this case the regulatory if investigate repowers act 2000 known to everybody by the short hand not everybody people who went to this repo now we've seen something similar this week we can ask John Laws about it he gave the lead opinion in the decision on Miranda and there we find that the detention of David Miranda for the maximum of nine arms at Heathrow airport was in fact lawful under the terrorism acts under the terrorism acts in particular scheduled seven of the terrorism act 2000 we need to be careful before we immediately assume that's a bad decision because that's the law and again I want to return to this point of legal legitimacy a bit later on and then what would David have made off a little notice case decided at the end of December 2012 by Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Simon both excellent judges sitting in the administrative court the case is called are on the application of newer can versus the secretary of state for the foreign and commonwealth affairs the claimant newer con asserts that employees in gchq were and are providing intelligence to the us for use in drone strikes in the middle of places Pakistan and that as such they are at significant risk of being accomplices to murder and are quote conduct ancillary to crimes against humanity or war crimes the facts as alleged i put as alleged these things are not conceded there are no factual findings in these cases were rather nevertheless poignant on the 17th of March 2011 the claimant father Malik Daud Khan was presiding over an outdoor meeting of the local yoga to settle with other elders a commercial dispute a missile was fired from the drone and the claimants father was killed with 49 others who were attending the year now it was surely inevitable and from a legal point of view right that the judges should have declined to be drawn into any discussion of the legality of the actions of a foreign power specifically here of course importantly a friendly one the united states of america the judges found it quote hard to see the point of any declaration which merely says that those who pass on intelligence maybe at risk of breaking the law if their activities and their state of mind fall within the scope of the relevant sections of the serious crimes act 2007 was the point of such a declaration and so here is not possible to produce they say a meaningful declaration which identifies the necessary men's rare without specific without reference to specific facts i gave a lecture at the guys who do the intelligence work and i mentioned in passing this and there was quite a lot of anxiety in the world actually about drone attacks i mean quite interesting there was definitely a concern by these people this kind of number people who sit at desks and look at stuff i didn't mean that humorously it's kind of now as with snowden the court's not dealing here with any kind of residual prerogative power as with snowden as with miranda they're saying there's a committee in parliament that looks at these things there's a special court the investigatory powers tribunal there is the special intelligence service and interception commissioners all established by statute available and therefore the judges say there is no basis on which this court this is a quote no basis on which this court could or should conclude that a declaration would fill a void and impose the rule of law on a lawless territory there is no lawless territory we have all these commissioners we have this tribunal and as for the americans as the americans uh lord justus moses says this the claimant cannot demonstrate that his application will avoid during the course of the hearing and in the judgment giving a clear impression that it is the united states is conduct in north was a stand which is also on trial and then the key thing which could be put as the kind of subheading of my lecture this is alamosus to go down this route will be caught damaging to the public interest without any contravailing justification or advantage in short there is no we there is no need or reason alamoses exact words to go there it's not exactly a refutation of the argument we're not going there we're not going anywhere either as a result of the gibson report are we uh there's a haunting resemblance to gibson finally published in the days before christmas last year after delay of some 18 months uh the chairs of peter gibson and his team found evidence of british involvement in rendition and of awareness of ill treatment of detainees by quote liaison partner from other countries not us the other guys we're helping the other guys we know who the other guys are just like we were in the drone case or not gibson concluded there were many questions left open about the training of key front line staff and about how the government and the agencies went about providing information to parliament this is torture we're talking about and actually working with liaison partners engaged in torture the report was explicitly interim but it set out 27 questions in the annex that needed urgently to be addressed but this won't be done now by an independent judge late inquiry which have been promised and which had led to the gibson inquiry the government said publishing the report that this would now be handed to yes a parliamentary oversight body the intelligence and security committee the intelligence and security committee dame janett paraskeva who sat alongside sir peter has reportedly expressed deep disappointment at the transfer of responsibility to a body that is only on one occasion ever met in public how right is she in her remark that she remains hopeful that the detainees will get their chance to have their say well i evoke our contemporary of minor wilson college uh an excellent conservative mp andrew tyree wilson man who said quote it is deeply shocking that britain facilitated kidnap and torture all these examples the laryons miranda snoden the drones gibson they're not about direct engagement with deeply disturbing behavior that's what's interesting that's what andrew tyree grasped they're about facilitating it and that's quite an important change that i want to talk about because as compared with the past the nature of what must not be disclosed is different and i'm going to make it a sort of a distinction here between for one to better distinguish the colonial period and the cold war period during the colonial period it was direct state violence by the british forces abroad that needed in the name of security to be denied that it was not in the public interest to acknowledge this traditional kind of imperial cover-up has not entirely gone away who cannot have been moved by the testimony of an array of elderly kenyns giving direct evidence in an English court of their brutalisation at the hands of british forces or who can have failed to have been affronted and this was the subject of a british academy letter to the paper by a number of us by the secrecy with which the foreign and commonwealth office has continued dogged to shroud its vast archives of colonial activity in secrecy if we include northern ireland within this broad colonial or quasi colonial remit we have of course many further examples of direct state action in the past which was shocking and needed to be covered up why in a moment but it was direct extended detention police and army brutality and even as we now know underlined know what if it were happening in a country who didn't like we would call death squads sudden killings of political representatives journalists and lawyers by forces which were not part of the state but which were working with the support of the state in the united kingdom and quite recently now during this imperial period of direct executive wrong doing what public interest could there possibly have been in the protection of such shocking behaviour from exposure and in the maintenance of secrecy that allowed for none of the effective scrutiny and criticism for which david williams argued at the start of the book that has become the centerpiece of this lecture so why why but first of all why do it and then why hiding first of all of course this happened because there was an imperative which was to preserve the status quo uh the control of the colonies it's astonishing how britain thought after the second world war as did france that they could reassume control over the world and we forget that that was the belief that drove the violence of the colonial period but also an enforced peace in northern arm but why did what was being done need to be hidden well answering that question for a moment about the past helps us i think to understand the present the current vogue for what andre tyre is so rightly called facilitation there's a marvellous chapter in another great legal historians book uh brian simpson uh human rights in the end of empire which gets right to the core of what i'm trying to talk about today uh the 1940s uh the atly administration they're thinking of signing up to the european convention on human rights the british are however of course looking to extend and reassert their global power as all the second world war as i said it never happened the colonial office puts up stunt resistance to the convention uh you mustn't sign it they say for words to that effect and then more or less have you any idea what we do more or less in polite civil service english uh they were right to be cautious uh they were in what michael ignatief uh in a controversial book which i've criticised myself but he got to the essence of something important here i would say by accident i don't know why i put that in that was so gratuitous michael has a lot of time in his hands and you might be looking at this uh in a controversial book about the response to the 11th september attacks it was called the lesser evil uh he called the people who do the brutalisation for us he called them the carnivores which in his mind was a term of praise and the colonial office were the carnivores they were the guardians at the gates who allowed us the rest of us the herbivores you guys in the room you know the intellectuals us to enjoy our way of life with all its apparent commitment to freedom equality and the rule of law while not having our belief in these disturbed the colonial carnivores knew what was going to come if you signed up to something which was about human rights and meant anything at all at the first case in the 1950s immediately was all about cyprus the colonial office was right there that was endless uh chaotic and then of course in the 1970s some years later we had from the British point of view the disaster of ireland versus the united kingdom which case was able to shed really shocking life on degrees of ill treatment and brutality in northern ireland meted out to members of the nationalist community who were suspected more recently in a most interesting development there has been a whole series of cases which have held authorities to account not only for inhumanly treating and often killing unfortunately innocent Iraqis but also brutalising almost casually killing our own troops in Iraq cases of bullying cases of reckless dangerous training cases of failure to provide adequate equipment equipment when on patrol these have all got to the european court of human rights strazburgs can dealing with them that's where the court is to the fury of ministers and other enthusiasts for the armed forces i heard a secretary of state for defense i think it was a secretary of state for defense say how this is going to make war impossible all these cases that don't let us kill our own people by sending them out on bicycles you know because we're saving a bit of money because we need to belt tighten unless we're a conservative area that's been sorry john you're going to have to keep an eye on me here the imperial public interest in keeping such matters undercover the interest that explains the colonial office's resistance to the convention is not about protecting individual soldiers or even generals from being accountable cultures like ours systems like ours can afford a few rotten apples can even strengthen their sense of their own righteousness by occasionally throwing such aberrance to the lions of justice look how good we are while there's a police officer in jail what the system cannot have is exposure of the extent to which it is constructed on what are after all a set of lies that was what concerned the colonial office rightly in the late 1940s it is all very well for the country to believe it's have special a place where justice reigns and civil liberties and the rule of law are the norm where fairness and respect for the individual are in the lifeblood of the nation these are important things to believe they might have been essential even in order to have got through the terrible war that had just ended but the past and it was then hoped future prosperity of the nation were built on a level of exploitation of the foreigner that was too terrible to be acknowledged that's the past how does this fit with the present the universality of human rights and the turn to law that this shift seems to signify were dangerous because they were potentially so destabilising to this nation's sense of self security demanded secrecy because too much truth could not be countenanced that is a strong public interest that is a strong public interest in in secrecy protect us from knowing what's happening that makes our lives possible now today direct action on the imperial law model is more or less over we're not fighting any wars next year according to the garden for the first time in 100 years although they kind of cheat by including some all-ever violence but nevertheless it's still rather dramatic in truth the cold war which overlap with this colonial and pseudo colonial period was always about facilitation so i said there were two the colonial and the cold war model the colonial model's direct action and the cold war model has always been facilitation Britain's always been number two for a little period in the ffifties and thought it mightn't be but then it was put back in its place by Eisenhower and it's always been number two facilitating pleasing the americans now when this public interest ran up against law the law usually buckled not going there in alamosa's is a counteristly attractive and frank phrase now of course not going there during the cold war came with the cost the rule of law appeared frayed at the edges not as complete as theory required and as its enthusiasts so loudly proclaimed not so majestically impartial as dicey had said and as university tutorials some given by me sought constantly to ram home but that was okay as long as these departures in the mainstream could be presented as simply as that departures from the mainstream one of us curiosities oddities the mainstream is freedom the rule of law liberty and there are these margins but they're only margins uh that was how dicey i went into this in great detail was that's how dicey explained why all his theories in the ninth century which were exemplified by a case about which you won't mind the same day but there's almost obsessed bgg and gilbans do you remember bgg and gilbans never i mean he bring everything round to dinner bgg and gilbans bgg and gilbans western super mirror he brought a picture of western super mirror into a lecture bgg and gilbans was salvationist who allowed march but the next year the Irish the Irish rent people were beaten up by a mob and it didn't apply didn't apply and dicey has a footnote saying this shows you the limit or something so as long as it's peripheral it doesn't damage the mainstream idea and another that's why it's possible for example the famous case in the 1960s called the soblem case written about by a predecessor of mine Irishman paul higgins here many many years ago that was where there was basically soblem was exported in a disguise it disguised extradition out of here to the united states he was involved in the cold war battles and it was scandalous and lord denning i think it was refused to go there and a contemporaneous comment in the criminal law review had the country demanding dr soblans return been mexico for instance or finland the examples are random the story would not have been the same but it was a cold war situation and the cold war is an enemy of decency and consistency so that explains soblem it also explains hozenbaw 1970s case uh american thrown out deportation in the for the public good in the interest of national security lord denning no reasons need to be given these are margins well david williams was very good at looking at this margin that margin this margin that margin saying wow there's a lot of margins where's the center a bring the margins together and telling a new story building a new truth where the margins are central not peripheral so what truth do we have today when the rule of law and the protection of human rights have never been stronger and yet despite this the tentacles of the security state have become ever longer more pervasive and the desire to facilitate the americans is as pressing as it ever was when safety from soviet attack was the central policy goal it was war hot cold or colonial which held law largely at bay where foreigners and enemies were concerned but we don't have a credible war basis to resist the movement of law and human rights today and in fairness to the british government successor governments have never made e stupid assumptions about the so-called war on terror we haven't used that here as a kind of alibi the way the american government underbushed it so law and human rights have been able to make progress but at a price uh how can it even be arguable that what snowden has revealed can have been lost we live in a world of human rights in legality how can moranda have been detained for nine hours under terrorism laws where could the legal edifice come from that allows the court of appeal to dodge the drones issue our facilitating the killing of large numbers of people by pointing to statutory safeguards and even the special tribunal how could law and human rights have ended up in such a place the last bit of the lecture is telling you how i think it's happened it did not much to go i know some of you need a pointer and john laws is probably out of sight a little bit what the hell's going on the process started even before the end of the cold war and as far away from smiley's people as you could imagine in a courtroom in newington cosway uh there was an antique dealer on trial we get a lot of kicks out of this when we teach at the malone case uh he was charged and later just acquitted of dishonest handling of stolen goods he's being tried police officer gives evidence looks now at his notes and says and then he said this and then he said that and they all look up and say how do you know that he says i was listening to his phone whoops shouldn't have said that and it turns out that the government since one of these lord chancellors has been authorising intercepts after dinner uh shades of enthic encounter for those of you who need legal references in this lecture uh vice chancellor migari sir robert migari very distinguished lawyer wrote a judgment which is far too long which exonerated the authorities and perplexed generations of students and those who teach them uh saying it was all right because the government can do it at once but strazburg came to the rescue in the mid eighties in this case called malone and the united kingdom saying look i'm sorry human rights means law doesn't mean you you have to have guaranteed privacy mr malone but there needs to be a law that regulates where we can listen in and uh in those days with the uh mrs thatcher uh an absolute epitome of good manners when it came to europe talked a little bit at home but this thing was uncontroversially implemented in english law called the interception of communication act 1985 one of the most important because uh hegemonic shifting to missie's gramshade piece of laws we've got because that's where the model was put in place whereas before you could snoop uh under the vague royal prerogative now you could snoop because the law allowed you snoop and the law was parliamentary law uh it's all there ex judges are dragged in to oversee things a complaint system is set up and it worked strazburg went away they didn't go away if you could show there was no law but if you could show there was a law strazburg went away there was a poor woman master mercy sir police whose phone was being listened to and she couldn't prove it was being listened to and the law was in place so she lost where malone had won so law wasn't the catastrophe the secret state thought it might be catching the mood of the times i'm with admirable foresight the security service mi5 went down the same route just months before the fall of the berlin wall the intelligence service followed suit in 1994 gone from the shadows they were as e and lee and loris lusgarton said in a book they wrote at the time in from the code this is what they preamble to the 1994 law said quote an act to make provision about the secret intelligence service and the government communications headquarters including provision for the issuants of warrants and authorizations enabling certain actions to be taken and for the issue of such warrants and authorizations to be kept under review to make further provision about warrants issued on the application by the security service to establish a procedure for the investigation of complaints about the secret intelligence service and the government communications headquarters to make provision for the establishment of an intelligence and security committee to scrutinise all three of these bodies and for connected purposes i think we have minister will you embody that at the time absolutely fascinating to hear took it through i'm not going to blame david devies for the collapse of liberty and freedom he believes himself poor miss guide of man that he's in favourables wouldn't be this you can have an answer back the reaper which is a stumbling block from pure illegality in the snowden case followed in 2000 the same year as the terrorism act which did for moranda this week the lesson was clear if local and strazburg courts were intent in the name of the rule of law as part of human rights upon ensnearing with red tape executive action direct and facilitative that had previously been outside the law then it was time to ensure control over the kind of red tape that was to be required crucial point the devil is in the detail detail is not the strong point with admirable exceptions is not the strong point of a lot of politicians and it's certainly not the strong point of the journalists so new worlds of only apparent openness were created innovative functionaries who had judge-like qualities might even once had been judges might be judges were conjured up from the ether to provide assurances i'm tempted to say sir Malcolm Rithgund was invented but i won't say it because that'll be unnecessarily rude parliamentary committees were created their grandeur a mask for their impotence and if courts managed to force their way in their cases should be in secret lawyers can represent their clients certainly but without meeting them and only after being vetted by the state a new kind of quasi-independent official called a special advocate and the justice and security act of last year comes from the same stable if people insist on suing the state for allegedly torturing them yes allegedly torturing them the state demands total secrecy even extending to the litigant him or herself as the price of such proceedings now this is my point in summary in the old days the war emergency activities of the state stood apart from the leader here were two domains which rarely have ever intersected bad behaviour could be hidden in total darkness unknown unknowns the wrestling philosopher don rumsfeld the march of the rule of law has made such a position unsustainable but in the process of reaching into this domain law now finds itself irretrievably changed drained of critical energy fatally diluted in the safeguards that can offer those affected by the exercise of state power in place of unknown unknowns we now have known unknowns the advocates who can't speak to their clients the courts that won't let you in the parliamentary committees that's it in private the former judges that sign off reports which are more redacted than informative very last section of the talk why have we allowed this to happen there are no colonies to protect and not even northern Ireland to prevent from declining into civil war why have we allowed who are we that's what i want to end on because i think it's too easy for us all to agree all it's above it's all of us i'm nearly say we but they're british i should say we for the purpose of this talk but the british like their past the british are proud of them they see in the second war their finest hour think of them says as decent colonial this and nowadays feel good as pervers of human rights abroad they feel good as a vital link in the global war on terror brainy facilitators of those who have the muscle we no longer have on the whole the british people it seems to me don't seem to mind having all those ships and aircraft and american nuclear weapons and soldiers and so on that make up the armed forces they remind the british and us that for all that has changed all their brick countries and their money from other people and so on we still punch above our weight all true but not the whole reason for this drift of language and ethical abeyance i think this vision of britain i think it's one of the reasons it's happened but we've drifted into ethical abeyance i'll put it strongly as that for another reason too my final point democratisation in this country was always only roughly achieved there's been war throughout the entire democratic period and of course there's never been a revolution so we haven't got a starting point now war has tamed the democratic instinct in this country i'm not suggesting war is fabricated there has been war this is not an unsensical point about that but war has tamed the democratic instinct in this country it's replaced one idea of security social security human flourishing potentiality equality fairness an opportunity for all with another a security link to land a security defined by opposition to enemies war has contaminated the wonderful possibilities of true equality and the institutions it has justified have lingered on into peacetime are now even recruiting on to their side a language that of law and to an extent also human rights that used to be energetic and spirited but which in their hands has become a mere accomplice to secrecy and official impunity it is understandable i suppose a kind of post-imperial trauma and yearning or pity post-imperial trauma and yearning but it's certainly not in the public interest thank you very much that's it