Rachel North: A life lived in total security is no life at all

The by-election is over; the crowd of candidates have hung up their ties and their cow suits and their hot-pants, the good constituents of Haltemprice and Howden have cast their votes. Turnout was hampered by 5,000 students being home for the holidays, and the lure of the Great Yorkshire Show, attended by the Queen, yet still they stepped out to exercise the most basic democratic right of all.

As I waved goodbye to a straight-backed and smiling David Davis on Wednesday at Brough train station this week, having travelled up to speak at his debate with Shami Chakrabarti and rebel Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, I wished him luck. He has done a brave thing, a big beast of a politician forcibly inserting himself into the Westminster machine until the sparks fly.

Now it is time to see if the debate he has ignited will continue to burn or be doused by the cold water of cynicism and tribal party politics as this grey wet summer – so far mercifully terrorism free – continues .

For over three weeks, the argument about liberty and security has crackled in the comment pages, the blogosphere and the airwaves. It has continued in the pubs and cafés, the offices and parks of Britain in a most heartening way. The initial jeers and smears of the Westminster village saying that it was but a madcap vanity stunt were quickly swamped by a tidal wave of opinion from the public, who made their voices heard by phoning and emailing and commenting in droves.

Now the polls have begun to swing – one has 60 per cent of the public now against Government plans to detain terror suspects for six weeks. The debate in the Lords has exploded, with the ex-Director General of M15 using her maiden speech to pour withering scorn on 42 days. The strikingly passionate public response has shown that when you ask people to consider serious issues, you get a serious and considered response. Liberty, debate and democracy are alive and well and have not been flattened by stifling populism. Thank God.

One of the most interesting things has been the shifting in traditional party-political tectonics. Claims that the left/right divide is dead and positive liberty/negative liberty are the new fault lines have some merit, though it is possible to detect anxiety in some op-ed pieces which betray a rattled attempt to return to the old left/right tribalism. A big tent can be a disconcerting place to find oneself, and the range of voices heard has thrown up some surprising results.

Some of what has come up has been downright depressing. The admired campaigner for rape justice Jill Saward, whose story mirrors my own – like me she is the daughter of a vicar and the survivor of a horribly violent stranger-rape – stood as an independent candidate.

Her desire for a universal DNA database where we are all logged – potential criminals all – is truly frightening, though I can understand it. After I was attacked, I wanted it too, for a while. Until I discovered that most people are raped by someone they know. Until I remembered that the issue in rape trials is not identification, but consent. Until I realised that a life of total security, with a faceless Someone to watch over me at all times is a suffocating nightmare and no life at all.

I learned, once I had fought through the worst of the nights of crippling flashbacks and fear, that life and liberty are to be cherished all the more for having nearly been lost, and the price of my liberty is an acceptance that I walk freely in the world, at my own risk, with responsibility for my fate in my own hands and that is a price worth paying gladly. For to treat people as permanent potential victims or suspects, to encourage them to make a fetish of their potential victimhood, is to dishonour their right to be fully human.

New technology and new fears are used to conjure old nightmares – and offer a shiny dream of how to protect ourselves against the worst. It is natural when you are frightened to wish to be protected. It is easy to slip into the trap of feeling that damn it; you are a good sort of person and ought to be safe from those who are not like you.

But history has taught us how dangerous it is to allow our base fears to name our enemies and to dictate our actions. If human rights mean anything at all, they mean the right to be fully human, with all our weaknesses, and must be applied to all. Our liberty is our best security; our impassioned debating of it is a measure of our strength and resilience.

Rachel North is the author of 'Out of the Tunnel', a memoir of being raped and caught up in the 7/7 bombings, and a campaigner for civil liberties

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