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4. Civil Liberties Protections – Protest and Data Protection

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About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the (potential) erosion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom, focusing in particular on the right to protest and on data protection. As we move through the module, we think about: (i) the attempts by the government to constrain people’s right to protest in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’; (ii) the case of Brian Haw, a protestor who set up a ‘peace camp’ in Parliament Square in 2001; and (iii) the passing of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2005, the subsequent legal case brought by David Davis and Tom Watson, and the government’s response.

Course

In this course, Dr Matthew Williams (University of Oxford) explores the development of civil liberties and human rights protection in the UK through the question ‘Civil liberties and human rights have been eroded in recent years. Discuss.’ In the first module, we introduce the question itself and think about some of the things to think about when answering any essay question of this kind. In the second module, we think about the history of rights protection in the UK from Magna Carta onwards, before turning in the third and fourth modules to four substantive areas of law in which human rights and civil liberties have arguably been ‘eroded’ – national security, criminal justice, the right to protest, and data protection. In the fifth module, we think about how procedural changes have impacted human rights and civil liberties protections, in particular some of the procedures laid out by the Human Rights Act (1998), before turning in the sixth and final module to consider the potential impact of Brexit on human rights and civil liberties protection in the UK.

Lecturer

Dr Matthew Williams is Access and Career Development Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. His research focuses on the the language of politics, especially how the language of legislation has changed over the previous century. His recent publications include How Language Works in Politics: The Impact of Vague Legislation on Policy (2018).