[another two or more-parter, with apologies for parochialism]

Though I live here, I´m still relatively grateful to be a citizen of one of the minority of states for which Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports have tended to start with something other than estimates of the probable numbers executed or tortured by agents of the state. This doesn’t mean I’m complacent about the current state of the state. And neither am I nostalgic for those innocent days before the War on Terror™. Awareness of the general willingness of states, organisations and powerful individuals to make major exceptions to avowed principle for the marginal, the powerless, or the vaguely threatening – see the British Empire(though not by Niall Ferguson), Northern Ireland, and whatever you fancy – has left me no golden ager, hellish useful as a belief in ancient liberties has often been (thanks, Tom Paine, Gerard Winstanley, others…). There’s never been anything approaching a golden age (or a golden land) for all, nor will there ever be till lamb lies with lion and lamb resists taking awful misdirected suckling revenge, but this doesn’t for a moment mean it’s all ok. Even if it were all ok, it wouldn’t be, that being the nature of the struggle. Rights, entitlements and freedoms have always to be wrestled anew from those who would rather keep them, doubtless benevolently, for the trustworthy.

This overloaded wheelbarrow of an introduction is wobbling towards, far down the garden path, a stile straddling two areas in which I’ll happily declare an interest – civil liberties and photography. I’ve never been sure about the morality of photography, but convinced of its pleasures, harmlessness, and necessity, and prompted by a bulletin board discussion, have been looking into this lobby, led by Austin Mitchell MP on the (increasingly? Who knows) routine bullying of photographers in the UK.

Mitchell, a, traditional advancer of the quirky and unpopular cause – the only MP I can remember showing a professional interest in Social Credit – has tabled an Early Day Motion, supported by the NUJ, calling for a parliamentary expression of support for unfettered photography. Within the British parliamentary system, EDMs are a popular way, outranked only by legislation, executive order, select committee report, ministerial questions, full debate, Westminster Hall debate and between-slice mutterings by the veteran wielder of the monogrammed knife of the cake trolley in the House of Commons tearoom, of raising an issue into the noble consciousness of parliament, and perhaps into the parliamentary record.

The text of the EDM is here

Socially liberal by heart and head, but economically not (and proud to wear the stacked dunces’ caps in that bottom-left corner of the bottom-left corner on the Political Compass), I’m not seeking the kind of story of the beastliness of others in restricting usually hard-bought freedoms (frittering natural capital, ignoring the global poor, claiming unrestricted ownership over pretty much everything) that some[I] defenders of liberty[/I] might prefer. Instead, I’m trying to work out on the page where this relatively minor civil liberties issue fits, and whether it can illuminate anything but itself, feebly.

The EDM defends photography on several grounds: on its harmlessness, enjoyability and artistic value. However, given that these butter few political parsnips (thanks, Jonathon Porritt, for that particular corning of mechanically recovered proverb). I suspect this is headed to the place where unwanted Early Day Motions compare treasury tags whilst knocking back the correcting fluid.

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