Race Discrimination

After 1960, Liberty responded to the tightening of immigration laws and a rise in race-hate incidents by lobbying for the Race Relations Act, which came into force in 1965. Liberty also published pamphlets exposing the effective ‘colour bar’, whereby black and Asian people were refused service in certain pubs and hotels.

Women's Rights

Campaigning for women's rights was also a major part of Liberty's work in this period, including successfully calling for reform of jury service laws that effectively prevented women and the poor from serving on juries by means of a property qualification. 

Gypsies and Travellers

After the Highways Act 1959 made it illegal to camp on highway verges Liberty worked to protect traveller and gypsy communities from persecution. In one illustrative case, gypsies in Orpington were moved onto the highway by officials and then summonsed for infringing the Highways Act. The Act was eventually abolished in 1980 after a long campaign.

Protest

Liberty kept a close eye on the right to protest, intervening on behalf of groups refused permission to protest and monitoring the policing of demonstrations such as those against the Vietnam War.

Reluctant Servicemen

Campaigning also raised awareness of the difficulty faced by ‘reluctant servicemen’ – men in the armed forces who had often signed-up as teenagers then realised they’d made a mistake but were prevented from discharging themselves for anything up to 16 years.

Northern Ireland

In the early 1970s Liberty campaigned for civil rights in Northern Ireland, including collecting 600 witness statements to show that the army were criminally reckless when 14 people were killed on a civil rights march in 1972.

Data Protection

In 1975 the NCCL bought 3 million credit rating files from Konfax Ltd after they were offered for sale in the Evening Standard. The files were destroyed and the major privacy protection ‘Right to Know’ campaign to give individuals greater control over their personal information was launched in 1977.