Liberty - Protecting civil liberties, promoting human rights

NCCL investigates the arrest and heavy sentencing of the leaders of the miners’ strike at Harworth Colliery, exposing bias against the strikers from members of the authorities.

The NCCL led a public campaign to help the strike leaders, collecting 25,000 petition signatures. Here Ronald Kidd delivers the petition to the Home Office.

Founder Ronald Kidd dies aged 53. Elizabeth Acland Allen takes over as General Secretary.

A major conference on wartime press freedom attracts thousands of delegates.

The men faced increasing antagonism from the local community and had difficulty finding jobs or being served. In 1949 14 of the men were arrested for ‘affray’. 

The NCCL arranged their defence and the majority were acquitted, exposing severe race discrimination.

The Mental Health Act 1913 is abolished and new Mental Health Review Tribunals established, at which Liberty regularly represents the interests of patients.

The Cobden Trust (later the Civil Liberties Trust) is founded as a research and charitable arm.

Landmark Challenor case taken:

NCCL supported the defendants and all the charges were dismissed or withdrawn. Challenor was investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the case led to the release of several people who had been wrongly imprisoned.

The first Race Relations Act passed, after lobbying by NCCL and others.

NCCL campaigns against internment in Northern Ireland, and collects 600 witness statements to show that the army showed criminal recklessness after 14 people were killed on the 1972 civil rights march known as ‘Bloody Sunday’.

Launch of major Right to Know campaign, which calls for greater protection of individuals’ confidential information.

NCCL supports Kathleen Stewart in an application to the European Commission following the death of her teenage son, hit by a plastic bullet in Belfast in 1976.

During the miners’ strike, Liberty strongly upholds the right to strike and campaigns on behalf of miners stopped from picketing outside their home regions.

NCCL changes its name to Liberty, and the new identity is launched at a press conference at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London by playwright Harold Pinter, Robin Cook MP and others.

Liberty publishes a ‘People’s Charter’ as part of campaign for human rights to be enshrined in UK law.

Terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September provoke a raft of anti-terror legislation with serious implications for civil liberties.

Using the protections in the new Human Rights Act Liberty supports terminally ill Diane Pretty’s fight to choose when to end her life.

The Civil Liberties Trust becomes the first UK charity to adopt ‘promoting human rights’ as an objective.

Christine Goodwin successfully uses the Human Rights Act to have her new gender legally recognised following discrimination and harassment at work. After almost 50 years of case judgments that have failed to protect transgender rights, the ruling marks a historic breakthrough.

Liberty intervenes in a major case, A & Others, in which the Law Lords rule that detaining non-British nationals without trial is unlawful, a crucially important decision for future government policy.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war Katharine Gun, an employee of GCHQ, was accused of disclosing to the media that the US had requested assistance from British intelligence to tap the telephones of members of the UN Security Council. 

Gun argued that the disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing and that she acted out of necessity to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".

Following a request for disclosure of the Attorney General’s advice on the legality of the war the prosecution was dropped.

In A & Others the Law Lords confirm that evidence obtained through torture is not admissible in British courts.

Government proposals for an increased limit of 90 days detention without trial in terror cases are defeated.

Liberty calls for a public inquiry into the mistreatment of asylum seekers at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre.

The European Court rules in Liberty’s case Gillan and Quinton that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (the broad police power for stop and search without suspicion) violates the right to respect for private life.

The ID Card scheme is scrapped, after years of campaigning by Liberty and others reduce public support from nearly 80% to 25%.

The new Coalition Government also announces a long overdue review of counter-terror legislation.

Liberty returns to its 1930s roots providing legal observers for the TUC march against public spending cuts.

Following a Liberty campaign Westminster Council drop plans to criminalise the giving of free food to the homeless.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, is invited onto the panel of the judicial inquiry into phone hacking.

After a decade long campaign Liberty welcomes the Home Secretary’s announcement that Gary McKinnon will not face extradition to the US.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, participated in the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games, joining human rights activists and athletes from across the globe in carrying the traditional Olympic flag into the stadium.