I remember the September 11 attacks vividly. It was only my second day at Liberty, having arrived – fresh from working as a lawyer in the Home Office – with the remit of working out Liberty’s strategic direction. I had wondered at first what our focus should be. By lunchtime that day the answer was perfectly clear.
I watched the first plane hitting a tower on a TV screen in our Press Office. Then came the haunting images of the second plane, the falling buildings and those poor souls diving from skyscrapers. With the realisation that this was premeditated mass murder, not some tragic accident, came pure human horror. I was shocked and afraid for friends and loved ones on both sides of the Atlantic. I remember asking myself whether it was really the time to swap the world of security for campaigning for liberty and the Rule of Law.
But there was soon another feeling – dread. Dread that the reaction to these attacks would make things much worse. And so it proved, as the next decade was defined by the response to that day’s atrocities.
Belligerence soon triumphed over thoughtfulness as Messrs Blair and Bush adopted the metaphor of "war" instead of treating the atrocity as a heinous crime. A crime is dealt with through criminal justice systems. Battle talk allows terrorists to brand themselves soldiers and governments to dilute our precious rights and freedoms for the duration of a war without end.
In truth I couldn’t have predicted the sheer scale of the grand folly that was the "War on Terror": Guantanamo, Belmarsh, control orders and blanket stop and search. I never anticipated open societies spinning intelligence to sell illegal war. I did not envisage the shame of democrats resorting to kidnap, torture and murder in freedom's name.
The resulting fight against these reactionary measures consumed my thirties. It was an intense decade. I saw humanity at its worst but also at its finest. And I’ve never once regretted making the move I did 10 years ago. Liberty worked with lawyers, politicians and journalists to defeat internment and sway public opinion away from authoritarian madness.
Time and time again, the much-maligned Human Rights Act proved crucial. It’s little wonder so many in high places are now so keen to replace it with something altogether more malleable and therefore worthless. So we must defend the Act, and show that we’re not beaten. Ten years on from 9/11 our values of dignity, fairness and equal treatment still survive.
