I want to achieve only two things in this documentary: To make people laugh, and to make them angry. Politics is never usually a subject to exact either of these responses, but Tony Blair has given us everything you could want for a jaw dropping and hilarious film.
Taking Liberties tells the story of how, over the last ten years, a group of sharp suited PR Men and management consultants called New Labour have stolen the rights and freedoms of the British People. This story is not told by celebrities or politicians, but by ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down by injustice. What is probably most fascinating is to see how these people – whether they have been arrested for a peaceful protest or tortured in Guantanamo Bay –have reacted to their injustices in startling and uplifting ways.
This is not a film about left and right - Liberty is apolitical. We have deliberately looked for the widest range of opinion possible, and the message we have heard from every corner of Britain has been the same: The past 10 years is an unprecedented shift of power away from the individual towards the state. New Laws have been passed that have restricted our freedom in ways that were not even considered in wartime.
Our leaders are now at least being open about this - in the summer of 2006 John Reid announced: “Sometimes we may have to modify some of our freedoms in order to prevent their misuse”. I still don’t know if he’s aware that he was actually paraphrasing Hitler. In order to distract us from this liberty heist we have to be sold the myth that terrorism is an entirely new phenomenon, and our leaders can supposedly only crush this threat by taking away our ancient freedoms. While Tony Blair has been the ringleader in this power grab, his successors are just as keen to increase state control even further. Even if you buy the fact that New Labour have dismantled our freedoms out of a genuine desire to protect us, they have left the door open for a less savoury leader to eradicate British Democracy.
Easy as it is to blame Blair for all of this, we must take some of the responsibility for letting this robbery to happen under our noses. We have been told that we must lay down our freedoms for our lives. I prefer to remember those people in past generations who laid down their lives for our freedoms.
However it’s not all doom and gloom – the sheer absurdity of the bewildering array of idiotic new laws have given us an abundance of bizarre and hilarious situations for our documentary. We should really thank Tony Blair and New Labour for providing us with more than enough surreal and absurd moments.
This journey has involved meeting hundreds of people, getting arrested, being laughed at, being hugged, being punched, being physically sick from talking to torture victims, and worst of all, meeting Geoff Hoon. Everyone who has been involved in Taking Liberties has been seriously emotionally affected by the experience – I hope for the better.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from making this film, is the understanding that politics is not about self important windbags in Westminster, or thundering newspaper editorials – it’s about people. And all people need to do is to engage and have a voice and they can change the world.
Chris Atkins
Director.
