Never shall be slaves

摘要

Liberty is a less powerful rallying-call in Britain than it is across the Atlantic. Whereas the civil liberties of Americans are enshrined in their constitution, those of Britons evolved messily in the courts. There is no British political equivalent to America's libertarian lobby; last year Jack Straw, then home secretary, dismissed Britain's few civil-liberties activists as "woolly liberals". Nevertheless, compromising freedom in the name of defeating terrorism may not prove popular.