Release Date: Monday 26th February 2007
Release Time: Immediate

Contact Details:
Dr Sean Gabb (Director), 07956 472 199, sean@libertarian.co.uk

For other contact and link details, see the foot of this message
Release url: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/news/nr051.htm

"REPEAL EVERY LAW MADE SINCE 1987: LET US WAKE FROM THATCHER/MAJOR/BLAIR NIGHTMARE", SAYS FREE MARKET AND CIVIL LIBERTIES THINK TANK

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today calls on Parliament to repeal every single Act of Parliament and every piece of delegated legislation passed or made since January 1987.

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb, says:

"We note that the Political Cartel, otherwise known as the Conservative and Labour Parties, is using the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 to shut down the United Kingdom Independence Party.

"It is our normal practice to call for the repeal of individual pieces of legislation which we think hostile to liberty, and then for the closure of whatever implementation agencies have been set up, and for the destruction of records.

"The present case, however, shows that the foundations of liberal democracy are now being attacked. It is no longer just that the authorities are using their legal powers to limit or destroy specific liberties. They are now pulling together all the threads of tyranny, carefully spun during the past generation, so that it will soon be impossible to vote these people out of power. We are perhaps two years away from a Belgian-style potemkin democracy, in which only those parties that accept the existing order of things are allowed to put up candidates for election.

"This being so, it is worth going beyond our so far cautious approach to the creeping totalitarianisation of our country.

"We call on Parliament to repeal every single Act of Parliament made since the 1st January 1987, together with every piece of delegated legislation made under any Act of Parliament passed before or since the 1st January 1987. We realise that many of these laws have been made pursuant to treaty commitments. We therefore call for all such treaties to be denounced as violations of national sovereignty.

"Some people suggest a repeal of all Acts passed since May 1997, others of all passed since April 1992. The Libertarian Alliance believes these suggestions are too gentle to the later record of Margaret Thatcher, who set in motion the collapse of constitutional government in this country.

"Repealing every law made during the past twenty years would at a stroke return Britain to the admittedly imperfect liberal democracy of the 1980s. But it would be a country with restored procedural safeguards like habeas corpus, the right of peremptory challenge, the privilege against self-incrimination, and protection against double jeopardy. There would be no terrifying emergency powers laws, no regular and permanent terrorism laws, no threat of arbitrary deportation to face trial in places like Italy and America, no money laundering laws, no Serious Fraud Office, few effective envrironmental or health and safety laws, no hunting and smoking bans, no gun bans, little censorship of the media, no searching regulation of just about everything we do. There would be hardly any foundation for political correctness. There would be no regulation of poltiical parties and other procedural closure of the ballot. We would also be so heavily in breach of the Treaty of Rome, that it would be a mere act of tidying up to repeal the European Communities Act 1972.

"In short, repeal en bloc would massively reduce the power of the State to tyrannise over us. It would be like waking from some long nightmare.

"If there are one or two valuable reforms that would be lost in such a repeal - such as, perhaps, lowering the homosexual age of consent - these are surely so obvious and attractive, that they could be re-enacted in short order.

"But everything else must be destroyed - before it destroys us."

END OF COPY

Note(s) to Editors

Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance and edits its journal Free Life. His book, Smoking, Class and the Legitimation of Power, is available at Amazon. His other books are available from Hampden Press at http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.

He can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by email at sean@libertarian.co.uk

Extended Contact Details:

The Libertarian Alliance is Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published more than 800 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk

Our postal address is

The Libertarian Alliance
Suite 35
2 Lansdowne Row
Berkeley Square
London
W1J 6HL
Tel: 07956 472 199

Associated Organisations

The Libertarian International - http://www.libertarian.to - is a sister organisation to the Libertarian Alliance. Its mission is to coordinate various initiatives in the defence of individual liberty throughout the world.

Sean Gabb's personal website - http://www.seangabb.co.uk - contains about a million words of writings on themes interesting to libertarians and conservatives.

Hampden Press - http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.- the publishing house of the Libertarian Alliance.

Liberalia - http://www.liberalia.com - maintained by by LA Executive member Christian Michel, Liberalia publishes in-depth papers in French and English on libertarianism and free enterprise. It is a prime source of documentation on these issues for students and scholars.