If it is to be fair, an appraisal of the state of freedom of expression in Britain during the prime ministership of Tony Blair must avoid three traps into which civil libertarian zealots in general – and free speech enthusiasts in particular – often fall. Seductive though they might appear to the already passionate, these wrong turnings risk plunging civil libertarians into a dark hole so far removed from the lived experiences of the general public that their perspective on freedom loses all persuasive power as a result. The first of these is the temptation to deny history. This particular lament takes a number of forms: the current prime minister and/or home secretary are the worst in living memory; the ‘erosion’ or even ‘destruction’ of our civil liberties is gathering pace at an ‘unprecedented’ rate; governmental animosity towards Britain’s traditional freedoms ‘has never been stronger’. But these are the kinds of things that have been said about every government, at least since the early 1970s. In truth there has never been a ‘golden age’ of freedom from which to mark the start of our current ‘decline’. Even the civil libertarian Roy Jenkins did not escape from it, when he introduced the first prevention of terrorism legislation (with its bans on politico-military associations) in 1974. Merlyn Rees was a particular hate-figure to activists when he was home secretary in the 1970s, as was Roy Mason in the Northern Ireland Office. During this period, official secrets prosecutions, expulsions of journalists and abuse of police powers were commonly front-page news. Then came the Thatcher years, when discussion about the decline of freedom became to all intents and purposes received wisdom: the media ban, the Spycatcher injunctions and the Official Secrets Act 1989 were just some of the anti-free speech highlights of the 1980s. Even John Major’s administration produced similar stories in the 1990s, with anxieties about executive hostility towards the judiciary then being at their height: Kenneth Baker, David Waddington and Michael Howard were at least as controversial in their day as John Reid, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett have been in theirs. If the first thing we need to do is recover our memories, the second is to re-establish a sense of proportion. Civil libertarians have long been inclined towards intemperate language. In the 1980s, activists set up organisations with names like Charter 88 and Samizdat, specifically linking the situation in Britain with that of central Europe under communist rule. There was much talk then – as