Long before V for Vendetta was released to considerable controversy, the film earned the wrath of the author of the comic book it's based on. "It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country," Alan Moore complained. "If the Wachowski brothers [the producers] had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn't it have been more direct to do what I'd done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?"
There's no denying the filmmakers took considerable liberties with Moore's original work; originally an attack on Thatcherism, it was modified to take a run at post-9/11 policies instead. But Moore was wrong on one front: There couldn't possibly be a better setting for a movie about the dangers of authoritarianism than England. While the producers may have intended the film as an attack on George W. Bush, its basic plot - an uprising against an Orwellian regime that's come to power by playing on domestic security fears - is much more effective as an indictment of Tony Blair.
That's not to say, obviously, that there is anything beyond the tiniest hint of the British Prime Minister in John Hurt's fascist chancellor. (There will be no banning of the Koran in Blair's England, no rounding up of gays, no genocide.) But V for Vendetta's value is in sounding alarms about the folly of surrendering freedom in return for security - and within less than two weeks of its release, Blair was demonstrating yet again why that lesson is so timely.
Earlier this week, Blair finally gained approval in the House of Lords for his national ID card - a scheme that will soon require anyone renewing or applying for a passport to obtain a biometric card containing fingerprint, face and iris recognition technology. The plan - which Blair opposed in his opposition days - has infuriated civil libertarians. But it's only the latest in a long line of authoritarian measures put forward by Blair ostensibly to combat terrorism.
Even back when the main threat was still the IRA rather than Islamists, Labour had already begun asking Britons to compromise their personal liberties for the broader good. With the Terrorism Act of 2000, the government significantly broadened police powers - powers that have subsequently been abused on several occasions, including the removal of a heckler from a Labour conference under the Act's auspices. The same year, Parliament approved the new Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, making it easier for the authorities to monitor and intercept personal communications.
That was child's play next to what came after 9/11. First, there was the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 - legislation that (among other things) provided for foreign nationals to be held without charge indefinitely if they were suspected of terrorist activities, even if they'd committed no crime under British law.
Since last summer's attack on the London subway, Blair has sent the message that free expression must take a backseat to public safety - imposing, or trying to impose, new laws to close mosques used by radical imams and deport imams accused of spreading "evil and extreme ideology." Worse, his government is making it a crime to "glorify" terrorism - an arguably open-ended attack on free speech that could apply not just to Islamic radicals, but also those who demonstrate overzealously in support of other causes.
The U.K. has not been alone, of course, in its willingness to sacrifice liberty to the war on terror; the U.S. Patriot Act and even Canada's post-9/11 laws are also arguably open to abuse. But where Britain has gone to a whole other level is in the laws that don't even have anything to do with terrorism - just a nannyish obsession with behavioural modification.
Even before Blair, England was going the Big Brother route with its vast network of closed-circuit cameras. But under the guise of protecting citizens from "yob" culture, Blair's crackdown on "anti-social" behaviour has taken the state to places it was never meant to go.
Already, there has been a reversal of the burden of proof allowing police officers to hand out on-the-spot fines for objectionable conduct that does not actually qualify as a crime. Blair is now seeking to boost those fines, to allow police to force those who can't cough up the cash to perform unpaid work, to set up a national snitch line, and to trample property rights by temporarily evicting homeowners accused of being a nuisance.
Moving beyond Big Brother, Blair is intent on turning government into Mom and Dad. If he has his way, parents will be forced to go to behavioural classes and impose curfews not only when their kids have committed an offence, but when schools or other authorities suspect they're getting into trouble.
"The question is not one of individual liberty versus the state, but of which approach best guarantees most liberty for the largest number of people," the PM declared in February. "In theory, traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties could work. But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed."
Blair's language was astonishing. To anyone who really believes in liberty, it cannot exist for most people; it exists for everyone or not at all. But by Blair's account, a very mild version of the logic that leads V for Vendetta's regime to expunge Britain of assorted minorities, citizens can be made more free by making others less so.
For all the criticisms levelled at it, only one misstep really undermines V for Vendetta's central point: the flashback that suggests the fascist regime had its roots in a Conservative government. It will forever be a mystery why the filmmakers picked on an opposition party when the one in power is already leading the West's worst assault on civil liberties.
