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The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England Paperback – 8 Apr 2004

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Peter Hitchens (Author)
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Peter Hitchens (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 36 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Atlantic Books; New edition edition (8 April 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1843541491
  • ISBN-13: 978-1843541493
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 254,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

About the Author

Peter Hitchens is one of Britain's most famous journalists and polemicists. His previous book, The Abolition of Britain, was a hugely popular call for the renovation of the Union of Great Britain, in the face of the centralising challenge of Europe's institutions.

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsIt doesn't have to be this way...
By MR J P JONES on 18 Aug. 2004
Format: Paperback
It's 3am and you're being burgled. Call the police in the UK, and they might send someone round the next day so that you can claim on your insurance. Tell them that you're going to shoot the burglar, and they'll be round immediately with a swat team and helicopters - to cart YOU away! Have you ever wondered why and when your welfare became less important than the criminal's?
Read Hitchens. His latest book systematically takes apart the development of the police service in the 20th century and exposes how the police force, once a representative of the civil population with close contact on the streets, has become sealed off and paramilitary in its operations over the last 40 years - and lost the respect of the law-abiding public in the process. He sets out how, despite there being more police and support staff per capita of population than ever before, more crimes are being committed, reported and remaining unsolved than at any point during our history. He explains how clear-up statistics have replaced crime prevention as the policeman's focus, and how only 5% of any police force's staff are out 'on the beat' at any point.
Other law and order topics include the encroachment of government surveillance on personal liberty. If the reason for having ID cards is to protect us from terrorism, how did the Madrid bombings happen? Spain had ID cards since Franco. And why weren't they introduced during the height of IRA bombings in the UK? It's these sorts of questions which Hitchens asks to great effect - and he produces a few interesting answers.
It's shocking reading in parts. But whether you lean left or right, this book will give everyone pause for thought.
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4.0 out of 5 starsAn uncomfortable read
By A Customer on 21 Mar. 2005
Format: Paperback
Hitchens is an articulate proponent of old-Right thinking. Hanging, flogging, retributive justice in general. Most of us would like to think we had moved on from that. But Hitchens doesn't pontificate from a distance. He has been into prisons and speaks with authority about the contempt the criminal classes in Britain now have for weaklings like us who have allowed them to set our nation's agenda. And he skilfully links our weakness in detecting and punishing criminals to our Government's increasing authoritarianism as far as decent law-abiding citizens are involved. If crime is a kind of disease brought on by poverty etc., then we are all potential criminals and should be treated as such. Just as the left has compassion for the criminals in prison, it is afraid of all the potential criminals on the outside. It's a perverted through-the-looking-glass logic which has the police harassing the decent and schmoozing the evil.
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4.0 out of 5 starsA thought-provoking read for anyone concerned with justice & liberty
By F. G. Lelliott on 18 Jan. 2009
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Whilst I find Peter Hitchens' column in the Mail on Sunday a little too right-wing at times, I couldn't help but read this book without nodding frequently in agreement.

Several issues had not previously occured to me, the disengagement of the police from the public, the politicisation of the police force (sorry police 'service'), the historic and gradual errosion of justice and liberty in our country, but Hitchens brings these issues into sharp focus.

Interestingly, the postscript of this book, all 7-and-a-bit pages of it, fittingly highlights the assault on free speech that masquerades as law and order in 21st century Britain.
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5.0 out of 5 starsInformative
By S Smyth on 12 Feb. 2007
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a well written and researched book explaining the key differences in continental, English and U.S. law and policing. This is backed up by a wealth of statistics to quantify how the expansion of crime without consequences to the career criminal has been facilitated by the growth of politically motivated policing in the UK, and England in particular.

At the heart of the problem is the moral vacuum of socialism which considers everyone to be criminals and, as a consequence, the career criminal is simply no different to anyone else and must be saved and reformed at any cost financially, and to the detriment of everyone else's life and liberty. Except for the enlightened elite at the heart of government and its institutions, that is.

The ID card is little more than the yellow star pinned on Jews in Nazi Germany. Criminals in Northern Ireland can now freely attack pensioners with hammers and guns, in the dead of night, in pursuit of small amounts of money and can reasonably expect to never be caught or punished. And they can also freely indulge in the tiger-kidnapping of the families of bank and business owners in order to gain ransom money, with detection, prosecution and punishment unlikely in case terrorists and paramilitary groups will be offended, or not be available to bolster the propaganda of the-war-on-terrorism.

Peter Hitchens suggests how many current failings of the law and policing could be addressed so that crime is prevented and criminals are punished. But this can only happen in a free society which has a government and legal system dedicated to upholding freedom and recognising that career criminals do not have more right to the expropriated resources of the state than the victims of crime.
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5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant account of the government-EU threat to our freedom
By William Podmore on 13 Jan. 2005
Format: Paperback
Peter Hitchens is a noted political commentator. This book, a serious, detailed defence of our freedoms, is a worthy successor to his 1999 book, The Abolition of Britain, a passionate defence of Britain's integrity and sovereignty against the EU.

Most EU members lack habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, single jeopardy, the right to silence and trial by jury. Now the EU wants to impose on us the European legal system (corpus juris), its mode of policing and its own prosecution service. Europol can already operate here, its officers immune from prosecution. Under the European arrest warrant, prosecuting authorities from any EU member country can order the arrest of a citizen of any other EU country. The Crown Prosecution Service is eliding into an EU prosecution service, an unaccountable servant of the state.

Hitchens makes an excellent case against ID cards, which would be compulsory and costly. He notes that the Australians and New Zealanders both defeated the proposal.

He points out that previous British governments wrongly copied US police methods unsuited to 'this wholly different country'. He notes, "the Victorian network of police stations has been lopped as drastically as were the railways by the half-witted Beeching cuts of the sixties." A thousand police stations, one in three, were closed between 1992 and 2002. The public want bobbies on the beat: we want laws enforced, not more laws and rights. Macpherson aimed to institutionalise racism, demanding, "'Colour-blind' policing must be outlawed."

Hitchens urges that we build new mental hospitals, ending the 'shameful Care in the Community programme' and getting the mentally ill out of prisons. He argues persuasively against decriminalising drugs.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsEssential

I can not stress enough how important this book is. Everything wrong with law and order today is mapped out from one bad decision to failed vanity project to the next. Read more

Published 1 month ago by failed music critic
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

A more measured Hitchen than writes in the paper so even more hard hitting.

Published 1 month ago by Jeremy
5.0 out of 5 starsVery Insightful.

Cracking commentry on what has happened and is happening to justice and policing of the UK.
Peter is an honest writer and clear thinker. Read more

Published 5 months ago by The famous Eccles
4.0 out of 5 starsA book for the police to ponder.

book in excellent condition. As an ex cop I identified fully with the content of the book. Hitchens has got to the heart of the problems with the police service, and articulates... Read more

Published 9 months ago by Mr. Roger Holloway
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat read!

Peter Hitchens clearly conveys the mindset and history of English
politics and and contrasts this with the changes of the last 50 years. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Patrick McCaughan
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Hitchens is one of my favourite writers and this investigation is another brilliant read.

Published 11 months ago by danny mclaughlin
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting viewpoint

Very interesting read. Makes so much sense!

Published 11 months ago by Antz
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

As described and quick delivery.

Published 11 months ago by The cats doorman.
2.0 out of 5 starsI haven't read this book but the reason for my poor review has nothing...

I must confess, I haven't read this book but the reason for my poor review has nothing to do with the author or the book. Read more

Published 12 months ago by MR CHRISTOPHER TYRRELL
4.0 out of 5 starsImportant book, bad typos

The book deserves 5 stars. I am deducting one star because the Kindle edition contains several typos. Read more

Published 13 months ago by T Ellis

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