The James MacKeith Memorial Lecture 2023

STATES OF DENIAL
How democratic society manages to square its liberal values with the ‘war on terror’

Wednesday 24th May
8.00pm - 9.30pm (BST)

Speaker: Conor Gearty

Chair: David Bell

Hybrid event at The Institute of Psychoanalysis and Online via Zoom.

This event will be recorded and available to all registered participants for 1 week.

How did the ‘War on Terror’ so easily embed itself in our liberal system of government? It involves wholesale departures from the rule of law and the values of human dignity, human rights etc that the West says it is committed to.  But not only was it welcomed by liberal, democratic states in the Global North, it has since become embedded in our many legal systems, becoming (in a modified form it is true) part of our system of law rather than a temporary departure from it. This lecture explores the origins of our terrorism laws in, firstly, the legal responses by the colonial powers to resistance to their rule, and, secondly, in the deployment of the law to control Communist challenges to authority in liberal society.  The ‘enemy without’ (in the colonies) and ‘the enemy within’ (radical subversives at home) have been with us since before the start of the democratic era. The ‘war on terror’ was building on a long tradition of squaring illiberal treatment of the other with the celebration of the liberal values of the rest of us.  The door to the extremism of our contemporary anti-terrorism laws has been open as long as we have had liberalism and democracy.

Conor Gearty is Professor of human rights law at LSE Law School. He has published widely on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights. Conor is also a barrister and was a founder member of Matrix chambers, from where he continues to practice. He was Director of LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights (2002-2009)

JAMES MACKEITH, OBE, who died in 2007, was an outstanding Forensic Psychiatrist who dedicated himself to Human Rights issues and to the collaboration between his field and psychoanalysis.

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Concession tickets are available, for students, BPAS candidates and NHS trainees and nurses. Please email outreach@iopa.org.uk if you are unsure if you qualify for a concession ticket.

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