The Abolition of Liberty : The Decline of Order and Justice in England Paperback – Import, January 1, 2004

What a prince. A thing worth keeping in mind when reading this is that Hitchen's isn't always being prescriptive (or proscriptive,) he is sometimes just being descriptive about the transformation and decline of British culture. Like his late brother, even if you disagree with him, he's still interesting and (thought) provoking.

Arrived and in perfect quality, thx. Even got the author's signature :P

If you've ever wondered why England is in such a pitiful state, or been a visitor and wondered why the cr*p hole you've seen doesn't really resemble anything you may have watched on the TV, then this book may fill in some of the blanks. Peter Hitchens has written a book that is at once superb, horrible, depressing, positive, thought-provoking, blood-boiling and true.The adage, "stupidity is no respecter of education" could be God-directed at the culprits - politicians, police, the judiciary - who have, over the last four or five decades, compounded idiocy, liberalism, disatrous good intentions, weakness, political correctness, cowardice and naked insanity over and over again. The result is certain disintegration. The lunatics have not only taken over the asylum, they've set fire to the curtains and locked the doors.A copy of this book should be inserted (figuratively speaking, of course) into any available orifice of nearly every MP, Chief Constable and High Court Judge in the land. The focus on the shameful MacPherson Report is worty of extreme scorn. Shame on them all. My opinion of the police was not good before, and it's through the floorboards now. Don't fear the threat of 'terror', fear the real danger of the loss of your liberty. I kid you not.As for a blow by blow review, I'll just say READ IT - Hitchens should be given some kind of award for not letting this travesty pass unobserved. The 'knock on the door' is not that far away. No wonder they all flinch when he's on Question Time.Yours,Baby Cromwell, Nottingham, England

Well researched and refreshing read. Always hard to read on such a somber topic, but well presented and thoroughly convincing.

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.

The book deserves 5 stars. I am deducting one star because the Kindle edition contains several typos. Not just different typos, but the *same* mistake made repeatedly throughout the entire book, as if the typist and/or proof-reader was actually under the impression that "signifcant" was the correct spelling! Errors this obvious simply shouldn't appear in any book, let alone one so short.The content itself has spells which are "heavy going" in terms of statistics and dates, but for the most part it is a fascinating and compelling read - and I cannot recommend highly enough how we as a people need to raise our awareness of the issues discussed here. Certainly the liberal elite in parliament and the press need to. Make no mistake, this is not comfortable reading, and is in fact somewhat depressing when one realises the state our beautiful country has sunken to. I did not finish reading this book with a sense of optimism. I can only hope that it's not too late to reverse the steep decline and say 'no' to our inept and cowardly leaders.

30 years ago I lived up-country, deep in the African bush. Every evening I twiddled the dials and adjusted the antenna on my short-wave radio. I was tuning into the World Service of the BBC and its radio serial "the Archers - an everyday story of country folk". This serial was the epitome of Englishness - robust, honest and worthy farming families leading their lives steeped in the rich cultural heritage of England. It was a world immensely civilized and comforting - it reinforced my identity - a universe woven through with integrity, self reliance, generosity, self restraint and common sense. Its institutions, parishes, policemen drew their strength, legitimacy and harmony from a centuries-long process of growth and adaptation.Peter Hitchens describes how this world was subverted and finally chain-sawed into oblivion by an unholy coterie of jealous and doctrinaire do-gooders, misfits, intellectuals and an evermore influential leftwing media.We now live in a geographic entity called Britain where state schools are obliterating our extraordinary achievements with a Stalinist airbrushing of history; where policemen operate like an occupying army; where the media indoctrinate the population with trash culture and scandalously biased 'news' and opinion.Now I know why I became out of sorts with the Archers. Those stolid farmers had become uncertain, self-critical, simpering, lap-dogs to masterful, bossy, manipulative and crusading wives. They were eating quiche for tea and measuring their manure in "kilos". In the novel '1984' George Orwell invoked a creepy feeling of alienness in the reader by having his hero go into an English pub and order a "litre" of beer. Well, pints are still in English pubs - just, but the new Archers' Britain invoked exactly the same feeling of alienness in me. And Peter Hitchens has explained why.That Archers' England has been captured by scriptwriters, politicians and activists who have a clear agenda - to mock, denigrate and finally wipe out all that they could find of beauty and strength and worth - and replace it with a gender neutral, guilt-ridden, multicultural nightmare. Meanwhile the general population is sedated into apathy by consumer prosperity and brain rotting, social conditioning TV. It is an England that "would have lost at Trafalgar and Waterloo, and given up on the attempt to colonize America, because of the absence of safety nets, sexual equality and proper child care."This same coterie hypocritically sends their children to élite schools to avoid them being turned into "mannerless, uncultured ignoramuses" by the state cooperative.Peter Hitchens' work challenges head-on the new taboos and shibboleths erected by this coterie. Of course they spit and fume in frustration when he mercilessly dissects the cancerous, illogical and spiteful nature of their doctrines...As Anatole Kaletsky wrote, "a nation that loses its self awareness will lose its self-respect" and "Many people have become embarrassed, even afraid of being British"...Is there any hope? Peter Hitchens book is a magnificent call to arms. It is required reading for the British people to confront the dry-rot that is eating the heart out of their cultural identity.

I cannot recommend this book enough. As a young British teenager, with two immigrant parents who speak very broken English, I set out on a journey to learn more about the country my parents had adopted. My formal education had taught me very little about British culture, British habits or British history - instead of learning about the cultural arc of our country, I was stuck learning, as Wordsworth would call it, little "spots of time" in British history, WW2, War of the Roses, and that's it.What I discovered in this book was a Britain I never knew or experienced, but a Britain I had heard mocked on TV mercilessly and seen in Downton Abbey: a Britain of manners, rich language, and a proud history. It has propelled me into a journey to learn more about the country I call home. I am currently on Milton's Paradise Lost - and quite a read it is!Hitchens makes an excellent point that a country without a shared culture, history or indeed memory, ceases to be a memory. Nowadays it seems that we have lost that shared memory. British culture seems to have eroded into a mixture of pride about our disastrous NHS, pubs, and the Queen. And now even the monarchy is under attack.The decline of the family and the divorce of sexual intercourse from emotional bonds is richly illustrated. The disastrous abolition of discipline in our schools is absolutely bang on - I witness it in my shockingly behaved school classrooms. There's one thing being cheeky (which I am), and another disruptive and plain rude. The prevalence of promiscuity in my school is something I never felt quite comfortable with, and Hitchens's has given voice to that discomfort. The complete takeover of screens, social media and TV and it's malignant effect on society is also a topic which Hitchens touches upon. Society has become increasingly superficial - Hitchens also addresses that anxiety of mine, and puts it into words!There are some bits I am slightly uncomfortable with - for example, the claim that racism was not prevalent in the 1940s seemed a bit off. I'm not quite sure if I buy that.I consider the role of this book in my life what the role of proper schooling should be - I can't wait to continue this journey of discovery about Britain and all its glory. Screw multiculturalism, I'm proud to be of one culture, and one culture only. British culture!

This is a very good book, describing pretty well, the decline in law and order, and the elite part in it. Perhaps needs updating to 2013? The police do not come off well, because they are constrained by procedures that do nothing to help justice. The book names names, which is good. Talking to a friend who recently retired from the police, it seems to fit in very well with his reasons for leaving, part of the 'old' traditional policing methods. Peter Hitchens seems to suggest a return to beat policing, instead of having the police turn up later to do no more than record the event. I think that it should at least be tried.The politically correct fascists in the trendy parties are responsible, as detailed extensively in the book. But it has got even worse than the period described in the book, with the riots of 2011 and the police pausing to check that they had ticked all the politically correct boxes while the riots began. I can only hope that ARMED police will be ready and willing to act when the black criminals start another one.