For my full review please visit The Literateur, an online literary magazine. http://www.literateur.com/2009/10/lanterns-on-their-horns-by-radhika-jha/

The first half of the book is devoted to “states in transition”: Singapore, China, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  Kampfner contends that Singaporeans tolerate the authoritarianism of the state as long as their government continues to provide the high standard of living that has been enjoyed under Lee Kuan Yew, and now under his son, and on condition that the government does not interfere unduly in their private lives.  In China, fear of chaos means that control is accepted as necessary for the sake of social stability.  The unspoken pact between the Chinese Communist Party and the weatlhy middle class requires co-operation in keeping the mob at bay.  According to Kampfner, insecurity is “as strong a social adhesive as optimism once was”.  Similarly, in Russia, the chaos following the economic collapse of 1998 has led to a version of the pact in which, as long as people felt suffienctly free, Putin was able to restore order and a sense of prosperity, and to introduce draconian security laws, provided he did not interfere in the oligarchs’ empires or in people’s lives.

In the UAE, the terms of the pact Kampfner delineates are more opaque and it is harder to discern the trade-off.  Here, symbiotic business relationships between westerners and the Arab elite mean that there is mutual enjoyment of material benefits.  The state turns a blind eye to occasional public outbreaks of western licentiousness, provided they do not offend Islamic sensibilities unduly, but it is unclear whether westerners are trading any real democratic rights for their comfortable lifestyles.  There are limitations on freedom of expression in the press, for example, and the Federal National Council, which has only consultative powers, is handpicked by the royal families, but only 15% of the population is indigenous.  The real losers seem to be the many guest labourers from elsewhere in Asia who are apparently employed under harsh conditions.

Of the democracies examined, India, Italy (and France, surprisingly subsumed within the chapter on Italy), the United Kingdom and the United States of America, Kampfner argues that “those in the West have colluded the most”.  As in the first four chapters, the unspoken pacts in each country are said to depend on the recognition by both the state and citizens that the state is best placed to deal with the public sphere but that the private sphere must remain inviolable.  Apart from Italy, where Kampfner maintains that Berlusconi’s popularity derives from his skilful erosion of the power of parliament, the media, and the judiciary so that both he and the wider population avoid full accountability before the law, the pact pivots around insecurities arising from terrorism.  In India, in France, in the US, and in the UK, the respective governments have introduced measures intended to tighten state security which have resulted in the curtailment of citizens’ freedoms and democratic rights but, generally, these have been accepted as necessary.  In India, following the Mumbai bombings of 2008, there were demands for improved security because the attackes directly affected the vocal, wealthy classes.  Following the attacks of 11th September 2001 in the US, the full mobilisation of US resources for intelligence gathering, surveillance, and law enforcement was seen as not only acceptable but as patriotic.

It is when Kampfner turns to the United Kingdom that his pace quickens and his argument intensifies.  Perhaps this is because the freedoms relinquished here are seen by some as an irremediable alteration of the British way of life, or perhaps it is because, in the UK, state authoritarianism is already making intrusions into the private sphere, contrary to Kampfner’s stress elsewhere in the book on the dichotomy between public and private being essential to the pact.  With a fifth of the world’s security cameras watching us as we go about our daily lives, the UK public is now the most closely observed in the world.  Kampfner cites the arrest of a young woman reading a list of names of war dead at the Cenotaph, and the arrest of an elderly heckler at a Labour Party Conference, to suggest that freedom of speech is no longer assured.  Whistleblowers are also liable to heavy-handed treatment from the state, apparently confirming state intrusion into matters of conscience.  The collection of personal data and the sharing of that data across government departments has been encouraged by the Labour Government, despite the fact that carelessness and lax security has led to data theft and in some cases the law on data protection has been breached.  The list of the ways in which the state can intrude into private lives is long, and has been facilitated by numerous changes in the law which, in turn, have been put forward as necessary for public security.

Freedom for Sale is thought-provoking and many of the facts Kampfner reveals about the erosion of western democracy are disturbing.  The book is slightly marred by some editorial lapses though and, despite the fact that his argument is convincing, its thread is obscured at times by personal anecdote.  Also, it would have been helpful to have been given a clearer sense of what Kampfner himself understands by the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘personal freedom’.  However, the book does have an interesting subtext in the political compromises he refers to throughout which show how the governments of the west have been, and continue to be, prepared to ignore sanction-breaking and abuses of human rights in transition states, and money-laundering in the west, because of the west’s need for oil and trade.  Perhaps these compromises will form the nucleus of his next book.

Freedom for Sale: How we made Money and lost our Liberty by John Kampfner, published by Simon & Schuster, London, 2009, £18.99, ISBN 978-0-74327-540-8  http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Freedom-For-Sale/John-Kampfner/9780743275408

Another question which comes to mind is: ‘Why blog about books?’  The natural answer is that reading is a fairly solitary pastime and blogging about books is one way of sharing the pleasure of reading and also passing on knowledge about books.