One of the most injurious blights to fall upon British society in the 21st century has been that of health and safety. Local authorities forgo Christmas decorations lest they fall upon passing shoppers. Extravagant warnings are printed on every kind of consumer product. The long arm of health and safety influences even the British Army’s battlefield operations. A climate of fear pervades institutions, and especially government, amid the perpetual quest to attribute blame for human misfortunes.

“There is a…craving for prevention,” writes Ben Wilson, “which we see again and again in all areas of life. Whatever benefits it brings, it is certainly incongruous with liberty.” He deplores legislation designed to avert the giving of offence: “The police [seem] to claim the right to pre-empt the manifestation of nasty behaviour…a young man in Oxford was arrested for ­joking that a police horse was gay.”

Our almost manic craving for security, says Wilson, has “sapped liberties from various areas which once stood between the individual and the state… The concentration of power at the centre has made ministers the CEOs of national life.” Such is our dependence on government to provide solutions and ­remedies for every ill that “if something is wrong, the complaint goes straight to the top. Something must be done”.

This impacts with special force on the issue of terrorism. Ministers, security and police chiefs are haunted by knowledge that if an outrage takes place, they will be held accountable. They therefore go to extraordinary lengths, and introduce draconian legislation, to reduce risk. This includes measures designed to curb expressions of intolerance, above all by Islamic militants.

The consequence, says Wilson, is that the historic freedoms of British citizens are being curbed and indeed confiscated in a fashion hitherto deemed acceptable only in the face of Hitler’s invasion threat in 1940. In our obsession with making ourselves safer, we allow and in some degree incite our rulers to adopt disproportionate precautionary measures.

The book comes with a jacket endorsement declaring it to be “brilliant, timely and readable”. This represents a gratuitous hazard to the author’s standing, since the words are those of Tony Benn, who forged a political career from being wrong about almost everything.

Readers should not be deterred, however. Wilson is a young Cambridge historian whose intellectual powers and breadth of scholarship seem remarkable in a man of barely 30. His work is not a polemic by a leftist zealot, but instead a cool examination of how Britain’s liberties have evolved over the centuries, and of the dilemmas involved in defining and protecting them today.

Most of Wilson’s text tells the story of how we have got to where we are, by way of revolutions and spasms of repression in the face of domestic and foreign threats. The mid-19th century was widely perceived as a golden age of British liberties, when religious impediments were removed, foreign revolutionaries found a haven in London, parliament became progressively more representative, and the industrial classes won rights of association and slowly improving working conditions.

“The state seemed to be rolling back in all areas,” writes Wilson, “using its energies to remove old abuses and restraints.” The importance of local government as a check upon the central executive was readily acknowledged.

Inevitably, popular attention will focus on Wilson’s analysis of what has gone wrong in modern times. Liberty is not an absolute. It requires the balancing of the interests and rights of the individual against those of the community. Thus, he is unconvinced that the 2006 Danish newspaper publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad represented a sound test of rights of free speech, as was intended by the editor concerned. This purpose was compromised because it seemed to be a deliberate provocation of Muslims.

Yet British liberals scarcely emerged well from the controversy. Some suggested that the violent Muslim protests that followed publication of the cartoons represented a legitimate and reasonable resp­onse. Nick Cohen has called this “the politics of comp­etitive grievance”. Wilson deplores the publication of the cartoons, because such rows have encouraged the ­government to introduce laws to curb public expressions of sentiment that might cause offence to minorities. Legitimate freedom is thereby diminished.

“Liberty means…the ability to contend for political change in a society in which dissent is protected and encouraged, justice is done and seen to be done, the individual is the primary unit in the political system and redress is automatically conferred on the wronged… The urgent problem does not include making Britons or Europeans out of Muslims by making them capitulate to western values. What should be taught are the universal rules of freedom.”

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