ESSAY: Perhaps the most significant UK constitutional case of the last fifty years

How the Malone case of 1979-1985 exposed the lie of our supposedly liberal constitution and changed the way we were governed

Consider this simple, attractive proposition: in the United Kingdom, you are free to do as you will, unless there is a law against it.

What could be wrong with such a nice proposition: it is almost a perfect articulation of principled liberalism.

But.

This proposition can have a hidden and ugly implication.

For it also can mean that the State can do as it wishes, to you and other people, unless there is a law against it.

And the case which exposed this unpleasant truth - and helped put an end to it, so that the State was required to have a legal basis for interfering with our lives - is the 1979-85 case of Malone.

This is the story of that case, and of its effects.