Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

"It’s all about the War on Terror as far as I’m concerned. I read this book shortly before I became director of Liberty and you might say I’m someone who’s a little unwell and thinks the TV is talking to me, but to me it’s a thinly veiled metaphor for the War on Terror. The Ministry of Magic is raining down in various draconian ways in response to a very serious threat from the dark Lord Voldemort. Early on in the book we see that the owls – who are a means of communication – are being intercepted to and from Hogwarts School – so that’s your increased surveillance. Poor old Harry is wrongfully accused of something and is up before a kangaroo commission where every trick in the book is used against him: they change the time of the hearing, and there’s no proper due process, and that’s very reminiscent of some of the secret commissions that sprang up in Britain during the War on Terror, this attempt to bypass traditional British justice as we understand it. “There’s an attempt in the European Convention on Human Rights to encapsulate the non-negotiables of any democracy: no torture, free speech, fair trials, personal privacy, equal treatment under the law, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and peaceful enjoyment of property.” In the book what it might feel like to be in front of something that purports to be a court but clearly isn’t comes across incredibly well. There are human rights issues all the way through it, and there’s even a scene where Harry is tortured. It’s great fiction, and what with the massive readership and the movies and everything you can reach so many more people than with polemical writing or political activism or whatever. It will reach – and has done already – so many more children and young people than I, or anybody who campaigns for rights and freedoms, ever could. What’s wonderful is that she’s got people reading this – about intrusive surveillance and torture, but also about solidarity and resistance and great human virtues."