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UK advocacy group and membership organisation

Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes human rights. It does this through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community. Liberty also aims to engender a "rights culture" within British society. motivated by their humanist convictions. During the 1950s, the NCCL campaigned for reform of the mental health system, under which people known to be sane but deemed 'morally defective' – unmarried mothers, for example – could be locked up in an asylum. By 1957, the campaign had seen the release of around 2,000 inmates, the abolition of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, and the establishment of new Mental Health Review Tribunals which culminated in the Mental Health Act 1959. Since 2016, Liberty's work has been dominated by a High Court challenge to the Investigatory Powers Act, as well as campaigning against the so called 'hostile environment' policies which allow indefinite immigration detention in the UK. The first Secretary was Ronald Kidd, and first President was the novelist E. M. Forster; vice presidents were the politician and author A. P. Herbert and the journalist Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman. H. G. Wells, Lewis Clive, Vera Brittain, Clement Attlee, Rebecca West, Edith Summerskill and Harold Laski were also founder members. The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) was founded in 1934. The inaugural meeting took place in the church of St. Martin in the Fields in London on 22 February. A letter published in The Times and The Guardian newspapers announced the formations of the group, citing "the general and alarming tendency to encroachment on the liberty of the citizen" as the reason for its establishment. The first campaign was against the criminalisation of pacifist or anti war literature. Under the proposed Incitement to Disaffection Bill, commonly known as the 'Sedition Bill', it would have been a criminal offence to possess pacifist literature, for example anti war pamphlets. Although the Bill became law as the Incitement to Disaffection Act 1934, NCCL succeeded in watering it down.

When Oswald Mosley was released from prison in 1943 (he had been imprisoned without trial under Defence Regulation 18B), the National Council for Civil Liberties demanded his continued imprisonment. A. W. Brian Simpson notes that the NCCL "had become an enthusiastic supporter of detention without trial". Harold Nicolson and 38 others resigned from the NCCL over the issue.

In 1989, NCCL rebranded as "Liberty". During this period, the organisation was headed by Andrew Puddephatt and John Wadham. On 10 September 2001, Shami Chakrabarti joined Liberty. After working as in house counsel, she was appointed director of Liberty in 2003. As director, she began campaigning against what the pressure group saw as the "excessive" anti terrorist measures that followed the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, such as the Anti terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA). Liberty became increasingly high profile, with Chakrabarti making regular appearances in the media. She was described in The Times newspaper as "the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years". Since the 2015 UK general election, Liberty has spearheaded the campaign to save the Human Rights Act. In August 2015, Chakrabarti said Liberty intended to become "more vigilant and active" in Scotland. She later shared a platform with Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to jointly defend the HRA. In January 2016 it emerged that Chakrabarti was standing down as Liberty's director. Martha Spurrier took up the post at the end of May. Since 2016, Liberty's work has been dominated by taking a High Court challenge to the Investigatory Powers Act, and campaigning against the so called 'hostile environment' policies and for an end to the use of indefinite immigration detention in the UK. In autumn 2019, the organisation set up Liberty Investigates, an editorially independent journalism unit that sits within Liberty. The unit formally launched in April 2020 with an initial focus on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting Human Rights in the UK.

Immediately following the 2015 general election result, Liberty launched a campaign to save the Human Rights Act. The Conservative Party – which had won a majority – had included a pledge in its manifesto to repeal the Act. Liberty called this "a knowing attempt by Government ministers to hand itself the right to end the universality of human rights and choose when and to whom they apply". In May 2016, Liberty, Amnesty International UK and the British Institute of Human Rights published a statement opposing repeal of the Act, backed by more than 130 organisations including UK Families Flight 103, Friends of the Earth, Refuge, Quakers in Britain, Stonewall, the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Down's Syndrome Association and the Football Supporters' Federation. In July 2015, Liberty coordinated an intervention from a number of former Anti Apartheid campaigners including Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane and Denis Goldberg.

Liberty represents the families of three of four young soldiers who died of gunshot wounds at Deepcut army barracks between 1995 and 2002 – Cheryl James, Sean Benton and James Collinson. Liberty used the Human Rights Act to compel Surrey Police to disclose evidence about the deaths to the families, which they were then able to use to apply for fresh inquests. The second inquest into the death of Cheryl James took place at Woking Coroner's Court from January to April 2016. On 3 June 2016, Coroner Brian Barker QC recorded a verdict of suicide, delivering a narrative verdict that strongly condemned the culture at Deepcut. Following the verdict, Liberty called for reform to tackle the "pervasive sexualised culture" in the Armed Forces. The second inquest into the death of Sean Benton also took place from January to June 2018, also in Woking. On 18 July 2018, Coroner Peter Rook QC also recorded a verdict of suicide and again strongly criticised failings at Deepcut and in the Surrey Police investigation. Following the verdict, Liberty and Sean's family called for all serious crimes within the Armed Forces to be investigated by the civilian police, rather than the Royal Military Police.

Liberty represented the family of Corporal Anne Marie Ellement, a Royal Military Police Office who took her own life in 2011 after alleging that she had been raped by two colleagues. An initial inquest in March 2012 recorded a verdict of suicide, but Anne Marie's family, represented by Liberty, used the Human Rights Act to secure a second, more thorough inquest. They alleged that Anne Marie had been bullied and that the Royal Military Police had failed in their duty of care. On 3 July 2014, Nicholas Rheinberg – Coroner in the second inquest – ruled that bullying, the lingering effect of the alleged rape and "work related despair" had contributed to Anne Marie's suicide. On 29 October 2015, the Service Prosecuting Authority announced that two former soldiers had been charged with raping Anne Marie and stated that "the original decision by the SPA not to prosecute was 'wrong'". The two men were acquitted on 20 April 2016. In October 2016, the Royal Military Police apologised to Anne Marie's family for failings and mistakes in the original rape investigation. In November 2017, the Ministry of Defence announced it would stop Commanding Officers investigating allegations of sexual assault themselves – a call Liberty had made from Corporal Ellement's 2014 inquest.

Following Edward Snowden's whistleblowing in 2013, mass surveillance became a major part of Liberty's work. Shortly after the revelations, Liberty brought a legal challenge to the UK government's practices with a coalition of other organisations, including Amnesty International, Privacy International and ACLU. In September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that GCHQ's bulk interception practices had violated privacy rights and failed to provide sufficient safeguards. In 2014, Liberty represented MPs David Davis and Tom Watson in a legal challenge to the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA), claiming that it breached privacy rights. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by the Court of Appeal, and in December 2016 the ECJ ruled that the general and indiscriminate retention of emails and electronic communications by governments was illegal. In January 2018, the Court of Appeal found DRIPA unlawful. Throughout 2016, Liberty campaigned against what it believed to be a serious lack of privacy safeguards in the Investigatory Powers Bill. The Bill passed in November 2016. In January 2017, Liberty launched a crowdfunder to raise funds to challenge the Act in the High Court, raising more than £53,000 in a week. Liberty's challenge to various parts of the Investigatory Powers Act is ongoing. In April 2018, the High Court issued its ruling on the first part of the challenge, giving the government six months to rewrite core parts of the Act, which it found incompatible with EU law.

Liberty represented John Walker in a legal challenge to a loophole in the Equality Act which let employers exempt same sex spouses from spousal pension benefits. Upon retirement from Innospec, John had discovered that his husband would only receive a few hundred pounds a year. If he were married to a woman, she would have received around £45,000. In July 2017, the Supreme Court found the loophole unlawful under EU law.

Liberty campaigned against the introduction of the 'hostile environment' policies and has since campaigned for their repeal. It has also campaigned against data sharing arrangements between immigration enforcement and public services including hospitals, schools and police. In August 2017, Liberty exposed that the Home Office had secretly gained access to nationality data on homeless people in London.

Liberty produces briefings on its campaign issues, as well as researching and writing reports on particular areas of human rights and civil liberties.

Being a cross party, non party political organisation, Liberty regularly publishes briefings to MPs and peers, to provide consultation to parliamentary committees and to respond to consultations on issues relating to human rights and civil liberties in the UK.