[3] 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.
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.
[6] 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.
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.
[7] Other prominent early themes included campaigning against fascists, against film censorship and support for striking miners in Nottinghamshire.
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).
[19][20] 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.
[26] It campaigned for the retaining of the public right to petition the ECHR, its General Secretary Martin Loney writing to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath.
[27] Opposition to racial discrimination After 1960, NCCL responded to the tightening of immigration laws and a rise in race-hate incidents by lobbying for the Race Relations Act, which came into force in 1965.
NCCL also published pamphlets exposing the effective 'colour bar', whereby black and Asian people were refused service in certain pubs and hotels.
[28] Data protection In 1975 NCCL bought 3 million credit rating files from Konfax Ltd after they were offered for sale in the Evening Standard.
The files were destroyed and the major privacy protection 'Right to Know' campaign to give individuals greater control over their personal information was launched in 1977.
[37] Chakrabarti and Liberty claimed a major campaign victory when the government dropped the proposal after it was rejected by the House of Lords in October 2008.
The billboard campaign used computer-generated images of Colin Joyce and Lee Amos to show how the "aged" criminals would look when they are finally released from prison in the 2040s.
[39] Cream of Conscience November 2011 saw Liberty successfully assist in preventing Westminster City Council from implementing a proposed byelaw which would have essentially criminalised "soup runs" within areas of Southwark.
The Bill was introduced as a result of prolific media investigations and litigation surrounding the UK Government and proposed "secret courts"[44] and evidence which would be non-disclosable.
[47] Gary McKinnon was charged in 2002 of hacking into US military and NASA systems, but maintains that he was looking for UFOs and evidence of free energy suppression.
Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti said of the Home Secretary's decision "This is a great day for rights, freedoms and justice in the United Kingdom.
[55] 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.
[56] In July 2015, Liberty coordinated an intervention from a number of former Anti-Apartheid campaigners including Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane and Denis Goldberg.
[58] 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.
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.
[61] 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.
[63] 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.
[67] 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.
[70] 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.
[76][77] 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.
In August 2017, Liberty exposed that the Home Office had secretly gained access to nationality data on homeless people in London.
[80] In June 2018, Liberty announced it would be representing Cardiff resident Ed Bridges in a legal challenge to South Wales Police's use of facial recognition technology in public spaces.