“The game is up” announced Theresa May.
The Home Secretary has outlined new counter-extremism measures to be introduced if a Conservative government wins the election. These include ‘closure orders’ to shut premises owned or used by extremists, and 'extremism disruption orders' which could be used against individuals.
With increasing media attention on the small numbers of British Muslims joining the so-called Islamic State, this announcement is unsurprising and will be welcomed by much of the general public.
How have public attitudes to security and civil liberties changed since 2000?
The graph shows the overall positions of each religious group on a ‘Libertarian-Authoritarian’ socio-political axis, based on their responses to a series of statements in the British Social Attitudes survey from 2000 to 2012 (see below). On this scale 1 is the most ‘libertarian’ possible and 5 is the most ‘authoritarian’.
We can see that the population as a whole is more authoritarian than libertarian, and has become slightly more authoritarian since 2000.
Anglicans tended to have the most authoritarian values, although unlike the other groups they did not become more authoritarian as the period progressed.
Those with no religious affiliation tended to have the most libertarian values, although as a group they shifted more towards authoritarianism over the period.
The other groups tended to oscillate between these poles. Those belonging to non-Christian religions showed the greatest shift towards authoritarian values over the period. It should be noted, however, that wide fluctuations in responses from this group may have been influenced by its small sample size.
The differences in opinion between groups on the BSA statements tended not to be substantial or consistent. The exception concerned attitudes to censorship, where there was a deep difference in opinion across the period between the non-religious and all religious groups.
These conclusions are drawn from the responses of different religious groups to the following Libertarian-Authoritarian statements in the BSA survey:
• People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences
• For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence
• Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values
• Schools should teach children to obey authority
• Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards
• The law should always be obeyed, even if a particular law is wrong
This snippet taken from our report on Voting and Values in Britain: Does religion count? (pp. 92-93).
See the full report here and an Executive Summary here for further analysis of voting behaviour and religious identity.
Data source: British Social Attitudes 2000-2012
Individual traditions within the 'Other Christian' and 'Other religion' categories are grouped together within the BSA data due to small sample sizes.
