Genghis Khan or Jacqui Smith? Tricky choice. One is a polite Nu-Lab minister in a sensible suit, the other founded the Mongol empire with fire and the sword. On the other hand, Genghis's eventual boast was that “a virgin with a bag of gold around her neck could walk naked from one end of the realm to another without being attacked”. Whereas Jacqui Smith apparently doesn't even have an ambition to make this small, affluent, educated country safe for the fully dressed after 10pm.

The revelation occurred in an interview. The Home Secretary was droning peacefully on about how “people are safer in terms of crime than ten years ago” (ignoring, as they always do, the fact that much street crime goes unreported because there's no point, and that the drop in crime figures has more to do with car alarms than policing).

Then the canny reporter asked whether she personally, would feel safe walking alone in Hackney at night? And the minister said “No. Why would I do that?” OK then, Kensington or Chelsea: would she walk alone at night there? “No,” replied the Home Secretary again, adding the appalling line: “But I never would have done, at any point in my life. I just don't think it's a thing that people do. I wouldn't walk around at midnight. I'm fortunate that I don't have to.”

Boing, splat! She said it; and worse, she has no idea why it is dreadful. In a desperate attempt to spin her clear, an aide revealed that his boss bravely bought a kebab in Peckham recently.

Investigative hacks discovered that this was at 5pm, and with a protection officer. Later the Home Secretary said yes, she would walk around in her own constituency (expressing terror of one's voters is never politically helpful) but added: “You don't walk in areas you don't know, in any circumstances”; and that her task is to “persuade” people that they are safe.

No. The task is to make them safe. On any street, any time. We do not ask for the right to walk around naked with bags of gold, just to be more confident that men like Garry Newlove will not be kicked to death by lads on bail, that a stabbing will be a nine-day wonder not a routine shrug, and that shift workers, women, partygoers, insomniacs, eccentrics and teenagers themselves should walk in safety.

Government exists to protect its citizens' liberties, and the most important of these is personal freedom of movement. Without it there is no equality, no choice, no free expression, no real prosperity. Abdicate responsibility for any bit of any city, any time of night, and you are on the downhill slope. When the question about whether she would walk alone at night was sprung on Ms Smith she should have answered: “I certainly hope so. I am forced to have bodyguards, but if I wasn't I would expect the streets to be safe at any time. It's a big part of my job to make that so.”

Her actual answers - “Why would I do that?... I just don't think it's a thing that people do” - were breathtakingly crass; reminiscent of the ironic comment by Chris Patten about the Tories' over-long grip on purring ministerial cars: “Nobody I know owns a raincoat.” Not everyone lives beside a bus stop, station or indeed a parking space, and taxis are expensive. If she was Jacqui the night cleaner she'd damn well have to walk through her city at night, in order to work and pay taxes (to fund those ministerial cars). Likewise if she was Jacqui the student, singleton or teenager wanting a social life beyond the cramped four walls of home, she would often need to cross “areas she didn't know”. Besides, how can a Government that legitimised 24-hour drinking and rightly penalises drunk-driving be surprised when people walk home? Is the Home Secretary an idiot?

Excuse the passion. For 40 years I have walked through cities in the dark as a matter of utility and principle. At 17 I regularly crossed Hamburg, including the Reeperbahn; in my first job walked to Pimlico from Bush House at 2am after night shifts; and once left a party, in a tipsy temper, to walk several miles to Maida Vale by the moonlit canal, thinking (probably aloud).

In 1977 I joined the women's “Reclaim the Night” march, less out of feminist feeling than a general sense that night freedom is too precious to be stolen by villains. I have traversed the solitary hours in cities from Paris to Singapore; today, going round literary festivals in provincial towns I consider it my inalienable right to stroll back to the hotel whatever time it is, albeit picking my way through knots of helpless drunkards (as Thora Hird once said: “They're less trouble, you've only to push 'em”). I have had my purse snatched once, and in Hamburg years ago was grabbed by a crazy-looking man in an underpass; I kicked hard and shrieked, and he wisely ran away as a confident middle-aged German couple appeared in the entrance.

I am not foolhardy; I stay away from alleys and don't flash jewellery. But I know parts of London in particular to be increasingly dangerous, and with growing caution comes growing rage. I will not be kept cringing indoors, not by day or night; nor should any man or woman in a free country. Reclaim the night! In that cause it is well worth frightening louts and their parents, doing random searches, breaking gangs, hammering drug dealers, herding thieving addicts into rehab and flooding the streets with zero-tolerance police with Singaporean attitudes.

“Walk at night? Why would anyone do that?” asks the Home Secretary. Because we're free human beings, that's why.

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