Henry Porter
Henry Porter is a man whose views I respect. His Vanity Fair article, reprinted in yesterday's Indy, made many salient points.'In the guise of fighting terrorism', he argues, Blair's government has 'taken power from Parliament and the British people'.
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act is perhaps the most obvious example of Blair's authoritarian style. We continue to see people arrested as if they pose some deadly threat by peacefully protesting in Westminster.
Certain aspects of ASBOs (the so-called presumption of guilt) are also a worrying development, although I think the basic idea of looking at an individual's persistent misbehaviour, rather than pinpointing single, minor offences, makes a lot of sense. The fact 'hearsay' is admissable as evidence in ASBO cases is of course unnerving; neighbours are able to police each other. Pat next door can get the state on you for any number of trivial reasons, if she takes a dislike to you.
Coupled with ASBO TV we can perhaps understand why the government is so sensitive about people quoting George Orwell in public.
Porter includes some pertinent quotes in his article, which I shall reproduce here (stay with me):
If you will not fight for the right, when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, becasue it is better to perish than live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill.
If you throw live frogs into a pan of boiling water, they will sensibly jump out and save themselves. If you put them in a pan of cold water and gently apply the heat until the water boils they will lie in the pan and boil to death.
-Shami Chakrabarti.
Homosexual practices are not acceptable.
-Iqbal Sacranie.
The first quote would serve to warn us against the dangers to established civillian liberties posed by Blair and the Labour Party.
Make no mistake about it: Blair's threat is as tangible as Chakrabarti describes.
The third quote is representative of an increasingly significant section of British society. A basic goal for many Muslims is to make England an Islamic state. I'm not being sensationalist here. I know Muslim men who are the nicest people you could meet, my next door neighbour for one, who would never ally themselves with those who kill in the name of Islam. But for a Muslim to want to establish an Islamic state in Britain is as natural as a Born Again Christian knocking on your front door with a bible in hand. That's what religions do.
While Porter seeks to defend civil liberties he needs to remember the rights of everybody, including those who would suffer if responsible attitudes to free speech were not maintained. In fact, the best example of the value of this responsible attitude was the refusal of the British press to publish the infamous cartoon depicting Mohammad.
Sacranie would do well to observe this code of responsibility himself (and free himself from the chains of hypocrisy).
And well meaning libertarians would do well to observe the faults of our "external" enemies as well as those of our "internal" ones. I cannot fall in line with those people who honestly believe Bush and Blair are simply protecting the people of the world from evil. But neither can I defend the actions of one type of tyrant simply to attack another.
posted by Phu @ 12:58 pm
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