‘I pass protesters every day at Downing Street, and believe me, you name it, they protest against it. I may not like what they call me but I thank God they can. That's called freedom’
Not only does that statement, made by Tony Blair in 2002, sound intolerably smug, but it’s also become increasingly untrue...
People dislike the constant wittering about civil liberties, but situation really has become rather bad, as countless examples attest. A few will do. How can it be, firstly, that a 20-year-old girl was arrested at the Midlands Game Fair for wearing a ‘Bollocks to Blair’ t-shirt, on the basis that old ladies might be offended? Worse still, how can it be that a peaceful protest was punished under terrorism laws? This concerns last week’s news that the controversial new security powers intended to protect Parliament were used to prosecute a peace campaigner. Maya Anne Evans, a 25-year-old cook, became the first person to be prosecuted under the law which bans unauthorised demonstrations within one kilometre of Westminster after reciting the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq outside the gates of Downing Street. And, for the sake of another instance, how can it be that a peace protester, who the courts have said may stay where he is, could be forcibly removed by police, arrested and then released without charge? This is of course a reference to Brian Haw, who’s been stationed in Parliament Square for years.
There has been much discussion of this across the press. A slangy slogan, capable of causing more offence to the PM than old ladies; a peaceful protest that is evidently not a terrorist threat; a man arrested for doing nothing: faced with the usual government sophistry, with the obfuscation of the police and the vast web of new laws against freedom of speech and against civil liberty, no wonder the people of Britain are feeling impotent. It smacks of Orwell and Huxley. How prescient those doom mongers are now turning out to be. But what can be done?
... And incompetent
On a different note, the BBC reports today that OfSTED has declared that poor levels of literacy and numeracy are marring improvements in standards in primary and secondary schools in England. For our take on this, see the first in a two part piece for the Spectator.