Thought police muscle up in Britain
Hal G. P. Colebatch
The Australian
April 21, 2009
BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison.
The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."
A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."
Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.
Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.
A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.
There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities.
The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.
Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?" is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture.
Hal G. P. Colebatch's Blair's Britain was chosen as a book of the year by The Spectator in 1999.
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UPDATE.
UK bill an attack on faith
Hal G.P. Colebatch
The Australian
June 30, 2009
I WROTE here in April that Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state, but it seems I didn't know the half of it.
A sinister new equality bill is before a parliamentary committee. So far there has been surprisingly little about it in the British media, although the Catholic Church has called attention to the fact it would give the government unprecedented powers to police not only public but private religious and other activities.
The Thomas More Legal Centre's director Neil Addison recently said that under this bill, "nearly every form of discrimination is banned, even for private associations and churches. Christian churches are to be banned from preferring Christians in their employment practices except in the employment of priests or religious teachers. They are not going to be able to insist that employees live in accordance with the ideals or principles of the church, and any employment or membership decision they take can be investigated by an unelected quango, the Equality and Human Rights Commission."
This is only the first stage. The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have warned that religious schools and care homes could be forced to remove crucifixes, holy pictures or other religious symbols or icons from their walls in case they offend atheist or non-Catholic cleaners. Under the terms of the bill, Catholic institutions could be guilty of harassment if they display images offensive to non-Catholics.
Ordinary laws already offer protection from harassment in the normal course of events. The draft bill defines harassment in the widest possible terms as "unwanted conduct ... with the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment".
The bishops, after taking legal advice, say that because the burden of proof for such a highly subjective definition is reversed in legal proceedings under the terms of the bill, it would put them in an impossible position if people complained about any manifestation of religious belief, even on church property.
Andrew Summersgill, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, says: "The practical consequences of this are that a Catholic care home, for example, may have crucifixes and holy pictures on the walls (that) reflect and support the beliefs of the residents. A cleaner may be an atheist or of very different religious beliefs. Nonetheless, if a cleaner found the crucifixes offensive, there would be no defence in law against a charge of harassment."
It also would be illegal under the bill to refuse employment to such non-believers. Catholic schools could likewise be forced to remove crucifixes or holy pictures if atheist or non-Catholic dinner ladies found them offensive. Beyond decorations, symbols and icons, this may open the way for state interference in invisible and perhaps more profound matters of doctrine.
There is no test of reasonableness in the draft bill, such as is contained in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. "It is tailor-made for people to come up with objections because it puts the emphasis on the person being offended rather than on an objective test of what ought to be considered reasonable," Addison says.
A proponent of the bill, Stephen Whittle of Press for Change, effectively agrees. He told the parliamentary committee examining the bill: "We would argue strongly that we experience discrimination because other people think that we look different. It is what those other people do, not what we do, that creates that discrimination. Therefore, the bill needs to refocus on what it is those other people see and react to."
The bill is largely the creation of the Labour Party's deputy leader and Equality Minister Harriet Harman, one of the party's most committed left-wing social engineering activists, who probably has as much clout in the government as anyone.
Although the bill was supposed to ensure protection for religious groups,
Harman neglected to mention this when she announced the proposals in the House of Commons last month. Recently she also refused to allow a debate on the rising numbers of religious believers complaining that they are discriminated against in the public sector. There has been a string of cases of people suspended or sacked for expressing their religious convictions, wearing religious symbols such as crucifixes or, in the case of one nurse, offering to pray or a patient.
London priest Tim Finigan says: "For the government to promote this agenda in extreme form at a time when the political system is suffering unparalleled contempt and the far-right groups have their best opportunity for years is stupid beyond belief."
While the potential for government interference with private religious activities is serious enough, the bill may go much further: as it stands it will, for example, also allow the government to control the membership criteria of political parties and movements, as well as private clubs and societies.
Hal G.P. Colebatch's book Blair's Britain was chosen as a book of the year by The Spectator in 1999.
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