The policeman and the sportsman

I’ve been watching an online debate the past few days about freedom in the UK. A sportsman, who has had his liberty to pursue his sport removed by the state, was accused by a police officer of having a very different idea of freedom than his own. Effectively the sportsman said that the states destruction of his sport was singing from the same song sheet as other forms of oppression and was just another symptom of decline of freedom in the UK.

The officer would not concede the point. My view on freedom lies a long way from your own he said. I could almost see the superior disregarding wave of the hand.

He stated that the loss of the sport is not a symptom of a more general decline in freedom. A decline in freedom is instead categorised by things such as the prevention of public demonstrations or by the incarceration of people for their personal beliefs. These are the characteristics of a decline of freedom. The imposition of legislation that destroyed the pastime of a minority is not.

What struck me about this exchange is the officer’s notion of freedom and also his inaccuracy. It’s clear that he only considers the major freedoms as defining factors in the overall freedom of a country and in the direction that the country is heading. Little incidentals are not of concern and if those little incidentals affect only an unpopular minority then so much the better. Such things can be safely discounted.

He is tragically wrong.

That is exactly how freedom is lost, over time and in small steps. And when the slide beings it is the unpopular minorities that are the first to feel its effects. I would say that such things are not only on the same song sheet as the officer’s larger freedoms but actually characterise the opening verses. Without them there would be no song.

Then we come to the officers big freedoms and even with these we can see the cracks. For instance we have the man in Exeter arrested for telling someone off for celebrating the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. We have the sacking of a prison officer for making an allegedly insulting remark about Osama bin Laden. We have the arrest of Robin Page for urging that the rural minority be given the same legal protection as other minorities. We have a recent police investigation of the Bishop of Chester for his sermon about homosexuality. We have the alleged use of the anti-terrorism act to impede demonstrators at a recent arms show. I am sure that if I browsed a few British blogs I could come up with many more signs; indications of the path we are now on.

Then we see another characteristic of the decent. An increase in legislation and power afforded to the state without essential controls to ensure the liberty of the citizen. We see a change in the machinery in favour of government and slowly the whole idea of a government that is there for the people flips into one of a government that is there primarily for itself.

When people like Lord Woolf call for new constitution on this very basis we begin to see how far we have decended and how dangerous things have become:

A written constitution may be needed to protect judges and citizens from the Government's "disturbing" legal changes, according to Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice.

Woolf thinks things are getting so bad that us British now need additional constitutional protection. Protection from whom? Not from an enemy that threatens our shorelines but from our own government.

And then of course we come to the principal agency for enforcing current and future government restrictions and oppression, the UK Police Force. Perhaps now we come to the reason why the officer and the sportsman differ in their idea of freedom and differ in the degree to which they think this country has descended.

One is in a privileged position, afforded a level of power over his fellow citizen by the state. One is not.

So what then must we do? To be honest, I cannot point to any specific remedy. But I do think it would be a good start if we could simply get the message to enough of our fellow citizens that the traditional Anglo-Saxon common law freedoms they take for granted are in mortal danger and that they are sleepwalking into a state of despotism.