Even a prominent Leftist is getting sick of modern Britain

A former editor of “New Society” speaks:

“Mantraps, ready to cripple liberty, lie all around us, as if we were villagers trying to poach the lord’s game. First I place the steady abolition of the secret ballot, fought for from the Chartists on. This government persists with a scheme that will end in all-postal voting, wide open to fraud and coercion. It gives all power to the man who wants to be master in his house, making his family vote as he does. I know the arguments about increased participation, but true dilemmas are choices not between good and evil, but between rival virtues. Here, quality should outweigh quantity. It’s up to politicians to ensure their message entices voters to polling booths.

Then we have the forcing through of identity cards. No longer shall we be able to read ironically about Stendhal’s romantic hero Fabrice, as he struggles with constant demands for his “papers” in the petty 19th century tyrannies portrayed in La Chartreuse de Parme. We, too, will have to show our papers, everywhere. No evidence has been produced that the system would hinder real villains or terrorists. It’s been driven through as a sheer Nietzschean exercise in will by the prime minister and his tame home secretaries.

Again, there’s the grotesque illiberalism of the foxhunting vote. I don’t hunt, nor have I any wish to. But in reading Sassoon, Surtees or Trollope, I recognise that it’s a long, not dishonourable thread through the fabric of English culture. Admittedly, this law was driven through not by Blair, but by Labour backbenchers - so keen to show their own transient freedom, for once, that they forgot about other people’s. But it was Blair who let this “promise” (which he hoped never to keep) stand in his manifestos. If we were really hunting down animal cruelty, far more animals die drawn-out deaths from kosher and halal slaughter. None of these minority pursuits should be actually banned (as opposed to campaigned about).

Finally, we have the project to forbid vigorous criticism of religions. It’s a censor’s dream. Wordsworth’s plea got it right: “Milton! [and Blake and Russell and Chesterton] thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; she is a fen of stagnant waters.” This anti-libertarian law is proposed as a gross sectarian palliative, for mere political gain: the prospect of more Labour votes from Muslims.

Voltaire and Swift proved that what dogmatists fear most is mockery. This truth was rubbed home in December by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, the Sikh playwright so disgracefully unprotected by the police - and government. As her satirical play closed and death threats drove her into hiding, Fiona MacTaggart, the minister for race equality, took it all on the chin. The violent dispute was, she said, “a sign of a lively, flourishing cultural life”.

Meanwhile, all the government’s diktats, its tsarist ukases, rain down from the centre. This regime is wedded to social intervention, for which a better phrase would be social manipulation. Fortunately, the pronouncements are often ignored atlocal level. Peter the Great issued an ukase ordering that all previous ukases be obeyed. The government must often feel similar frustration. It says “Don’t smoke”, and people continue to smoke. It says “Drink two units”, and they continue to drink five. It says “Waste your money by putting it in a Pru pension scheme”, and they persist in taking out loans to buy houses. People cling to their eternal (I hope) right to go to hell in their own way.

Last month’s findings from the annual British social attitudes survey cast authoritative light on the upshot: disenchantment with a form of politics that seems to have little to do with most people’s own anxieties. The most prominent anxiety is a wish to cut immigration. Newcomers are often seen as freeriders on a welfare state other people’s taxes paid for…

The man, or woman, in Whitehall doesn’t know best. Even in the government’s current troubles, the present chances of change seem bleak. But every libertarian must hope it’s the dark before the dawn. Otherwise, forget America and Russia: it’s farewell freedom in Britain”.

More here.  (Via Blithering Bunny)

Posted by jonjayray on Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 05:28 PM in British Politics
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