PARLIAMENTARY ANTI-FREE SPEECH ACTIVISM

 

PARLIAMENTARY ANTI-FREE SPEECH ACTIVISM

 

Looking beyond the current froth of the Conservative leadership election it is noteworthy how large a majority there seems to be in parliament across all the British Establishment parties, to crack down on free speech and on many traditional English civil liberties. 

 

The On-Line Harms Bill in particular is a Bill that would give concern to any who cares at all for free speech.  In addition to that, there is the clamp down on the right to protest whereby you will be able to get up to 10 years imprisonment for taking part in a protest where you could “Annoy” somebody!  You might think that annoying those people that you are protesting against might be the obvious purpose of such a protest! 

 

We also have the whole “Cancel Culture” phenomenon whereby those members of the Statist Multi-culturalist Establishment who now control many of our public institutions are able to prevent people hearing any contrary narrative.  There was also, of course, the whole Orwellian displacement of free speech during the “Pandemic”.  We were not allowed to protest or otherwise tweet. Also we were not allowed to even tweet anything that disputed their narrative. Anything broadcast on any of the Mainstream Media which challenged the narrative was also banned.

 

We can see where all this is heading towards.  It may not be long before anyone challenging the new British Establishment, or Multi-culturalism, or Globalism, or Internationalism, is likely to be arrested.

 

We saw some of that with a Reclaim activist who merely re-tweeted Laurence Fox’s jokey meme transforming the LGBGTQ+ flag into a Swastika being arrested by Hampshire Police for the possibility for having “Offended” somebody.

 

England was once known for our Rule of Law and our Freedoms - but no longer.  The British authorities think that the Rule of Law is us doing what they tell us to do, which shows us how far gone they are, as the whole point of the Rule of Law was that the authorities were restricted in what they could do by Law. 

 

It is however, as it often is, worth delving back into history to see whether there are any parallels in the past. 

 

I have recently been reading extracts from William Cobbett’s “Rural Rides” from the 1820’s.  William Cobbett was amongst many other attributes of this very able man, a radical politician, who was then called radical for being in favour of universal suffrage i.e. the right of everyone to vote!

 

In 1819 the Parliament passed a series of Six Acts which made it the crime of sedition even to criticise Parliament.  The consequence was that William Cobbett, along with many other “radical” politicians, was regularly being arrested and sometimes locked up for simply criticising the Government and Parliament. 

 

It did take 12 years of campaigning to succeed in getting the enactment of the Great Reform Act in 1832 which brought Cobbett into Parliament and onto the Front Bench and radically changed politics.  By the end of that century we had universal manhood suffrage and less than 100 years later in 1927, we had universal adult suffrage. 

 

The point that I am making is that looking back into history we can now barely imagine the mind-set of a Parliament which opposed widening the franchise so viciously that it would have its opponents locked up! 

 

This is a vivid example of just how wrong headed the current Establishment approach may be in criminalising its opponents.  They are thereby demonstrating that they do not really have very good arguments for their position!

 

Of course, if they did have good arguments, they would be using them, rather than trying to close down our arguments which they fear are likely to beat theirs!

 

My message therefore is don’t be discouraged.  However bad the positon may appear to be now it doesn’t mean that the counter arguments are lost.