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The interim director of Liberty comes near to defending liberty

While Gracie Mae Bradley does not go all the way, her opinion piece in the Guardian, “How the British government is trying to crush our right to protest”, does get close to an actual defence of liberty.

In 2020 each of us has faced criminalisation for leaving the house without a “reasonable excuse”. Police have used surveillance drones to shame people walking in national parks. And countless people have been wrongly criminalised under the rushed and draconian Coronavirus Act, which also contains powers to force people to quarantine, close our borders, and even postpone some elections. And in all of this, parliament has been sidelined, with some lockdown laws, which have regulated aspects of our daily lives to a minute degree, coming into force at the stroke of a minister’s pen, with parliament given an opportunity to vote only weeks later.

Here is the moment when she defends the right to protest of those with whom she disagrees:

Across the board, the response from the government and police has raised cause for serious concern. Scores of people have been arrested for taking to the streets to protest against lockdown restrictions.

It was never going to last. The brief encounter with libertarian principle over, she marks her return to respectability by reciting the names of the holy things.

We could be disheartened, but instead we should look to the many powerful protest movements that have persisted nonetheless – from school climate strikers, to opponents of the exam “mutant algorithm”, to people fighting for racial equality. It’s up to all of us to protect our hard-won freedoms: 2021 is going to be hard enough for the government – it should drop this protest bill before it sees the light of day.

Indeed it should. But one does not have to agree with the climate strikers or BLM to think so.

12 comments to The interim director of Liberty comes near to defending liberty

  • ‘Liberty’ have been as much use as a chocolate teapot for a great many years.

  • Jon

    How hard would it be to actually co-opt Liberty? It can’t have many members and I don’t suppose it has all that much money.

    Why not take it over?

  • Rob

    Liberty support liberty for their fellow travellers, they haven’t supported genuine liberty for a couple of decades or more.

  • To be fair, part of politics and persuasion is getting people to do things your way for their reasons rather than for yours. If reciting certain names of power gets your target audience to stand up and salute then that is the way to go. 🙂

  • Paul Marks

    The point is the different way that protests are treated – on ideological grounds.

    “Anti racists” can “protest” by looting and burning – and the establishment (including the medical establishment) SUPPORT that.

    But if people peacefully protest against “lockdowns” and the rest of the “Inclusive Capitalism” “Sustainable Development” totalitarian agenda – then such people are brutally crushed.

    And, I repeat, the idea that such people Mr Joseph Biden or Prime Minister Alexander Johnson come up with these policies themselves is absurd – are we expected to believe that international governments just woke up one morning with very detailed policies and even the SAME SLOGANS?

    They all just woke up saying “Build Back Better” and “Great Reset” – so many different governments and Corporations just happening to come up with the same words?

    There is no “conspiracy” here – because conspiracy implies something hidden. The meetings of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, and the various other government and Corporate bodies, are out in the open.

    No “conspiracy” – just blindness by some people who try and maintain that all these policies were thought up, independently, by such people as “President Elect” Biden or Prime Minister Johnson – people not exactly well known for being “details” people.

    Face it – the governments of the West are doing what they are TOLD TO DO, and these plans have been in the works for many many years. Covid 19 just allowed a pre existing line of policy to be pushed faster internationally.

  • Schrodinger's Dog

    What’s her issue?

    I thought BLM and the school climate strikers were already exempt from the coronavirus regulations.

  • John B

    The question is why are climate & BLM protestors allowed, but others not? Once we get an answer to that, all will be revealed.

  • staghounds

    I know I know!

  • Surellin

    “We could be disheartened, but instead we should look to the many powerful protest movements that have persisted nonetheless…”. Persisted, or been permitted?

  • Paul Marks

    John B – it is hardly a difficult question.

    Marxist (specifically Frankfurt School Marxist) Black Lives Matter “protests” are allowed, indeed massively PUSHED – because they benefit the Establishment Elite.

    These Marxist rioters are not going to burn down the home of Jeff Bezos or any of the Super Rich – they loot and burn his small business competitors.

    The Marxists, knowingly or not, serve the interests of the giant Super Corporations – Google, Amazon, Bank of America and-so-on.

    Not that these vast Corporations want Free Enterprise – most certainly NOT.

    They want “Inclusive Capitalism” – the crushing of all free competition and freedom generally, in the name of “Sustainable Development”.

    Saint-Simon would be delighted.

    Karl Marx?

    I am not sure what he would think of it all.

  • Paul Marks

    Of course you can stand against all this if you want – you can make a gallant stand for Freedom of Speech and so on.

    However, you will then be removed – as President Trump is being removed (in his case by massive Election Fraud).

    “I will go to the courts – they will defend justice!”

    Oh no they will NOT. Judges are “educated” in the same schools and universities as the other Collectivists in “Woke” Big Business, the international government bureaucracies, and so on.

  • Paul Marks

    It must be remembered that the wealth of the international elite is NOT really “capitalist” at all.

    We do not have honest money (a commodity – gold, silver, whatever) and we ALSO do not have financial system based on REAL SAVINGS (capital – as in capitalism).

    The modern system is based on Credit Bubble finance – they are the “Aristocracy of Pull”, their wealth depends on POLITICAL INFLUENCE – which is why the strut about in Davos and other such places.

    Whether it is the Credit Bubble bankers of New York or the Tech Lords of California – they have more in common with the looters and burners on the streets, than they do with honest production and trade.

    And they know it – which is why they support the looters and burners on the streets.

    Their “education” (in the Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” dominated schools and universities) comes together with their SELF INTEREST.

    They want a Collectivist system in which freedom is utterly exterminated. Perhaps not on a strictly Marxist model – but certainly on a sort of Saint-Simon model with Big Business in charge of the socialist state – and with the Credit Bubble bankers (and payment processors) at the top. All in the name of SCIENCE – SCIENCE, SCIENCE, SCIENCE.