The vast majority of the British public opposes the government’s nannying campaign, according to a poll released today by the campaign group Reform. It shows that 71% of the public think that “Too many infringements on personal liberty are being proposed on matters that should be for individuals to decide for themselves”, while only 27 per cent believe that “The Government should legislate on such things even if they mean restrictions on personal liberty.”
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It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that we have long regarded the Ban on Foxhunting with Dogs as having very little to do with foxhunting. As David Carr has pointed out before, those who shout loudly that the move against hunting is ‘undemocratic’ are completely wrong: it is perfectly democratic. Welcome to the world in which there is no give and take of civil society… welcome to the world of total politics.
No kidding. That is what we have been pointing out here on Samizdata.net for quite some time and why we have treated commenters who shrugged and said “why get worked up about foxhunting?” with such derision. It was never about hunting but rather things that are far, far more fundamental. It is about those who would make all things subject to democratically sanctified politics (‘Rule by Activist’) seeking to crush those who see private property and society, rather than state, as what matters.
And Mr. Bradley is correct but for one thing: the battle in question is about the limits of political power and not just Labour’s political power. Until the supporter of the Countryside Alliance see that they are actually struggling against the idea of a total political state, they will not even be fighting the right war. It is not about who controls the political system but what the political system is permitted to do under anyone’s control. The United States has a system of separation of powers and constitutional governance which (at least in theory even though not in fact) places whole areas of civil society outside politics. Britain on the other hand has no such well defined system and the customary checks and balances have been all but swept away under the current regime. Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ has been shown to be a paper tiger. But those who look to the Tories to save them from the class warriors of the left are missing another fundamental truth. During their time in power, the Tory Party set the very foundations upon which Blair and Blunkett are building the apparatus for totally replacing social processes with political processes, a world in which nothing cannot be compelled by law if that is what ‘The People’ want: populist authoritarianism has been here for a while but now it no longer even feels it has to hide its true face behind a mask. Moreover it would take another blind man to look back on Michael Howard’s time as Home Secretary and see him as being less corrosive to civil liberties that the monstrous David Blunkett. Have you heard the outraged Tory opposition to the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act? Of course not, because the intellectual bankruptcy of the Tory party is now complete… for the most part they support it. If the so-called ‘Conservatives’ will not lift a finger to stop the destruction of the ancient underpinnings of British liberty, what exactly are they allegedly intending to ‘conserve’? The Tories are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem and the sooner the UKIP destroy them by making them permanently unelectable, the better, so that some sort of real opposition can fill the ideological vacuum. Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain. It is only once the people who oppose the ban on foxhunting and the people who oppose the Civil Contingencies Act and the people who oppose the introduction of ID cards and data pooling all realise that these are NOT separate issues but the same issue will effective opposition be possible. And I fear that opposition will, at least until the ‘facts on the ground’ can be established, have to be via civil disobedience and other ways to make sections of this country ungovernable by whatever means prove effective. The solution does not lie in ‘democracy’ but rather by enough people across the country asserting their right to free association and non-politically mediated social interaction by refusing to obey the entirely democratic laws which come out of Westminster. Peter Bradley is right and he has provided any who are paying attention with a moment of utter clarity: It is time to challenge his right to ‘rule’ by whatever means necessary. November 22nd, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict. It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is. November 22nd, 2004 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
In about three months’ time from now, the centuries-old country practice of foxhunting with hounds will be a criminal offence in England and Wales, following the decision by Labour MPs to vote for total abolition of the activity. It has already prompted thoughts on whether foxhunting groups will defy the law and make life in marginal rural constituencies difficult for Blair and his cohorts. Personally, I hope Labour lose a swathe of key seats on this issue, although in practice I do not imagine the issue will be a make-or-break one. But it will have an effect. In issues like this, it is easy to get caught in the thickets of whether foxhunting is particularly cruel or not, a necessary activity, etc, etc. But it seems to me that the supporters of foxhunting allowed themselves to devote too much time stressing how many jobs would be lost from a ban, and not enough time on the fundamental issues of liberty and property rights. What appals me – as one who has never been to a hunt meeting in his life – is that the banners of foxhunting are determined to crush a particular form of enjoyment. Foxhunters have fun. Yes, their idea of fun may not be yours or mine – but our lives would be pretty bleak if our pleasures could be struck down at the whim of a temporary majority of our fellow electors. In banning a form of fun, this government has shown itself at its bullying worst and established a particularly nasty precedent, coupled with a rancid amount of bigotry against the ‘upper class’. The affair is a reminder of just how much class hatred still exists inside the so-called New Labour Party. The property rights issue also has not been stressed nearly enough by the now-defeated hunting lobby. The government has essentially told owners of land that they are not allowed to hunt game on it in a certain way. It is, along with the outrageous ‘right to roam’ legislation giving ramblers freedom to go on owners’ land, an attack on the ownership rights of landowners. The question now has to be – who is next? Game shooters, anglers, horse riders? What happens when today’s cheerless puritans run out of things to abolish? Will they spontaneously combust? I am writing this up in deepest rural Suffolk, which is not a main hunting area like Leicestershire or Gloucestershire, but nevertheless the locals are steamed. UPDATE: In case anyone brings up the argument about cruelty to animals, while I strongly sympathise, I should point out that the abolition of hunting with hounds will not mean the end of killing foxes, which are classed as vermin. They will be shot, gassed and trapped. Nice. November 21st, 2004 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life. The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes. Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out. The state is not your friend. November 4th, 2004 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Business enterprises are often attacked for selling people ‘junk food’ and not telling them about the health benefits of vegetables. Well recently ASDA (the British arm of Walmart) labelled its vegetables, explaining that people who eat certain types of vegetable have a lower chance of developing certain forms of cancer. ASDA was promptly prosecuted and punished. It seems that ‘making health claims’ is not legal in Britain. Oh well, back to selling junk. The state is not your friend. October 31st, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The British government is preparing to launch a further assault on the English Common Law by eroding the presumption of innocence in jury trials involving certain categories of offence. In short, the government wants it to be possible for a defendant’s previous convictions to be made known to a jury unless there are compelling reasons in the eyes of a judge against it. It does not take a lot of imagination to see why prosecutors and even the odd well meaning but deluded politician think this is a grand idea. It must be disheartening for a prosecutor to see a serial rapist, mugger or thief get off on a technicality and for the defendant’s nefarious past to be undisclosed to a jury. But – and it is a very big but – keeping previous convictions a secret except in certain conditions is designed to ensure that juries examine a criminal case on the facts as they are presented, and not by trying to guess the motives of the accused or rushing to a conclusion on the basis of a hunch. Also, by withholding information about previous convictions, police and others are forced to present their evidence as strongly and as competently as possible. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies here. My fear is that prosecutors and others could become lazier and more slapdash in how they present evidence if they think that they can always shove X’s seedy past in front of a jury as part of the case. I must say it is hard to summon up feelings of surprise or even anger any more at what our political classes are doing to the traditional checks and balances of our criminal code. To be fair, much of this process began long before Tony Blair, although this most authortarian of governments has set about destroying our liberties with a zeal not seen in decades. I hold little hope that the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats will offer much resistance, given their terror at being thought to be ‘soft on crime’. And so we go on, changing processes of law in ways which will undoubtedly lead to more unsafe convictions. The present government, like all too many before it, is extraordinarily hostile to process and the understanding of the long-run bad consequences of interfering with constraints of law and custom. The likelihood, of course, that all this messing around with the Common Law will reduce crime significantly is, I confidently predict, zero. October 26th, 2004 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
The European Court has dispelled any residual doubt that it is little more than a politically motivated tool of the European Commission and continues its slow but steady construction of the means to make investigative journalism impossible in Brussels by ruling that Belgian police could seize Hans-Martin Tillack‘s computers and records to identify his sources regarding reports on EU corruption. The Euro-court has made little attempt to hide that is has colluded with EU political interests in a judgement that cuts to the heart of journalists ability to report on wrong doing and corruption by politicians.
Whistleblowing will not be tolerated. The superstate is not your friend. October 18th, 2004 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
If your political antennae have been sensitive to the undercurrents shimmering across the blogosphere, then you will have picked up the few postings alerting readers to the implications of the Civil Contingencies Bill. The dangers of this giant step towards authoritarianism have been publicised far more effectively both by David Carr and on Iain Murray’s personal weblog, The Edge of Englands Sword:
Readers could argue that this is an invocation of Godwin’s Law and that, by quoting this passage, I have lost the argument. However, this opinion is that of Torquil Dirk-Erikson, “a noted Eurosceptic writer and learned silk”. However, in considering the passage of this Act, it should also be noted that the European Constitution has a section on ‘civil protection’ as one of the coordinating powers for the European authorities.
One giant step along ‘Chavez’ Blair’s road to a ‘managed democracy’. Cross-posted to White Rose. October 16th, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I bet that if I mention the term coup d’etat it conjures up images of heavily-armed soldiers on the streets, tanks on airport runways and besieged radio stations. In truth, though, that is precisely the means by which such things are usually conducted. But they happen in faraway, third-world countries. It is the kind of thing we have come to associate with Oxford-educated ‘Generals’ who manage to wrest power from their tribal rivals in some African shanty-nation or with bandoliered, mustachioed Bolivians firing their carbines into the air and shouting “Viva El Nuevo Presidente” while the still-warm body of the old ‘Presidente’ swings from a nearby lamppost. But this is not the kind of thing that happens in developed countries like Britain. No, this is a stable country with a proper economy and elections and democratic governments and political parties and judicial independence and free speech and the such. I suppose it is, in part at least, because complacency caused by all those institutions appearing to be extant that we are about to taken over in a quiet, stealthy and bloodless coup d’etat all of our own. → Continue reading: A very British coup October 6th, 2004 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
The unfortunate but wholly predictable result of British government meddling in the affairs of the countryside:
What about the root causes of the hunter’s anger and frustration? September 25th, 2004 | 58 comments - (Comments are closed)
The stunt pulled by pro-hunting protestors of intruding into the inner sanctum of the House of Commons has produced a large number of very predictable responses. MPs and other establishment figures harrumphed that “Parliament’s privileges have been infringed!” and “This is an attack on democracy itself!” and “We must protect this most important of our institutions!” and “The protestors must not alienate people by acting so despicably!”… Well I have a suggestion for the pro-hunt protestors: ignore all those remarks because the only way to win is to fight your battles on ground of your choosing. As David Carr pointed out earlier with regard to when one of the protestors in the Commons shouted “This isn’t democracy. You are overturning democracy.” – Wrong. This is democracy in action and you are on the receiving end of it. What they really, really need to understand is that the majority of people in Britain are urban folk who are at best utterly indifferent to the protestor’s concerns and frequently somewhat hostile to them. The hunters and their supporters cannot hope to convince a majority that hunting is something that is either important or even needs to be tolerated. Do not waste your time making arguments about ‘country livelihood’ or ‘managing pests’ because not only do most people not believe you (such as me, for example), most simply do not care because they feel no particular affinity with you. It is preposterous to argue that the only effective way to put down vermin is to chase them on horseback with hounds. It is simply not a matter for highly questionable utilitarian arguments but rather for arguing for free association to do what you will on private property. That is the only coherent and more importantly resonant argument to make. If gay men can congregate together in clubs to do things the majority of people find deeply distasteful, without having to worry about being raided by the fuzz, why cannot foxhunters congregate together to do things the majority find distasteful without worrying about the Boys in Blue showing up? Successfully point out to gay rights activists that making the prejudices of the majority the law of the land is not something they should be comfortable with… and suddenly the class warriors behind the hunting ban might find it much harder to ‘bash the toffs’ as the implications of where this is clearly heading starts to dawn on altogether different groups. In short, stop making invocations to the graven idol called ‘Democracy’ because it will not hear your prayers. Accept that you are a heretic and raise up an idol of your own. Call it, say, ‘Liberty’ and then challenge your enemies to denounce it. If you want to defend your liberty to do things in free association with likeminded folk on private property, you will have to come to some very sobering realisations. → Continue reading: Confronting reality September 18th, 2004 | 77 comments - (Comments are closed)
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