Even less free speech
MPs back ban on glorifying terror.
Not that we had any free speech, but there is goes, up in a puff of smoke even more. etc etc.
There is one key test for any legislation: the Nelson Mandela Test.
I didn't come up with this, someone on radio 4 one morning did. It runs like this:
Any law that would have prevented us calling Nelson Mandela a Freedom Fighter is a bad law.
He is, but the state he was in at the time branded him a Terrorist.
Under these laws in this country, I could be locked up for saying so, were that regime still in power.
These laws suck - we are already in a police state, and it is getting worse and worse.
Not that we had any free speech, but there is goes, up in a puff of smoke even more. etc etc.
There is one key test for any legislation: the Nelson Mandela Test.
I didn't come up with this, someone on radio 4 one morning did. It runs like this:
Any law that would have prevented us calling Nelson Mandela a Freedom Fighter is a bad law.
He is, but the state he was in at the time branded him a Terrorist.
Under these laws in this country, I could be locked up for saying so, were that regime still in power.
These laws suck - we are already in a police state, and it is getting worse and worse.
posted by MRM at Wednesday, February 15, 2006
4 Comments:
Enough with the hyperbole, Mark dude. It obscures the real case, which is that while we *don't* yet live in anything resembling a police state, and we *do* still have free speech in almost all respects, we have a major problem: a government that is carelessly removing these right, one tiny sliver at a time, in pursuit of favorable right wing newspaper headlines.
Wild exaggeration just makes it too easy for people to ignore the real issues, which are quite worrying enough.
Simon, I don't think this is wild hyperbole any more. Sliver by sliver things are being taken away, and at some point someone has to call it. Many people are looking at the totality of the recent legislation (including for example, the newest wheeze whereby ministers would be able to create new offences punishable by up to two years in prison without recourse to Parliament, among other things - 6 Cambridge law professors today wrote in the Times today about their alarm at this) and starting to wonder how much further down the road it can go.
The biggest problem with this "indirect encouragement"/"glorification" thing is that it can and does catch a lot of things. Many of which the government might not want to prosecute for now. But they could. And ultimately it comes down to whether they think you are a bad person, and that is no way to legislate in a free society.
The government's own definition of terrorism is the use of violence for political aims (not by the state). Nelson Mandela and the ANC would most certainly have been caught by that - they were saboteurs not suicide bombers but they were not peaceful.
The text of that letter in full (with a hat tip to Talk Politics):
Sir, Clause one of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill provides that: “A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes - a) reforming legislation; b) implementing recommendations of any one of more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.”
This has been presented as a simple measure “streamlining” the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, by which, to help industry, the Government can reduce red tape by amending Acts of Parliament that wove it. But it goes further: if passed, the Government could rewrite almost any Act and, in some cases, enact new laws that at present only Parliament can make.
The Bill subjects this drastic power to limits, but these are few and weak. If enacted as it stands, we believe the Bill would make it possible for the Government, by delegated legislation to do (inter alia) the following:
# create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred, punishable with two years’ imprisonment;
# curtail or abolish jury trial;
# permit the Home Secretary to place citizens under house arrest;
# allow the Prime Minister to sack judges;
# rewrite the law on nationality and immigration;
# “reform” Magna Carta (or what remains of it).
It would, in short, create a major shift of power within the state, which in other countries would require an amendment to the constitution; and one in which the winner would be the executive, and the loser Parliament.
David Howarth, MP for Cambridge, made this point at the Second Reading of the Bill last week. We hope that other MPs, on all sides of the House, will recognise the dangers of what is being proposed before it is too late.
PROFESSOR J.R. SPENCER, QC
PROFESSOR SIR JOHN BAKER, QC
PROFESSOR DAVID FELDMAN
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER FORSYTH
PROFESSOR DAVID IBBETSO
PROFESSOR SIR DAVID WILLIAMS, QC
Law Faculty,
University of Cambridge
PS I don't think we live in a police state. Yet. Whether that continues to be the case is a whole other question.
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