We must speak up for old British values before they are destroyed by our elites

Telegraph

2 days ago

Rose Docherty is a woman of few words. You'd never have heard of the 75-year-old if it wasn't for what she didn't say. She's the activist who staged a silent protest outside the abortion clinic in Glasgow last February, holding a sign reading: 'Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want'. Hers was a simple offer of conversation, made without a sound.
You know what happened next. The septuagenarian was arrested under Scotland's 'buffer zone' laws, which prevent anybody engaging in harassment or intimidation in the vicinity of abortion facilities, or influencing a woman's decision to use them.
Are there parallel laws protecting women from being pressured into terminating their unborn babies? Surely that would be a more sinister scenario, one that would fall more obviously under the purview of the police.
There are not. Scotland's police are on the lookout for anybody offering support to women who may be doubting their decision, not those encouraging them to go ahead with it.
The message is clear. There is no mistaking where the state, and the culture it grimly cultivates, now stands on the question of ending unborn life.
We see it reflected in the legalisation of euthanasia. We see it in the depravity of full-term abortions. Welcome to modern Britain, where convenient death is prized higher than life.
This past week, however, Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service changed tack and decided that the case would be dropped. This was announced quietly and without fanfare, presumably in the hope that the matter would slip conveniently under the rug.
So much so understandable. After all, the silent woman of Glasgow had drawn Britain's creeping authoritarianism to the attention of the world when her case caught the eye of Donald Trump. That can't have been comfortable for Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. In May this year, the president sent a White House delegation to meet Ms Docherty and other pro-life campaigners. Afterwards, she told the press that it was 'heartening that others around the world, including the US government, have realised this injustice and voiced their support'.
A few months earlier, in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, vice-president JD Vance lambasted Scotland's buffer zone laws, under which Ms Docherty had been arrested. Without these American interventions, she may still be facing conviction today.
This episode draws together a number of intertwining concerns. Firstly, there is the question of freedom of speech in a Britain where citizens may be visited by the police on suspicion of a 'non-crime hate incident', and 30 arrests are made every day for offensive posts on social media.
After she was detained, Ms Docherty was apparently told that she could avoid prosecution on condition that she acknowledged her actions were unlawful, accepted a warning and did not repeat them.
She declined, insisting that she had not broken the law and that she was protected by her fundamental rights to free speech. 'I simply stood there, available to speak with love and compassion,' she pointed out.
So much, surely, should be obvious. The fact that it took Donald 'grab 'em by the p---y' Trump, who even to his supporters is hardly the paragon of purity, to bring Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to its senses is an embarrassing sign of how far we have drifted from our morals.
The second, deeper concern is the disdain for religious faith and traditional values which is so relentlessly advanced by our rulers.
Ms Docherty embodied an older Britain that the elites have sought to tamp down for decades. It is the Britain of faith, flag and family; of a belief in borders, a love of tradition, an affection for our history and pride in our armed forces; of hard work, fair play and modest patriotism.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, those at the top of society have smeared such a sensibility as the root of fascism. Whether voting for Brexit, flying the George cross or demonstrating against migrant hotels, ordinary people who refuse to respect the new taboos are immediately defamed as quasi-Nazis.
What values have been imposed in their place? Moral relativism; multiculturalism; diversity; secularism; appeasement; sybaritic complacency; Israelophobia. To this we can now add an enthusiasm for death for the elderly and the unborn.
This suffocating ideology, which Sir Roger Scruton described as the cult of 'down with us', seems to be imposed upon every corner of society.
In some quarters it is no longer permissible, for instance, to say 'merry Christmas' or 'happy Easter', but only 'happy holidays'. No such restrictions are applied to 'Ramadan Kareem' or 'Eid Mubarak'.
In the United States, so sick had people become of this dogma that they considered the outlandish proposition of Donald Trump – the obnoxiousness, the braggadocio, the allegations of racism and financial irregularities, the misogynistic audio tapes, the claims of Russian collusion, the lack of political experience and total disregard of the norms of professional society – and decided he was worth a go. Anything, they felt, would be better than this.
Will it really take Trump to save Britain from itself? Maybe. But there is a better source of hope: Rose Doherty, who takes her place alongside Lucy Connolly as a martyr to old Britain, and the thousands like her who comprise the silent majority. We must be silent no longer.