6 days ago
Richard Murphy: Passing laws that destroy our freedoms is tyranny
On Tuesday, the UK Government effectively abandoned almost all of its planned cuts to disability benefits in England and Wales, due to pressure from many people who reminded Labour backbenchers that no MP was ever elected to make some of the least well-off in society even worse off.
Hundreds of thousands, and maybe more, now have reason to be thankful that protest still creates change.
Then, as if to prove sanity had not returned to the Labour Party, large numbers of its MPs trooped through the lobbies to contentiously vote in favour of declaring an activist organisation a terrorist threat – a move not all MPs or peers agreed with. A step such as this has never previously been seen in the UK.
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Almost certainly, the UK Government's action breaches the rights to freedom of expression and association under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights 1950, which the UK helped draft.
It also seems to violate Articles 19 and 20 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, of which the UK was a principal author.
Bizarrely, on the day this action was approved in the Commons, Yvette Cooper wore a sash celebrating the Suffragette movement which won votes for women after a campaign in which people died.
Acts we might now call terrorism took place and serious vandalism, including arson, were committed (contemporary news reports did call them terrorism). Cooper conveniently forgot all that.
By the standards Cooper is now imposing, anyone who supported the Suffragettes at the time, even without taking part in direct action, might today face 14 years in prison.
This new move against the freedom to campaign affects me directly. For the last 25 years, I have been a campaigner above all else.
In the first decade of this century, when I spent much of my time exposing tax abuses in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, I became intensely unpopular in those places. Simply by blogging, I proved their tax systems did not comply with EU requirements. All of them were forced to change their laws.
I faced what felt like a fabricated criminal investigation in Jersey at one point, which quietly disappeared after an election.
I also received death threats and more mundane abuse.
The then first minister of the Isle of Man suggested I was mathematically incompetent. My calculations showing the UK was providing his government with half its income to subsidise its tax haven activities were then accepted by the UK Government, which took that money back, saving the UK more than £200 million a year. I didn't even get a note of thanks.
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I recount these stories to show I know campaigning comes at a cost. No-one should expect to voice opinions that upset others without anticipating some backlash. That's how we change things. That process is fundamental to democracy.
And, of course, if during a protest someone breaks the law, they should expect prosecution for the crime committed. That's the price of taking action.
But what no-one should expect is to face grossly disproportionate penalties simply for expressing a genuinely held opinion that does not incite violence or threaten human life. Yet such penalties are exactly what UK ministers are now creating.
Ministers probably know convictions under their new law will be rare. Juries often refuse to convict when penalties are wildly inappropriate. People, unlike politicians, generally have a sense of justice.
However, what the Government has done is a sign we are on a perilous path to more draconian measures. How long might it be before suggesting Scotland should be independent is labelled a terrorist threat because it implies the UK should cease to exist?
How long, too, before expressing socialist views is treated the same way? After all, government literature already suggests such views can justify referral to the anti-terrorist Prevent programme.
And might the day come when even questioning 'free market' capitalism is deemed so extreme that it should be outlawed?
To suggest any of these things would once have seemed absurd, but everything has changed. The Labour Government's actions force us to reconsider the world we live in.
We can no longer rely on our right to free speech. We can no longer rely on common sense. Nor can we trust international law or declarations of human rights to protect us.
Now, tyranny is not represented by those who protest, even if they sometimes commit criminal damage (which I do not condone).
Instead, it is undertaken by Cabinet ministers intent on passing laws that destroy our freedoms.
I will continue to campaign. I will continue to protest. I will still raise my voice. I hope others will too.
But people in Scotland have an opportunity denied to those of ethical conscience in England – to leave this desperate Union and recreate in Scotland a country where genuine freedoms exist.
I truly hope that happens, and I will continue to say so.
