Labour's problem with Free Speech
It's an occupational hazard that all parties need to watch out for when in government that the longer you are in power, the greater the temptation to become authoritarian and try to crack down - "in the public interest, of course" - on those who express views you don't like.
Partly this is due to an entirely legitimate fear on behalf of those who are responsible for protecting the public that insufficient vigilance might result in the deaths of innocent people because a genuine terrorist is able to take advantage of the freedoms which a civilised society offers.
The Twin Towers attacks in the states, 7/7 in London and the recent Charlie Hebdo and other murders on the continent demonstrate all too clearly that our society faces a real terrorist threat, and that officials who want ever-wider surveillance are mostly motivated not by a lust for more power but by a genuine wish to save lives.
That does not mean we should always agree with them - those who coined phrases like "The Price of Liberty is eternal vigilance" were warning that a free society needs to be on guard against overzealousness by it's own guardians as well as against external threats and that warning is even more relevant today than it was two centuries ago.
But trying to protect society against terrorism is one thing - cracking down on legitimate journalism or non-violent dissent is something entirely different. Arresting octogenarian holocaust survivors for shouting "Liar" at the then Foreign Secretary, (a certain Jack Straw) is an example.
There was, of course, something very similar at a Copeland Council meeting last week.
As it happens, during my time in local politics I have more than once been in the position of chairing a council meeting which was interrupted by members of the public who felt very strongly against something that was being said or done. (Usually at a planning committee.)
If it was an isolated shout or comment which was not seriously disrupting the meeting or preventing councillors from being heard, I usually cultivated a moment's temporary deafness and let it pass.
If the interruption continued I would usually ask, in as sympathetic a manner as possible, the person who was doing so to let councillors be heard.
The council's Standing Orders required the councillor chairing a meeting to warn a member of the public who continued that they would have to leave if they did not stop, and to call the police to escort them out if they still persisted.
In all my time chairing meetings I always tried to make this an absolute last resort: I only had to make the threat to have someone escorted out once and I never had to actually have the police called.
Last week at Copeland Council Councillor Keith Hitchen, who was chairing the meeting in the absence of the (civic) mayor and deputy mayor, clearly took the same view I would have taken, that calling the police to deal with a difference of view should be a last resort, and he tried to calm the situation down.
However, prominent members of the Labour group started calling for the meeting to be adjourned and the police called almost immediately. For them this appeared to be a first resort, and of course it inflamed the situation faster than the chairman of the meeting could calm it down, with the result that it did come to the meeting being adjourned and a prominent campaigner from the "Time for Change" group being escorted out.
The frightening thing about the Labour party is how authoritarian they are when not in government.
Over the past few months there have been repeated instances when someone disagrees with Ed Miliband and the Labour party and they have not just robustly defended their view - that would be entirely legitimate - but responded in a way that was at best an ad hominem attack and at worst downright threatening.
Not that this is new. During the last Labour government when there were concerns about the care which a nonagenarian pensioner, Rose Addis, had received from the NHS, Labour spinners put the (untrue) story round the press that Mrs Addis was a racist.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1382811/Granny-in-the-middle.html)
Then there was the Labour special advisor who was caught digging for information on the political affiliations of a railway safety action group founded by survivors of rail crashes, of whom he asked "Basically, are they Tories?"
(see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2030685.stm or http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-121434/The-smear-merchants.html)
The present Labour leadership, like the Bourbons, have forgotten nothing and learned nothing: they are keen to tell people that they have ditched "New Labour" but sadly it seems that they have ditched some of the few things New Labour was groping towards getting right - realising that confiscatory taxation does not raise more money for instance - while continuing with Blair's must unattractive streak, his authoritarian tendancy.
Some of the Labour party's recent targets - nuns for instance - only seem likely to inspire ridicule, but some are more threatening.
If a businessman dares to disagree with Labour policy, you can bet that all the class war rhetoric will come out. Look at how they responded when the Chairman of Boots disagreed with some of their policies.
Sometimes they actually suggest boycotting people who disagree with Labour. When Myleen Klass tore Ed Miliband to shreds on TV here,
pointing out that many of the people who would have to pay the tax would be elderly people who have lived for a long time in houses which most people would not consider mansions, Labour did not just disagree with her - they have every right to do that - but went for her personally.
They attacked her over her own wealth (as if Miliband and Harman were not wealthy themselves), one Labour candidate told her to leave the country, and Labour supporters even organised a petition calling on Littlewoods to fire her from a position advertising for them.
(http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/19/theres-now-a-petition-to-get-myleene-klass-dropped-as-the-face-of-littlewoods-4954375/)
Then there is the ominous noises Labour recently made against those University Vice Chancellors who dared to disagree in public with any of the various half-baked plans Labour has put forward recently to reduce student tuition fees.
Now I don't like the idea of student tuition fees: I didn't like them when Labour introduced them (breaking a promise in the process) and I didn't like it when Labour increased them (breaking another election promise that they would not do so) and I regret that the financial mess left behind by Labour forced the coalition to increase them again.
But any changes need to be properly thought through and costed, and you might think it wise to listen to what people who know the University system have to say about them.
From what a Labour source close to the shadow Universities minister, Liam "there is no money left" Byrne told the Times Higher Education Supplement after UUK (Universities UK) leaders had criticised Labour proposals, Byrne had, quote “explicitly advised UUK that now was an especially unwise time for any destabilising intervention” which sounds very much to me like
'We warned UUK that they'd better not criticise our proposals in public before the election, or else.'
The same Labour source said that it had been "unbelievably stupid" to disagree publicly with Labour plans and added that “Labour’s Treasury team has been looking with raised eyebrows at the 8 per cent increase in [some] vice-chancellors’ pay.”
Translation - 'don't you dare criticise us in public before the election if you want that pay rise.'
Details of Labours veiled and not-so-veiled threats to University leaders can be read at
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/labours-warning-to-v-cs-critical-of-6k-fees-plan/2018494.article
The one thing just about everyone agrees about the forthcoming election in two month's time is going to be extremely close. The good thing about this is that a close election means that everyone's vote will count, which may encourage people to engage and force all political parties to listen to them.
The sad thing is, it means there is a danger that Labour, the most authoritarian and least democratic of the main parties and the one whose massive mistakes caused the mess which most of the nasty things the present government has had to do were necessary to repair, might get back in. That would be a disaster for Britain. I think it would be healthy for British democracy if Labour did very badly indeed in all this year's elections because it might make them reconsider this bullying attitude.
Partly this is due to an entirely legitimate fear on behalf of those who are responsible for protecting the public that insufficient vigilance might result in the deaths of innocent people because a genuine terrorist is able to take advantage of the freedoms which a civilised society offers.
The Twin Towers attacks in the states, 7/7 in London and the recent Charlie Hebdo and other murders on the continent demonstrate all too clearly that our society faces a real terrorist threat, and that officials who want ever-wider surveillance are mostly motivated not by a lust for more power but by a genuine wish to save lives.
That does not mean we should always agree with them - those who coined phrases like "The Price of Liberty is eternal vigilance" were warning that a free society needs to be on guard against overzealousness by it's own guardians as well as against external threats and that warning is even more relevant today than it was two centuries ago.
But trying to protect society against terrorism is one thing - cracking down on legitimate journalism or non-violent dissent is something entirely different. Arresting octogenarian holocaust survivors for shouting "Liar" at the then Foreign Secretary, (a certain Jack Straw) is an example.
There was, of course, something very similar at a Copeland Council meeting last week.
As it happens, during my time in local politics I have more than once been in the position of chairing a council meeting which was interrupted by members of the public who felt very strongly against something that was being said or done. (Usually at a planning committee.)
If it was an isolated shout or comment which was not seriously disrupting the meeting or preventing councillors from being heard, I usually cultivated a moment's temporary deafness and let it pass.
If the interruption continued I would usually ask, in as sympathetic a manner as possible, the person who was doing so to let councillors be heard.
The council's Standing Orders required the councillor chairing a meeting to warn a member of the public who continued that they would have to leave if they did not stop, and to call the police to escort them out if they still persisted.
In all my time chairing meetings I always tried to make this an absolute last resort: I only had to make the threat to have someone escorted out once and I never had to actually have the police called.
Last week at Copeland Council Councillor Keith Hitchen, who was chairing the meeting in the absence of the (civic) mayor and deputy mayor, clearly took the same view I would have taken, that calling the police to deal with a difference of view should be a last resort, and he tried to calm the situation down.
However, prominent members of the Labour group started calling for the meeting to be adjourned and the police called almost immediately. For them this appeared to be a first resort, and of course it inflamed the situation faster than the chairman of the meeting could calm it down, with the result that it did come to the meeting being adjourned and a prominent campaigner from the "Time for Change" group being escorted out.
The frightening thing about the Labour party is how authoritarian they are when not in government.
Over the past few months there have been repeated instances when someone disagrees with Ed Miliband and the Labour party and they have not just robustly defended their view - that would be entirely legitimate - but responded in a way that was at best an ad hominem attack and at worst downright threatening.
Not that this is new. During the last Labour government when there were concerns about the care which a nonagenarian pensioner, Rose Addis, had received from the NHS, Labour spinners put the (untrue) story round the press that Mrs Addis was a racist.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1382811/Granny-in-the-middle.html)
Then there was the Labour special advisor who was caught digging for information on the political affiliations of a railway safety action group founded by survivors of rail crashes, of whom he asked "Basically, are they Tories?"
(see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2030685.stm or http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-121434/The-smear-merchants.html)
The present Labour leadership, like the Bourbons, have forgotten nothing and learned nothing: they are keen to tell people that they have ditched "New Labour" but sadly it seems that they have ditched some of the few things New Labour was groping towards getting right - realising that confiscatory taxation does not raise more money for instance - while continuing with Blair's must unattractive streak, his authoritarian tendancy.
Some of the Labour party's recent targets - nuns for instance - only seem likely to inspire ridicule, but some are more threatening.
If a businessman dares to disagree with Labour policy, you can bet that all the class war rhetoric will come out. Look at how they responded when the Chairman of Boots disagreed with some of their policies.
Sometimes they actually suggest boycotting people who disagree with Labour. When Myleen Klass tore Ed Miliband to shreds on TV here,
pointing out that many of the people who would have to pay the tax would be elderly people who have lived for a long time in houses which most people would not consider mansions, Labour did not just disagree with her - they have every right to do that - but went for her personally.
They attacked her over her own wealth (as if Miliband and Harman were not wealthy themselves), one Labour candidate told her to leave the country, and Labour supporters even organised a petition calling on Littlewoods to fire her from a position advertising for them.
(http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/19/theres-now-a-petition-to-get-myleene-klass-dropped-as-the-face-of-littlewoods-4954375/)
Then there is the ominous noises Labour recently made against those University Vice Chancellors who dared to disagree in public with any of the various half-baked plans Labour has put forward recently to reduce student tuition fees.
Now I don't like the idea of student tuition fees: I didn't like them when Labour introduced them (breaking a promise in the process) and I didn't like it when Labour increased them (breaking another election promise that they would not do so) and I regret that the financial mess left behind by Labour forced the coalition to increase them again.
But any changes need to be properly thought through and costed, and you might think it wise to listen to what people who know the University system have to say about them.
From what a Labour source close to the shadow Universities minister, Liam "there is no money left" Byrne told the Times Higher Education Supplement after UUK (Universities UK) leaders had criticised Labour proposals, Byrne had, quote “explicitly advised UUK that now was an especially unwise time for any destabilising intervention” which sounds very much to me like
'We warned UUK that they'd better not criticise our proposals in public before the election, or else.'
The same Labour source said that it had been "unbelievably stupid" to disagree publicly with Labour plans and added that “Labour’s Treasury team has been looking with raised eyebrows at the 8 per cent increase in [some] vice-chancellors’ pay.”
Translation - 'don't you dare criticise us in public before the election if you want that pay rise.'
Details of Labours veiled and not-so-veiled threats to University leaders can be read at
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/labours-warning-to-v-cs-critical-of-6k-fees-plan/2018494.article
The one thing just about everyone agrees about the forthcoming election in two month's time is going to be extremely close. The good thing about this is that a close election means that everyone's vote will count, which may encourage people to engage and force all political parties to listen to them.
The sad thing is, it means there is a danger that Labour, the most authoritarian and least democratic of the main parties and the one whose massive mistakes caused the mess which most of the nasty things the present government has had to do were necessary to repair, might get back in. That would be a disaster for Britain. I think it would be healthy for British democracy if Labour did very badly indeed in all this year's elections because it might make them reconsider this bullying attitude.
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