It is a bit of a running joke between ‘Yellow Bastard‘ Andrew Emmerson and I that we agree on everything. Many are the times when I have reached to blog only to find that he’s set out my opinion on an issue in a far better way that I could have. There are exceptions to this, of course, as few and far-between as they are, and his post on August 25 on the EDL’s banned march through Tower Hamlets is one of them. A lot of Lib Dems pay lip service to freedom of thought and expression, but seem all too happy to believe in banning the latter without looking for other ways of dealing with the issue. The free speech ideal is, of course, that people are allowed to protest on public land and say whatever they like, with police action in case of violence, and as liberals we should be working towards this, not working away from it. By trying to avoid violence you only end up banning free speech. Allowing free speech and banning violence seems a perfectly rational approach to me – yet instead views we agree with are allowed easier airing than those we do not.
Nick Clegg had blue paint thrown at him, also on August 25, condemned seemingly universally by politicians and commentators of all parties and none as a foolish stunt. It would be very interesting to see the reaction if Nick Griffin had been attacked in a similar way. But why should the two be different? What real danger does Griffin pose? Will one man spouting nonsense start a race war? The BNP is bankrupt, its leadership have more hatred for each other than any immigrant, and yet they are still spoken of in hushed, he-who-must-not-be-named terms by the mainstream, giving them a form of respect that they do not deserve. That respect is the all-important lifeblood in their dying days. Now, although the EDL are not (yet?) a political party, they are a fully legal organisation, and giving them the same misplaced respect by treating them to illiberal bans is falling into the same trap. Any group that wishes to march peacefully has the right to do so, whatever their beliefs – those in disagreement with them are welcome to counter-protest, a system that has worked pretty well until now. More often than not, you’re left with two groups of idiots screaming at each other, and indeed, the usual left-wing suspects are probably already hankering for a street battle…
Unfortunately, we are not yet at the stage where some enterprising businessman hires coaches to take the most violent from each side to the nearest field where they can batter seven shades out of each other in front of a paying audience! The stock libertarian response would revert to criticism of the state and call for private ownership of roads, the owner then deciding if to allow marches on his property, not constrained by the conflicting interests of different tax-paying groups. So how about this, as a middle-of-the-road, liberal response that all can agree with – let them march, and if said marchers turn violent arrest them and charge them. If they damage anything, make them pay for it. The truth is that it’s too easy to outsmart those trying to use the apparatus of the state to silence a particular group, as the late Brian Haw would point out. Quite apart from anything, if banned the EDL will turn up anyway, as they have in the past. If prevented from a protest march, they will stand still and protest, as this blog advises. And being blunt, they have a point. The right to protest is the right to have your protest heard, and government ‘solutions’ such as banning all marches in the area for a month will just as likely create a leaky net through which the mischievous can escape whilst the more liberally-palatable groups will be stopped from protesting themselves. No-one wins except the bad guys.
To be honest, I’m not sure that I even agree that the EDL are out to cause trouble or incite Islamic rage as primary motives, because as those who have read modern fascist literature will know, these people can be sneakier than that. They seek controversy and demonization by the mainstream whilst depicting themselves as the real voice of the mainstream, downtrodden by the liberal elite in this disturbing world where immigrants are given rights denied to others, where brown extremists may apparently live their lives freely but reasonable white natives may not. “It’s not us that are the extremists”, they wail. “We’re just pointing out the extremism of others, and being punished for it!” Sad to say, these views are only being encouraged by banning the EDL’s march, not stamped out. So, sorry Andrew, but I don’t agree this time – let the EDL march.
By Zadok Day
This article is syndicated from “A Song of Liberty”
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