[R-G] Thought police muscle up in Britain

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25361297-7583,00.html

Thought police muscle up in Britain

Hal G. P. Colebatch | April 21, 2009
Article from:  The Australian

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian  
state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international  
law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought  
police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff  
out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal  
tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not  
Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a  
new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise  
politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven  
years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech  
amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was  
Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and  
suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence  
by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English  
"propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and  
Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very  
aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of  
draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution  
of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political  
correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said  
at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in  
Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum- 
seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as  
you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter  
saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence  
comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will  
seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old  
schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another  
group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only  
Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream  
at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset  
and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher  
called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom  
had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police  
station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to  
her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was  
questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence  
and then released without charge. The school was said to be  
investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher,  
but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An  
allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially  
motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude  
towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism  
in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for  
having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden"  
during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had  
called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the  
case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so  
distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan  
Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are  
prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There  
are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute.  
This is nonsense."

Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those  
witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or  
pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as  
witches and candidates for burning.

Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's  
television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that  
Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode  
would be banned.

A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to  
"celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a  
police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious  
workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers  
how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been  
asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.

Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books  
advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had  
their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This  
year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the  
same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been  
threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.

There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in  
schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of  
various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not  
shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private  
conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was  
to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely  
mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist,  
Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking  
about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her  
church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking  
for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.

Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy  
socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has  
installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the  
proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?"  
is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case  
seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied  
to prison inmates who need it.

This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental  
bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less  
unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the  
Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in  
a fudged and deniable manner.

Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but  
taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are  
reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture.

Hal G. P. Colebatch's Blair's Britain was chosen as a book of the year  
by The Spectator in 1999.