Posted on 12/12/2005 3:56:35 PM PST by Pokey78
All over the United Kingdom, right now, real crimes are being committed: mobiles are being nicked, front doors are being kicked in, bollards are being lobbed through bus shelters - just to name some of the lighter activities that add so much to the gaiety of the nation. None of these is a "priority crime", as you'll know if you've ever endured the bureaucratic time-waster of reporting a burglary.
So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".
A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Telegraph's Sally Pook that it's "standard policy" for "community safety units" to investigate "homophobic, racist and domestic incidents" because these are all "priority crimes" - even though, in the case of Mrs Burrows, there is (to be boringly legalistic about these things) no crime, as even the zealots of the Yard concede. "It is all about reassuring the community," said the very p.c. Plod to the Telegraph. "All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."
So no crime was committed. Yet Mrs Burrows was "investigated" and a report about the "incident" and her involvement in it is now on a government computer somewhere. Oh, to be sure, the vicious homophobe wasn't dragged off to re-education camp - or more likely, given budgetary constraints, an overcrowded women's prison to be tossed in a cell with a predatory bull-dyke who could teach her the error of her homophobic ways.
But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.
Mrs Burrows writes on "children's rights and the family", so I don't know whether she's a member of PEN or the other authors' groups. But it seems unlikely the Hampstead big guns who lined up to defend Salman Rushdie a decade and a half ago will be eager to stage any rallies this time round. But, if the principle is freedom of expression, what's the difference between his apostasy (as the Ayatollah saw it) and Mrs Burrows's apostasy (as Scotland Yard sees it)?
I don't suppose the Tories will be eager to take to the ramparts for Mrs B, either. Every time I hear a Conservative heavyweight these days, they're droning on about how "the public sees us as too white, male, middle-class and heterosexual". Actually, they don't seem terribly heterosexual to me. But, at any rate, defending Lynette Burrows's right to free speech seems unlikely to play well with the party's marketing gurus.
As for the Government, in the Observer on Sunday, Tony Blair wrote a piece almost every bland sentence of which had me spraying my cornflakes all over my civil partner, right from the sub-headline: "The most important freedom is harm from others."
Well, up to a point. If you live in one of those parts of, say, Aston in Birmingham where the writ of the British state no longer runs in any meaningful way, that sounds grand. But the police don't seem to have much stomach for enforcing your right to be free from harm in such neighbourhoods. The Prime Minister was writing principally about the great Asbo - that's not the powerful God-like being from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, though, from Mr Blair's faith in Asbo as an instrument of righteousness and justice, it might as well be. Technically, Asbo is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, one of those "so-called summary powers", as the Prime Minister puts it. The trouble is the British police are a lazy lot and, if it's a choice between acting against intimidating thugs who've made the shopping centre a no-go area or investigating the non-crime of a BBC radio interview, they'll take the latter. I leave it to Scotland Yard to decide whether the Asbo's reach already extends to "homophobia" and "Islamophobia", but whether it does or not, sticking Mrs Burrows's "homophobic incident" in a police file is certainly an Anti-Social Behaviour Notice, de facto if not de jure.
"Freedom from harm" is all very well, "freedom from being offended" is extremely dangerous - a way of extending the already harmful media phenomenon of "libel chill" to every noisy lobby group. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie and co get their way on "religious hatred", every BBC Five Live discussion on Islam will be followed by a call from an aggrieved listener and a visit from the Fulham police. And, for every Lynette Burrows, insisting she'll continue to exercise her right to free speech, there'll be a hundred more who keep their heads down and opt for a quiet life.
Hollywood stars are forever complaining about the "crushing of dissent" in Bush's America, by which they mean Tim Robbins having a photo-op at the Baseball Hall of Fame cancelled because he's become an anti-war bore. But, thanks to the First Amendment, he can say anything he likes without the forces of the state coming round to grill him. It's in Britain and Europe where dissent is being crushed. Following the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, film directors and museum curators and all the other "brave" "transgressive" artists usually so eager to "challenge" society are voting for self-censorship: "I don't want a knife in my chest," explained Albert Ter Heerdt, announcing his decision to "postpone" a sequel to his hit multicultural comedy Shouf Shouf Habibi!
But who needs to knife him when across Europe the authorities are so eager to criminalise him? No society with an eye to long-term survival should make opinion a subversive activity. Here's a thought: we should be able to discuss homosexuality, Islam and pretty much everything else in the same carefree way Guardian columnists damn Bush's America as "neo-fascist".
He hits the nail on the head again.
Thanks for the ping. :)
Think about that. This is truly well put and perfectly describes something which few Americans, yet, comprehend.
I thank my lucky stars this guy is on our side.
Cheers,
knews hound
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.
Exactly. Steyn hits another one right on the head.
Good stuff ~ Bump!
Not yet; give it another five or ten years and then see what happens.
Why is Europe so oddly fascinated with totalitarianism? Why does that continent always gravitate that way, even when a generation that suffered from it still exists?
Political Correctness onward to it's illogical conclusion!
Steyn on the nail as usual!
bump for the Master
BTTT
Thanks again Pokey for the ping!
I think this ought to be bookmarked for when Oscar time comes around.
BTTT - Steyn documenting Orwellian EU (I wish, now, that we had saved that word "Orwellian" for this time when it is actually happening.)
If I ever got the chance to meet Maureen Dowd, all that I would say to her is: You try, but you're no Mark Steyn.
bttt
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