Many have been shocked by the scenes in Clapham on Saturday night, where the Metropolitan Police used extremely heavy-handed tactics to break up what appears to have been a peaceful protest and vigil, held in memory of Sarah Everard, who was brutally murdered just days earlier. The reason they did this was because the protest contravened the rules on public gatherings, introduced by the Government and supported by almost all Parliamentarians, as part of apparent efforts to keep us all “safe”.
I confess I am not especially shocked by these scenes. It was clear to me that we gave up on being a free country in March last year when millions of people supinely accepted the apparent need for the curtailment of liberties, ostensibly (but absurdly) aimed at “controlling a virus”. Together with a very few other voices, I warned many times that Lockdowns, and their wide acceptance as an appropriate policy, marked another nail in the coffin of the free Britain we knew, and would likely herald the start of a slide into a far more despotic society and police state.
The Metropolitan Police’s actions were indeed disgraceful, but they were entirely consistent with the powers granted to the authorities under the Coronavirus Act, and entirely in keeping with the treatment meted out to those who peacefully protested against that very legislation in numerous demonstrations last year. In short, they are inseparable from Lockdown laws, which millions accepted with supine acquiescence last year.
If you supported the despotic Lockdown policy, copied straight from the totalitarian Chinese State (as Professor Neil Ferguson candidly admitted), which included curtailments of the right to peacefully protest, why are you shocked at what happened in Clapham? What did you expect? Did you seriously think that freedom and liberty can be turned on and off like a tap: off, when politicians say it needs to be turned off; on, when they say it’s safe to do so? Did you seriously think that the path to freedom required you to first give up your freedoms?
If so, perhaps you are finally discovering that this is not actually how freedom works. In the grand scheme of things, the kinds of liberties enjoyed by millions over many decades in this country are an aberration. They are a historic abnormality, granted by the grace and providence of God, through people who were far wiser than our generation — people who understood that the only way to grant and ensure the liberties of a people is to first and foremost put limitations on those holding power.
In the last year, because of irrational and wholly disproportionate fears of a virus which is not deadly to around 99.8% of people, we have allowed these ancient freedoms and laws to be taken away by those who have seized the opportunity to increase their powers. Indeed, the Government and so-called opposition, far from trying to allay people’s fears, as one would hope from good and responsible leaders, deliberately ramped up an extraordinary campaign of fear and hysteria, the likes of which have never been seen before. Why?
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