Watching the ebb tide of freedom in Britain

Rod Liddle, writing in The Spectator magazine (Jan, 1 2005), shows how new laws brought out by the Labour government have eroded free speech. Also the laws have been used as a political weapon against The British Nationalist Party, an opponent. Nick Griffins the leader of the BNP was arrested, along with several party members. The charges were that they were supposedly fomenting racial hatred when they complained in a pub about the problems caused by large-scale Muslim immigration.

It's not quite up there with the bullhorn calls for murdering non-Muslim infidels, that various imams call for in London parks.

At first, Liddle could not get the arresting West Yorkshire police to comment on the case, except to say "they had a team of officiers on the case five days a week, ten hours a day." When he asked what evidence they had, they refused to answer. They did say that their direction came from "higher up"--meaning a political level. Yet when Liddle quizzed The Home Office about that admission, they said they knew nothing about the case. Then, being a good reporter, he asked the magistrate who signed the arrest warrant whether she saw this as a political gag tactic. The judge, Mrs. Parnham said, "I can't say anything about this. I could get into trouble."

The paw tracks of political instigation are all over this legislation and its covert use to silence any challenge to the Labour Party's ideology. Labour has been practically impotent in stemming the most viscous Muslim pronouncements--one leader openly preached that former PM John Major, should be assassinated; yet he escaped anything stronger than a tut-tut from the government. I guess in some perverse way, a bogus refugee can call for murder of officials (and all homosexuals, of course), yet not be seen as inciting racial or religious hatred. This is happening in what we used to call The Cradle of Democracy, so don't think that Labour's little brother, The Liberal Party of Canada, isn't taking note of how to muzzle the Conversatives. Also, on their radar screen was the decision of Belguim's Supreme Court to outlaw the Vlaams Bok Party, which garnered most of the votes in the Flemish area of northern Belguim. Because they called for decreased immigration, they were deemed "racist".

If Harper doesn't make an appeal to the ethnic vote, he is labelled "racist" by Martin, and if he does, then he is pandering to the worst aspects of the ethnic voters. It's the old Liberal 'Catch-22'. The bet is that with nearly a million new immigrant/refugees coming in every three years, (not to count the 'visitors and student' that they have lost track of) the Liberals can just corral them with favours. Along with the diehard-liberals, and the francophone vote, they can give the middle finger to the rest of us.

If you think Cotler's glib excuse for trashing traditional marriage was the nadir of social engineering, then consider his boast that much more 'groundbreaking' minority rights are in the works. If these new laws can be used to hobble his political opponents, all the better.

Bud Talkinghorn