Voice of the Family

A LAY INITIATIVE FORMED TO DEFEND

CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THE FAMILY

England’s growing Orwellian nightmare

28 August 2024

by Liam Gibson

According to the old joke, in Heaven the cooks are Italian, the mechanics German and the police are English. In Hell, however, the mechanics are Italian, the police are German and the cooks are English. While nothing is likely to change the perception of English cooking, the damage done in recent weeks to the reputation of the British police means that the joke is no longer funny.

In the aftermath of the killing of three little girls in Southport1 and the disruption sparked by their murder at the hands of a second generation Rwandan immigrant, the Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer wasted no time in branding both rioters and those peacefully protesting against uncontrolled immigration as “far-right” extremists. The irony is that, while the violence erupted in traditional Labour strongholds, it is Starmer’s reaction to the unrest that is likely to drive Britain further down the road to authoritarianism.

The speed with which the criminal justice system kicked into high gear was remarkable. The determination of the authorities to make an example of anyone accused of fomenting violence meant that some who were merely on the periphery of events were also swept up in the process. So immediate was the response that custodial sentences were being handed down within a matter of days. This was all the more surprising given the routine failure of the English police to deal with crime generally. Reports into “effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy” of the forty-three police forces in England and Wales revealed that the rate of victim-based offences “brought to justice” in the 2021/22 period was just 8.3 per cent, down from 22.7 per cent in the previous year.2 The rate for all crime decreased from 27.8 percent to around 11 percent. The report concluded, “These reductions reflect a decline in performance across forces in England and Wales regarding investigating crime.”3

Roughly ninety per cent of crimes across England and Wales currently go unsolved, up from seventy-five per cent in 2015.4 Figures published by the Office of National Statistics show that, in the year ending March 2024, this included more than 188,893 sex offences, roughly thirty-six percent of which — 67,928 — were reports of rape. There were also 50,510 incidents of knife crime recorded in the same period compared to 48,409 offences the previous year, an increase of four per cent.5

However, despite the undeniable decline in police performance, on 8 August, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, made it clear that the authorities were prepared to prioritise offences committed online.

“You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial [or] religious hatred,” he told reporters, adding, “If you retweet something, you are republishing it. We have dedicated police officers whose sole task is to scour the internet, scour social media. This is what they’re focusing on.”6

The Crown Prosecution Service reinforced the message by cautioning the public:

“Think before you post! Content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful — it can be illegal. The CPS takes online violence seriously and will prosecute when the legal test is met. Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.”7 (Emphasis added)

Nor did a damning report into the failures of the London Metropolitan Police8 stop the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, from equating social media activity with physical violence. He even threatened to have individuals outside the UK arrested, warning that the government would extradite citizens of other countries for what they posted on social media. “We will throw the full force of the law at people,” he said. “And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.”9

The urgency shown in the pursuit of those associated with the recent unrest, in contrast to the light touch used against Black Lives Matter or pro-Palestinian protesters, has not gone unnoticed. For many, it has given further credence to the claim that the British police operates a two-tier system of justice where the ethnic or political persuasion of the alleged perpetrator dictates the level of response. It should surprise no one then that in recent days, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, called for “extreme misogyny” to be treated as a threat to national security. And just as the government now decides what qualifies as incitement, it will decide what constitutes extreme misogyny. The target of this policy is not “honour” killings, female genital mutilation, or the types of crimes associated with the grooming of vulnerable young girls (although social services facilitated the exploitation of countless girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and other English towns while the police did little or nothing to stop it). All these acts are already unlawful. Instead, the Home Secretary is determined to crack down on people “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs,” including those who express those views online.

If anything positive could be said to have emerged as a result of recent developments in England, it may be the growing recognition that the UK is sleepwalking into an Orwellian nightmare, where those who refuse to espouse the tenets of cultural Marxism will be accused of thought crime. For those involved in the pro-life movement, this realisation came when praying in the vicinity of an abortion centre was criminalised. In December 2022, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a director of the UK March for Life, was detained by police for breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order by praying silently near an abortion facility in Birmingham. This happened a second time a few months later. Although she has since received £13,000 (around US $16,000) in a settlement for wrongful arrest, this case is unlikely to set a legal precedent. With the introduction of the Public Order Act 2023 and similar legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland, silent prayer is now outlawed within the boundaries of the exclusion zones around every abortion facility in the UK. In 2022, when the Scottish Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, argued before the Supreme Court that silent prayer is more damaging to clients of the abortion industry than noisy protests, the court agreed.10 With the unanimous acquiescence of the judges of the UK’s highest court, the absolute and universal right to freedom of conscience suddenly became contingent for everyone. 

In Catholic thought, justice is the foundation of the state and whenever the state “demolishes these rights to material justice, it does away with its own juridical being”.11 If a democratic system of government is to be maintained, the rights of its citizens must be derived from natural law. And while the state can recognise and guarantee them, they are pre-legal and cannot be legitimately withdrawn. In The Rights of Man and the Natural Law, Jacques Maritain writes:

“What we know as freedom of speech and expression would, in my opinion, be better designated by the term freedom of investigation and discussion. Such freedom has a strictly political value, because it is necessary to the common effort to augment and diffuse the true and the good in the community. Freedom of investigation is a fundamental natural right, for man’s very nature is to seek the truth.”12

Of course, the state has the right as well as the duty to protect its citizens by imposing sanctions on enemies of the common good, for example, a religious group that seeks to practice infanticide or polygamy.13 And in terms of Realpolitk, the state must also hold “the monopoly of legitimate physical force”.14 From one perspective, Starmer’s push for harsh punishment for rioters can be understood as an attempt to prove that the state still holds this monopoly. But while the perception of two-tier justice remains, these efforts are unlikely to bring stability. Successive UK governments have demonstrated that they have surrendered the monopoly on violence when they failed to protect their own citizens. In 2005, when Islamists bombers killed 52 people on buses and tube trains in London, there were no riots. Nor was there unrest when a British Muslim of Libyan heritage killed twenty-two people at a concert in Manchester. The same is true of the litany of other less deadly attacks over the past twenty years. With stereotypical reserve, the English people suppressed their anger, fear and anxiety. However, the limit of what they could endure was reached at Southport. 

When Keir Starmer arrived in the town to lay a wreath, he left without listening to the people of the town.15 Had he offered them a chance to vent their rage at the failures of successive governments to protect them and their children, and reassured them that he would take action, perhaps events would have unfolded differently. 

Sooner or later the government must address the root cause of the recent riots if worse unrest is to be avoided. To echo the words of John F Kennedy, those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable. A warning Keir Starmer should bear in mind.

Notes

  1. Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7) and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9), were attacked on 29 July during a dance class in the town of Southport, about 17 miles north of Liverpool. The assailant also stabbed eight other children and two adults. ↩︎
  2. It should be noted that the definition of “offences brought to justice” includes cases in which the suspect died, an extrajudicial settlement was agreed, prosecution prevented by lack of evidence or was not considered to be in the public interest. ↩︎
  3. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Police performance: Getting a grip. PEEL spotlight report, p 28. ↩︎
  4. See Sam Bidwell, “Lawless and disordered: British police and courts increasingly struggle to maintain public order” (The Critic, 16 August 2024). ↩︎
  5.  Office for National Statistics, Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2024. ↩︎
  6.  Flora Thompson, “Repost hateful messages about disorder online and you could end up in court”, Independent, (London, 7 August 2024).
    ↩︎
  7.  https://x.com/CPSUK/status/1821227881575403810 ↩︎
  8. Out of eight areas of assessment the Met was found to be adequate in one, requiring improvement in five and inadequate in two. In no area was it judged to be good or outstanding. See His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, “PEEL 2023–25 Police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy. An inspection of the Metropolitan Police Service”. 
    ↩︎
  9. Shola Lawal, “Why is Elon Musk clashing with the UK government over far-right riots?” (Al Jazeera, 8 August 2024).
    ↩︎
  10. REFERENCE by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland — Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill, 7 December 2022. ↩︎
  11. Heinrich A Rommen, The Natural Law, (Liberty Fund, 1998) p 216. ↩︎
  12. Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and the Natural Law, (Ignatius Press, 2011) pp 122–3. ↩︎
  13. These examples are cited by Thomas P Neill in Weapons for Peace, (Bruce Publ, 1945) p 155. ↩︎
  14. Max Webber, The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation, Politics as a Vocation, David Owen (ed), R Livingstone (trans) (Hackett, 2004) p 38. ↩︎
  15. “Prime minister visits scene of Southport stabbing” (video), Sky News, 30 July 2024. ↩︎

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