14th September 2009
Britain - Bastion of Freedom
Mark Hanson
Britain, as a nation state, has had a wide and varied history, and as a “free society” there has been a significant and often violent struggle.
This struggle has taken form between opposing forces of authoritarian control and libertarian values.
It would be fair to say that neither malevolent dictatorship nor the anarchic forces of extreme libertarianism are to be desired, and this has been borne out in the interplay between the two forces.
During the fifties, sixties and seventies the pendulum swung far to liberal and licentious extreme. Public mass demonstration took on a new impetus, and the idea of “rights” took hold, although the equally important aspect of responsibility seemed to take a back seat.
Now the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way to a more dominant, controlling and authoritarian governmental policy. The days of individual responsibility seem to have passed, and now the State, under Labour, is seeking to redress the balance in its native socialist way of authoritarian control.
We are on a dangerous slide, as the State loses its trust in the individuals and communities of which it is comprised, and those individuals and communities lose faith in the State.
Aggressive policing, intrusive databases, a presumption of guilt and malevolence; all are symptoms of a much wider malady of a degenerate society. If the opposing forces of excessive freedom and excessive authoritarianism are not balanced, then the result will be a new relationship between oppressors and oppressed.
The civil liberty issue is one that can’t be ignored; there has been a substantial removal of unwritten but nevertheless very real freedoms in the UK, and whilst we cannot be as crass as to suggest that Britain is North Korea or Iran, we must be aware that society is a collective of individuals. We have responsibilities, but so does the State.
