On
3 September, the
British government presented the
transparency of lobbying, non-party campaigning and trade union administration bill
to its parliament. This bill, dubbed the ‘gagging law’ by critics - and
there are many - proposes new measures curtailing political action on
the part of non-politicians in the year running up to any general
election. While this is ostensibly in order to limit and regulate
funding from trade unions or wealthy lobbyists, any campaign or other
political activity which might affect the result of an election would be
strictly regulated. The bill proposes limiting spending to just over
450,000 euros for non-party-political campaigns and to introduce criminal sanctions for those exercising their right to free speech.
MINISTRY OF TRUTH
Trade unions, campaign groups, charities and other political parties
have condemned the draconian measures. If the bill were passed, it would
constitute a
severe infringement of civil liberties in the
UK
and would leave political parties free to deliver their propaganda
unchallenged in an election year. In effect, groups would be unable to
speak out against any of the major issues of the day for fear of
becoming tangled up in the new law, which has met charges of being both
overly complex and too vague. The conservative-liberal democrat coalition government is being accused of
attempting to rush the bill through. Campaign group
38 Degrees is urging constituents to
write to their politicians in protest at this disturbing proposal.
The bill is only the latest of a series of worrying instances concerning limitations upon civil freedoms in the UK. In
May Edward Snowden, a former national security agency (NSA) contractor in the
USA,
revealed classified information about how both the USA and the UK’s
government communications headquarters spy upon their civilians using
the internet, and spend thousands of pounds in
attempts to break encryptions on private information. American
journalist
Glenn Greenwald published the leaked information for the British left-wing newspaper
The Guardian. In
August, Greenwald’s Brazilian partner
David Miranda was detained at a UK airport for
nine hours
and had all his electronic goods confiscated under the terrorism act.
He was returning after visiting one of the other actors in the NSA
revelations, documentary maker
Laura Poitras. It was subsquently revealed that the UK government had ordered
The Guardian to destroy the hard-drives containing the Snowden files.
Pornwalls
In other developments, the 'con-dem' government plans to make internet
service providers block online pornography by default, turning porn into
an ‘opt-in’ service. While this action may at first seem relatively
innocuous, governmental censorship of any kind sets an alarming
precedent. It seems likely that other types of ‘inappropriate’ sites may
also be
automatically blocked if prime minister
David Cameron’s
'pornwall' is set up, such as extremist and terrorist related content
or esoteric material. Many of the categories are disturbingly open to
state interpretation. George Orwell's
1984, the blueprint of
dystopian state control, put it thus: 'Who controls the past,' ran the
party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls
the past'.
While the government couches its proposal in terms of safety and of
protecting children, it is dubious whether governmental organisations
should have the power to censor and filter the information available on
the internet. For those who argue that the 'innocent' have nothing to
fear, the UK government’s proposed
anti-social behaviour, crime and policing bill
may give some cause for concern. This bill would criminalise anyone who
‘engages or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance
or annoyance to any person'. That’s pretty broad. Many of us would argue
that the bill could potentially
violate our freedom of expression.
It may also remove the lawful freedoms to assemble and protest. The UK
government is attempting to pass measures which would both increase
state power and severely curtail civil freedoms in at least
England and
Wales.
The fear is that the public won’t notice, won’t seize their right to
protest these authoritarian and oppressive new bills until they are
enshrined in law and their right to protest no longer exists. As Orwell
said, 'In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five,
and you would have to believe it.'
