Inconsistent punishments of protesters reveals Tory cowardice

Have laws been made specifically to target anti-lockdown campaigns?

The ‘rule of law’ is an often cited but variously defined concept, even though it is frequently claimed as the defining value of British democracy. Some say that it simply means ‘equality under the law,’ the principle that all citizens are subject to the same rights and restrictions, regardless of class, race, religion or gender. This fundamental value is the basis for the great strides in civil rights made in the last hundred years and is a significant bulwark against arbitrary power and corruption.

The principle is always applied imperfectly. Bias can never be totally eradicated. Cronyism and lobbying mean that special treatment is a reality in our system regardless of the country’s historical checks on absolutist power. Despite all this, George Orwell noted that even as every British citizen knows that the system is not pure, they also rest in the security that there is at the very least a presumption among their leaders and fellow countrymen that equality under the law is preferable to the alternative and a principle worth defending.

However, speaking to The Critic Magazine this month, the barrister Kirsty Brimelow QC said that the bloated and confusing coronavirus legislation is in danger of eroding the rule of law.

She said:

‘The rule of law is being so emasculated that when you actually need it you will find it is no longer there. That then leads to arbitrary decisions, overreach and [the law] being used against citizens. We have become too used to being a liberal democratic country and our rights are being pulled away by stealth. If we don’t have a strong legal framework then we will move towards law by government and not law through parliament, and the heart of democracy will be gone. We must be alert to that.’

Judging by the lack of challenge to these laws from parliament and among the press, most of the country still believes that the supposed Covid emergency trumps all other concerns, even the integrity of the constitution.

Brimelow’s point is that cancelling the normal function of the constitution risks a descent into arbitrary power. Emergencies are all very well, but we better be sure what we are dealing with really is an emergency, and even then we must retain as much scrutiny and due process as possible in order to avoid creating a rod for our own backs down the line.

It may be expedient for a panicked government to lock people up for ‘dangerous’ views today, but what’s to stop these laws being applied across the political spectrum in the future? It might make sense to use ‘emergency’ as a reason to suspend rights in order to keep society safe, but what’s to stop any future tyrant using the same excuse to grab even more powers at some later date?

These questions, and Brimelow’s comments, are especially relevant to the case of Piers Corbyn, the organiser of the bank holiday weekend anti-lockdown protests, and self-described ‘weather-forecaster’. On August 30th, Corbyn was arrested after holding a demonstration in Trafalgar Square and held for a number of hours without charge. He was then issued with a fine of £10,000, the largest ever punishment for protest in UK history.

It eventually emerged last week that Corbyn had been charged under a new law that was quickly nodded through into law on the evening before, as a ‘statutory instrument’ under existing Covid legislation. The charges were made under the newly-minted Regulation 5B of The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions on Holding of Gatherings and Amendment) (England) Regulations 2020.

On that same weekend, the Extinction Rebellion protests started and a protest was held in London by Black Lives Matter. BLM organiser Ken Hinds was initially warned by the police that he too could be issued a fine, but the police backed down, claiming that BLM’s status as a political organisation left them exempt from any punishment. Neither BLM organisers or those from Extinction Rebellion were charged under the same law as Corbyn was (although a number of XR protesters have been arrested under public order laws), prompting questions as to whether Regulation 5B was made law specifically to target anti-lockdown campaigns.

It has now been revealed that Corbyn faces yet another £10,000 fine for breaching Health Protection legislation at a protest in Sheffield, and that six others now face the same fine after organising an ‘illegal rave’ in Leeds. It remains difficult to understand the reasoning by which these harsh punishments are being handed out, given that London has been over-taken by righteous protest many times over in the last four months, sometimes with violent consequences and causing damage to national monuments.

Why is it that only those organising pro-freedom rallies and recreational activities have been charged for breaching lockdown?

Bournbrook Magazine has contacted the Met Police, the Home Office and the department of Health (the department responsible for the new draconian law), but all of them have failed to comment. Specifically, Bournbrook challenged these bodies to clarify why BLM have faced no punishment, Extinction Rebellion have faced non-health-related charges, but anti-lockdown protesters seem to be singled out for harsh clampdowns.

As Peter Hitchens noted in his column for the Mail On Sunday this weekend, it appears that the government is happy to apply harsh regulations randomly and inconsistently, but one thing that cannot be tolerated across the boards is any questioning of its new powers, or any challenge to the suffocating, society-crushing lockdown.

This intolerance on the part of the establishment was sharply demonstrated by news reports about ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’, said to be the main type of attendee at the recent anti-lockdown demonstrations. Anyone who had actually joined these demonstrations, however, would have been confronted by a remarkably diverse crowd of people, and an exceptionally peaceful atmosphere.

This diversity extends not just to race but to class, region of origin and age. The general tone of these demonstrations is closer to the kind of climate you might have found at the anti-war marches during the Iraq invasion.

Students and pensioners, hippies and conservative country folk have all been represented at these anti-lockdown protests, proving the suspicion that lockdown sceptics have had for sometime that their qualms about over-zealous Covid legislation are shared by a large cross-section of the country.

The difference in the treatment of anti-lockdown campaigners compared to basically any other form of protest speaks to fakery of the self-appointed counter-culturists and the cowardice of our current government. Protest is still a protected right in this country, but only if you are taking part in campaigns on government-approved issues such as climate change and ‘diversity.’ The reason is of course, that these campaigns are not anti-establishment at all, they are part of the elite’s own propaganda strategy. Toothless, bland and irrelevant ‘protests’ are welcomed by the government and the technocratic class because they keep people from actually challenging the real foundations of power.

The unfair treatment of anti-lockdown protesters shows that, for all the rhetoric of the counterculture and the social media posturing of BLM and XR loudmouths, we are living not in revolutionary times, but in a truly reactionary age. The elites' hypocrisy may be down to cowardice and a desire to avoid a public relations disaster rather than an overt conspiracy against lockdown protesters, but this inconsistency is a dangerous violation of the British constitutional traditions.