POET ON POLITICS: BRITAIN, CHARNEL

HOUSE OF LIBERTIES

Michael Blackburn
 BRITAIN, CHARNEL HOUSE OF LIBERTIES

It's the accumulation of small things that aggravates and finally makes one snap. Bit by bit over
the last dozen years our own government has been waging a guerilla war against us, slicing
away a freedom here, a liberty there; adding a fine here, a punishment there, inventing new
crimes for us ('environmental crimes', anyone?), extending the power of the state into every
area of our private lives.

What were our elected representatives and their advisers doing when they lobbied hard in
Brussels for the innocuous sounding Directive 2006/24/EC (don't they all sound so harmless,
worthy and dull?) compelling the recording and retention of the details of all our phone calls
(landline, mobile, internet) and all our internet activity (emails, visits to websites, etc)? Which
is now part of British law, because EU law is superior to our own (think on that a while).

What kind of representatives are they who vote to keep their own expenses secret and have
their home addresses not made public when they're busy passing laws that demand increasing
amounts information about our personal lives - our finances, our children, our dealings with
our own and other people's children, our health, our travel plans, our formal and informal
working arrangements, our private and business communications?

What kind of government corrupts the charitable sector by funding its favourite charities to
lobby it in favour of its own causes, and even sets up its own charities to further its agenda?

What were our hard-working MPs doing when they allowed over three and a half thousand
new offences to enter the statute books, thus expanding the scope for us all to transgress, suffer
fines or imprisonment and be marked as law-breakers?

What kind of morally-atrophied troglodytes think it's OK to take and retain the DNA of
innocent people; to blather constantly about justice then to ignore the ruling of a court that tells
them they are acting illegally?

What kind of people think it's acceptable to parachute an unelected, ennobled body into a
government post, to pass squalid laws spatchcocked together for PR purposes, then to be found
breaking those very laws herself, only to be fined half the total amount permissible and still to
be allowed to keep her job?

And what have the media been doing while all this time? Where have our independent-
minded, highly-trained investigative journalists and broadcasters been while our liberties were
systematically shaved away?

What has the BBC, supposed bastion of our national culture, been doing? Covering its quivering
backside while kissing the rod of government, that's what. Vacuous nonsense about celebrities
and sport often takes precedence over important but governmentally-embarrassing items.

Even its old-fashioned mission to inform, educate and entertain has been twisted to fit the
pompous, officious values of New Labour. It's primary function now is 'sustaining citizenship
and civil society'. 'Citizenship', now there's a word that makes me retch. It fills me with the
same nausea as other 'progressive' appropriations, such as 'community', 'public' and 'safety'. Just
add the word 'committee' and you'll get my drift.

In the meantime writers, artists and academics wanting to visit the country find themselves
deported at our airports for minor mistakes incurred in fulfilling the expensive requirements of
the new immigration system enforced by the Border Agency. Canadian singer Alison Crowe,
Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, and Russian classical pianist Grigory Sokolov, have all
been refused entry. Recently the writers Hassan Najmi, Ouidad Benmoussa and Dorothea Rosa
Herliany were prevented from entering the UK to attend the Ledbury Poetry Festival. There are
many others. In the skewed cyclopean vision of the government, and the Border Agency, these
are all obviously untrustworthy people against whom regulations must be applied without
regard to decency or common sense.

And where are our writers and poets? How many have even been aware of what's going on, let
alone written about it, talked to each other about it, tried to bring it to public attention? Back in
the 1980s there were scores, probably hundreds of us politically or socially engaged to some
extent. Have we been reduced to automata, sleepwalkers, quislings? Or have we simply been
guilty of trusting our representatives and public servants?

One thing is certain. We have been traduced. Our lives and our country have been stolen from
us by the very people entrusted with their care. That corruption comes right from the top. And
we have been deceived by the fourth estate, who have willingly ignored the evils being
committed or actively colluded in them.

All of these people have reduced our country to a charnel house of liberties.

We know what they think of us, in what contempt they hold us.

It's about time they understood that we know them for what they are: scum.

(The unexpurgated version), Michael Blackburn, 2009