The decision by the Metropolitan Police to suddenly at 9pm on 14th October withdraw the right of Extinction Rebellion to protest in London, taken it is now clear without reference or discussion with the London Mayor, has attracted much criticism.
The historical context is William Cobbett’s Freeborn Englishman discussed by E P Thompson in his Making of the English Working Class (1963)
Thompson’s focus on the Freeborn Englishman suggests that he (and it was always a he) was a complex figure who was identified neither fully with left or right but could appear in either space depending on context.
For example Thompson notes that the Freeborn Englishman claimed a right to riot against oppression founded in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.
The Freeborn Englishman did not however claim many rights but what he did not like was authority telling him what to do, or restricting his activities. Hence things like freedom from arbitrary arrest, jury trial and equality before the law were very important matters.
The British Government of the early nineteenth century, referred to by William Cobbett as The Thing, liked, as Thompson notes, to flatter the Freeborn Englishman by claiming that it held to these principles, whereas OTHER COUNTRIES did not.
Certainly the Freeborn Englishman was not an internationalist or an enthusiast for what happened in other countries.
In reality of course, for example at Peterloo in August 1819, the gap between the appearance of some kind of liberty and the reality often led to the Freeborn Englishman and the defence of his liberties to appear on the left rather than the right.
Perhaps that is something that want to ban Extinction Rebellion might reflect on
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