Historically the Government telling people what they can and cannot protest about is UnBritish
Both Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood’s have called peaceful protests on Palestine ‘UnBritish’. Given that 10 years ago both were participating in similar protests some might be inclined to call out a political hypocrisy.
There is, historically speaking, no such thing as an ‘UnBritish’ protest. The UnBritish thing is for the Government to think it can tell people what they can or cannot protest about
E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class discussed the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ the archetypal British patriot. He was referring to the early nineteenth century and the ‘man’ is related to historical evidence and documentation. Even so work on the ‘Freeborn Englishwoman’ is long overdue.
Thompson makes the point that the English patriot can be on the political left or the political right depending on the specific times and context.
He identified some key characteristics. The first he noted is ‘freedom from foreign domination’ which in a modern context was a feature of the EU Referendum campaign, whether genuinely so or not.
Many others relate not to economic or social liberty but political liberty. These included, freedom from arbitrary arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law and freedom from the home being arbitrarily entered by the authorities.
Thompson also indicated the notion of some specific political freedoms around elections, free thought and speech and Parliamentary opposition.
The bottom line however was what Thompson called a ‘moral consensus’ of limits beyond which the patriotic Englishman would not be pushed. In short the Freeborn Englishman wanted the right to be ‘left alone’.
Starmer and Mahmood’s plan is in short not to leave people alone, free to speak out. The Tories who blather on about ‘free speech’ are on exactly the same page but even more forcibly.
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