Taking Liberties

By coincidence, Conservative MEP Roger Helmer has sent me a copy of a post he has written for his blog. It concerns a hearing he has just attended in the European parliament. (Note: the hearing is NOT the reason I am in Brussels, although it could have implications for an initiative we are working on with our European partners.)

Roger writes:

A series of anti-smoking campaigners vied with each other to vilify the tobacco industry, accusing it of dreadful things like lobbying, and seeking to influence legislation, and promoting the interests of its shareholders, and doing other cynical things like awarding prizes for Corporate Social Responsibility and contributing to anti-AIDS programmes. The sort of things that just about all major industries do, in fact.

The World Health Organisation has initiated the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which the EU and 26 member-states have signed up to (The Czech Republic, God bless it, has declined to sign). They are now producing "guidelines for implementation". Anti-smoking lobbyists are proposing that the guidelines should preclude legislators from speaking to the industry. Yep. You read that right. They want to ban MEPs from speaking to tobacco companies.
 
Frankly, I was hopping mad when I heard this proposal. It is absolutely fundamental to any kind of good governance that legislators should discuss proposed legislation with those affected, and that parliamentarians should talk to businesses in areas they represent. I represent the East Midlands, home to Imperial Tobacco. Hundreds of their employees are my constituents, and a quarter of my constituents smoke. I personally hate smoking, but I respect the right of my constituents to make grown-up choices. Imperial has already been hammered by the EU's Tobacco Directive, which like so much EU regulation had the primary effect of moving jobs, production and investment out of the EU altogether.
 
The WHO proposal is an assault on democracy. Listening to constituents, and to businesses, is a key part of what I am paid for, and I shall continue to do so without let or hindrance from the WHO.
 
If we start with tobacco, where do we stop? Many of my colleagues would like to start restricting the drinks industry. They believe that "Big Oil" is frustrating their attempts to curb global warming. Packaged food companies contribute to obesity. Cars cause accidents and pollute the atmosphere. They have problems with the pharmaceutical industry.  This could grow into a full-scale assault on business and capitalism - which of course is exactly what many in the green lobby want.

The full post should appear HERE shortly.

When I blogged yesterday I intended it to be my last post on the subject of Kerry McCarthy. To recap: the member of parliament for Bristol East wrote about the smoking ban on her blog on June 29 but I only mentioned it here (on July 3) when I discovered that she had published a second post on July 1 in which she made specific reference to Forest and linked our champagne tea party at the House of Commons to Libby Brooks' class-based critique in the Guardian.

Not unreasonably, I feel, I invited readers and supporters of Forest to respond. Come Saturday night there were 200+ comments on her blog. (To put this in perspective, most of her posts attract no comments at all.) On Sunday she responded to those comments with a further post. To my mind, we had stretched this particular thread as far as it would go. So yesterday afternoon, to wrap things up, I sent her a rather cheery email:

Dear Kerry,

Thank you for your response to the comments that appeared on your blog. For your information, you may be interested to see [HERE] the original blog post that encouraged people to write to you.

The reason [your] post came to our attention - unlike your previous posts on smoking - was the reference to Forest. I have now added THIS post:

I won't go over all the issues again, but I hope we have demonstrated that, in some quarters at least, there remains a great deal of anger and resentment at the extent of the smoking ban, which I don't think will go away this side of an election.

In our experience, based on thousands of emails, blog posts, telephone calls and letters, most of the anger comes from "lifelong Labour supporters" who say that they "will never vote Labour again" as a result of the ban.

They may change their tune after a few years of Conservative government, but it indicates the deep sense of betrayal that many natural Labour voters feel as a result of legislation that went much further than promised in the 2005 Labour manifesto.

Should you be interested:

1. A short video of the recent Forest/Boisdale party is on Friction TV HERE:
2. An equally short video of the Forest reception at the House of Commons can be viewed HERE:
3. A report of the HoC event is on our Free Society blog HERE:

Boisdale, I should add, is NOT a private members' club as you stated more than once. It's a very public bar and restaurant where you would be very welcome to join us for lunch or dinner at any time.

Kind regards,

Simon Clark
Director, Forest

To my surprise (I wasn't expecting a reply), I received the following email which I reproduce in full:

I think it's quite clear that your strategy is to mobilise supporters to hound those who have publicly supported the ban, with often quite abusive emails, until they decide that it is simply not worth the hassle of saying anything in public about it again.
 
As some of those posting comments said, the normal response is for the subject of their attention to post a statement and then close down the blog. It says a lot for your commitment to free speech that you encourage such behaviour.

To be honest, I was a little taken aback. My second impulse was to ignore it. My third reaction was to draft this post and sit on it overnight. This morning I thought, "To hell with it."

So, let's get this right. It's OK for elected representatives like Kerry McCarthy to praise the smoking ban (and imply that Forest is an elitist organisation), but it's not OK for Forest to alert people to her comments in order that they can give her a different perspective. In her eyes, that amounts to hounding.

Worse, she claims that "it's quite clear that your strategy is to mobilise supporters to hound those who have publicly supported the ban, with often quite abusive emails [my emphasis]". If McCarthy had bothered to read the posts on this blog she would know that I have gone out of my way to ask people NOT to send abusive emails.

Yes, a few went a bit too far, but the overwhelming majority were well within the bounds of civil debate. She should see what we have to put up with from anti-smokers. One local councillor - from Bristol, funnily enough - once sent me a scrawled note declaring "I hope you die of cancer". He's not the only one.

To top it all, she suggests that we "encourage" people to target blogs which then have to be shut down. Excuse me?! Is it too much to ask that she provide evidence of a single blog or website that has been closed down as a result of our alleged "behaviour"?

What we have here is an MP rattled by the fact that 200 people have had the audacity to take issue with her comments on an open blog - so she shoots the messenger.

Free speech? Don't make me laugh. The anti-smoking lobby doesn't know the meaning of it.

PS. If you have anything to add on this topic, please post your comment here, not on Kerry McCarthy's blog. We have made our point. There is nothing to be gained by posting further comments there. Let it lie.

A timely article by Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, on The Free Society blog. Reflecting on the fate that has befallen the Archbishop of Canterbury in recent days, she notes how Dr Rowan Williams has joined a long list of public figures, from DNA pioneer Professor James Watson to TV's David Bellamy to Pope Benedict XVI who have recently been denounced and told – YOU CAN’T SAY THAT. 

The problem is less big government, or the nanny state, and more an informal narrowing of what all of us can say in the public sphere ... We have to defend free speech by asserting that we can say that, we will say that, and no amount of media hysteria or moral outrage will silence us. If we don’t, we can expect a free society to go up in smoke.

Full article HERE.

Last week's sports pages were dominated by one story - the 50th anniversary of the Munich plane crash that killed 23 people including eight members of Manchester United's famous "Busby Babes". All week there were dire warnings that some Man City fans might abuse the minute's silence to honour the victims. Before yesterday's Manchester derby some commentators were even calling for a "lifetime ban" for any supporter caught shouting out.

In the event everything passed off smoothly and supporters of both teams respected the occasion. Nevertheless, it has to be said. A lifetime ban? For shouting during a minute's silence? Bad manners, yes. Tasteless, certainly. But why should it be considered a major offence punishable by a "lifetime ban"?

What next? Are we going to ban everyone who boos the opposition's national anthem or calls Frank Lampard a "wanker"? In a free society people have a right to be offensive, up to a point.

I say "up to a point" because there has to be a limit to our tolerance. I once had someone thrown out of a football ground for making "monkey" chants at an opposition player and I don't regret it for a second. I didn't however want the guy banned for life.

More often than not peer pressure will govern people's behaviour without the need for draconian penalties - and that's what happened yesterday.

I woke up this morning to the Today programme and the sound of two MPs - Julian Lewis (Conservative) and Evan Harris (Liberal) - heatedly discussing the pros and cons of tonight's debate at the Oxford Union where BNP leader Nick Griffin and discredited historian David Irving have been invited to speak.

First, I should declare an interest. Julian Lewis and I go back a long way. From 1983-85 he helped raise funds to support a national student magazine that I founded and edited. (One of our goals was to strike a blow against the closed shop system whereby undergraduates had to be members of the National Union of Students.) For five years thereafter I worked for him as director of the Media Monitoring Unit which he founded in 1985 with former Labour minister Lord Chalfont to combat unrestrained political bias on television news and current affairs.

Yesterday, Julian announced that he was resigning "with great sadness" his life membership of the Oxford Union, arguing that the right to free speech should not guarantee access to "privileged platforms". In his letter to the union's officers, he wrote:

"Nothing which happens in Monday's debate can possibly offset the boost you are giving to a couple of scoundrels who can put up with anything except being ignored. It is sheer vanity on your part to imagine that any argument you deploy, or any vote you carry will succeed in causing them damage. They have been exposed and discredited time and again by people vastly more qualified than you in arenas hugely more suited to the task than an undergraduate talking-shop, however venerable."

I know how carefully Julian chooses his words and, to be fair, he isn't arguing that people shouldn't have the right to say (within the law) what they think. His principal grievance is with the Oxford Union for offering Irving and Griffin a prestigious arena for their views.

There's no direct comparison but there are echoes of the argument we had with the BBC and other broadcasters in the Eighties - namely, if our democratic political system is to be defended, is it reasonable to give equal weight and prominence to the opinions of extremists who wish to undermine the system?

Politics has changed since then, of course. Back then there were clear battles between right and left, capitalism and socialism, democracy and dictatorship (aka the Cold War). Indeed, one of the sad things about Britain today is that those of us who fought so hard to defend our democratic institutions have been badly let down by the "democrats" in power (and in opposition).

But the arguments about free speech haven't changed. Then again, Julian's point is not about freedom of speech. It concerns "privileged platforms". The danger is, if we accept this concept, it could so easily be abused by those wishing to stifle debate on all manner of subjects.

Like Julian, I abhor the BNP and what little I know of David Irving's views. But where do we draw the line? Who decides when (and where) a certain point of view can be expressed? I'm not sure I know the answer but it's an important issue because the definition of a truly free society depends on it.

Resignation story HERE. Update HERE.

Iain Dale (left), one of Britain's most successful bloggers (and a friend of The Free Society), drew attention last week to EU legislation that will curb our right to free speech. "Its aim," he wrote, "is to make holocaust denial a criminal offence, but it has far reaching implications beyond that. I have never believed that you can legislate on people's thought processes. If someone believes the holocaust didn't exist they are clearly bonkers, but does that mean they should be banned from articulating that view? Surely the best way to defeat such idiots is to expose their specious arguments? That's what you do in a free society." I couldn't have put it better myself.