The U.K.: Corruption of Law

by A. Millar
January 20, 2009 at 12:45 pm

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/231/the-uk-corruption-of-law

While there has been much talk of law in the last year, there seems to have been little or no discussion of what law is actually for. As the nature of policing, the punishment of offenders, and even law itself, is steadily changing, now would seem to be a good time to remind ourselves of its nature and purpose, and, more especially, to probe the ideology that underlies law in Britain today.

First, however, it will be worth noting some of those changes. In the last few years violent crime has risen sharply, with the police seemingly unwilling to investigate or prosecute even many serious offenses, and government guidelines requiring judges sentence those found guilty to little or no prison time. Currently the Ministry of Defence is drawing up plans to allow residents to vote on punishments http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1104062/Petty-criminals-face-public-vote-punishment-new-community-payback-plans.html for lesser offences - and Norfolk has already been testing this system. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3533467/Police-adopt-aboriginal-elders-approach-to-combat-anti-social-behaviour.html Sharia courts are now operating legally, and have expressed an interest in prosecuting low-level criminal cases. And well over three hundred European laws have been established http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/874-parliament-bypassed-over-eu-laws in Britain against the wishes of parliament.

John Laughland has observed in his The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea that, “The European ideology is based precisely on a belief in the primacy of executive power […] and on an ignorance of the nature and importance of law. Or, to be more precise, the view of law implicit in the European ideology is not a liberal one.” (p. 182) Since Laughland wrote this, the Labour Party has come to power. And both the EU and Labour appear to have exchanged classical liberal values, such as freedom of speech, equality under the law, etc., for legislation that attempts to coerce people into saying and doing what is deemed acceptable, modern, liberal. Equally important, having abandoned natural law http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm the British and other EU member-sate governments have adopted other notions. In Britain at least, the notion is “tolerance.” Tony Blair famously spoke of “tolerance” for differences, and there has been much talk of the supposedly British “tradition of tolerance” in recent years.

When we hear talk of “tolerance” we naturally think that the alternative is intolerance, and that the latter being bad, the former must be good. But the choice is a false one, and the conclusion completely erroneous. History tells us that men will tolerate their fellow citizens being harassed or fired from their employment because of their race, religion, or political opinions. It tells us that men will tolerate their neighbors being disappeared to concentration camps, gulags, and secret prisons -- for the same reasons, or because they are artists, journalists, or intellectuals. This should be enough to tell us that tolerance is no basis for a philosophy of legislation.

We should all be open-minded, I believe. But, tolerance, is not ‘open-mindedness.’ Open-mindedness implies intelligence, character, culture, and an understanding of right and wrong. It also means evaluating the facts, and acting appropriately.

But the jury must be open-minded about the character of the accused, and whether or not he is guilty of the crime with which he is accused, but the jury cannot be open-minded about the crime. A society might tolerate a sharp rise in murder, but it cannot be open-minded about murder. We can tolerate injustice, poor education, a corrupt government, an inept police, the decline of democracy, the sufferings of others, but we cannot be open-minded about injustice, poor education, a corrupt government, an inept police, the decline of democracy, or the sufferings of others.

However, it is tolerance, and not open-mindedness, that is currently informing not only legislation but the police and other authorities. To cite only one of the more obvious illustrations of recent years, in 2007 when Channel 4 aired a documentary http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-474055/Police-accuse-Channel-4-distorting-film-radical-Muslim-preachers.html in which radical imams were seen inciting violence, calling women “deficient,” and gay people “dogs who should be murdered,” the police made an official complaint to OfCom, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom claiming the film had edited, so that the imam’s words were out of context. This is certainly tolerant of the imams in question, but it is also obviously unjust and closed-minded - clearly the evidence wasn’t evaluated in an objective, open-minded manner. Does tolerance require people to be closed-minded - to countervailing evidence? For we have seen that the so-called “liberal” ideology today has continually peddled a tolerance that is close-minded, that ignores the facts, and treats everyone with regard to their race or religion, rather than the content of their character.

They are prosecuting people for flying the English flag and issue kindergarten guidelines suggesting that if a child as young as three says “yuk” at spicy food that this is a sign of racism. There is an erosion of free speech but the unwillingness of police to prosecute or even investigate crimes such as burglary. There are attempts to deport Gurkha war heroes who fought for Britain, yet the protection of terrorists from deportation in case their human rights might be violated abroad. There is harassment of moderate Muslim and Conservative MP Baroness Warsi for suggesting that parliament discuss the crisis in immigration, yet then-London Mayor Ken Livingstone openly backing a supporter of terrorism, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. There are lowered sentences for honor-killing (and thus less protection for Muslim women), but cultural apartheid and the creation of Muslim ghettos. Close-minded “tolerance” has encouraged - even demanded - all of this.

This kind of tolerance has also enabled liberals to protested that Sharia law in England is a “right” of Muslims, because, they argue, Jews have their own courts.

It is not a question of allowing one group to have their law because another has its law, but rather it is a question of whether these laws are just.

Are women given an equal or lower status, for example? From what I know about Jewish law it in no way conflicts with democracy. As we know that women, homosexuals, and non-Muslims are regarded as inferiors in sharia, to defend its use as a right is absurd. How, for example, can it be the right of Muslim women to have fewer rights? Or for a Muslim man to allow his wife or daughters to have fewer rights?

Of course, if by “tolerance” we had meant the kind of laissez-faire attitude that underpins mature democracies (such as allowing, and even defending the right of, all sides to speak, regardless of whether we agree with the expressed views or vehemently oppose them) then the worst we could say would be that the term was being used inaccurately. “Tolerance” has undoubtedly been peddled in part in a misguided attempt to make it more like the US, but Britain does not understand the country with which they claim to have a “special relationship.” Britain, EU member states, and their populations have a love-hate relationship with the US. On the one hand they admire it for its “diversity,” modernity, cities, etc. On the other hand they believe that US culture, such as freedom of speech, is the culture of a people with no clear view of right and wrong.

I should like to point out that, on the contrary, freedom of speech only emerges in cultures with a very clear view of right and wrong - and that includes the US. Once, Britain was also known for being one of these countries. Journalist Luigi Albertini, who risked his life to write against Italy’s fascist regime, was inspired by his time in London and at The Times newspaper during the first quarter of the twentieth century. This, according to his brother, “confirmed in him the faith in ideas and in the possibility, in a free country, of promoting the elevation of minds through discussion and objective, unprejudiced criticism.” (Frank Rosengarten, The Italian Anti-fascist Press (1919-1945, p 34.) Today no-one would describe Britain in such terms.

Labour MP Denis MacShane has recently spoken http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3704 of “The hard-won European politics of […] trying to legislate for tolerance […]” He would appear to mean the acceptance of differences, different types of people, other cultures, etc. Yet, it should be obvious to MacShane that such acceptance cannot be legislated because the nature of the legislation is itself intolerant. The legislating of which opinions might be held or expressed, the intrusiveness of the authorities in people’s affairs, and the exponential growth of legislation that has been demanded in the name of “tolerance” can only produce intolerance. “Excess legislative zeal,” as Laughland says, “[…] is a danger to traditional liberties and to the rule of law itself.” (The Tainted Source p. 186.) Yet, in 2006 The Independent revealed http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-frenzied-law-making--a-new-offence-for-every-day-spent-in-office-412072.html that Labour had created one new law for almost every day in office - or, at that point, 3, 023 new laws - since coming to power in 1997.

The notion of “legislating for tolerance” echoes Rousseau’s statement in The Social Contract that people “will be forced to be free.” People obviously cannot be forced to be free, because, of course, in forcing them their freedom is lost. Open-mindedness tends, then, to be the next casualty. D’Entreves has said, quite correctly, that with Rousseau is the notion that “freedom lies in obedience,” and that from Rousseau we drift “towards the doctrine of totalitarianism.” Totalitarian states, he also says, claim that they allow people to live the good life because, according to them, they embody what is morally right. As such, “man will cease to obey out of fear, but obey out of conscience […]” (A.P. d’Entreves, Natural Law, p. 142). This very belief seems to lie beneath the legislating of the Labour government.

There are other ways in which the notion that a passive or natural state can be actively brought about has filtered into British intellectual culture. The conception of a “tradition of tolerance” that has been spoken of in the press over the last few years owes something to this peculiar mindset as does the assertion that multiculturalsm is “natural,” or that Britain has always been multicultural, yet that multiculturalism must be legislated vigorously. Britain has a ‘history of tolerance,’ but ‘tradition’ implies something active - something done - while ‘tolerance’ implies inactivity, passivity, or not doing. I might, for example, have a tradition of drinking coffee every morning, but I cannot have a tradition of not drinking tea, or not drinking orange juice.

When I first heard someone say that multiculturalism is natural and that Britain had always been multicultural, I wondered, why have we only recently heard of multiculturalism? The speaker appears to have meant that it is natural for societies to be composed of different types of people doing and thinking different things, and in this sense he is correct. It would seem that whether the speaker knows it or not, he or she is saying that multiculturalism is in accord with natural law. But, if so, they are wrong. Marriage may be natural - or at least in accord with natural law - but an ideology of ‘marriage-ism,’ or laws forcing everyone to marry, would quickly undermine marriage, just as laws that appear to enforce the government’s vision of multicultural Britain have fragmented society, created ghettos, have emboldened extremists at the sake of moderates, and given rise to seething resentment.

The natural can be allowed, but cannot be legislated into existence. Open-mindedness is manifest when people feel that they are in the same boat. When people feel this, racial and religious distinctions either disappear or are actually regarded as interesting. Cultures coexist without animosity in cities such as New York (which is now seen as a model for Britain to copy), not because multiculturalism is enforced by law, but because it is not enforced by law. Because the government seems to stay out of people’s private business, and because the police concern themselves with crime, not thought crime.

Indeed, while the US has had its share of racial troubles - and while there is still a problem with illegal immigration in particular - where it has overcome these racial troubles, it has done so because of a shared belief in its Constitution. It is the belief in “liberty and justice for all” that supports an American nationalism that crosses racial and religious boundaries.

Concerned at the possibility of the end of “legislating for tolerance,” MacShane has highlighted the emergence of anti-Semitism in Britain. MacShane is probably one of the few politicians that has attempted to seriously tackle the issue of anti-Semitism and the growth of radical Islam, http://www.newstatesman.com/200608210015 and to do so consistently. The Labour government prefers to pretend that there is no such thing. However, MacShane not only fails to see the correlation between Labour’s “legislating for tolerance” and the emergence of anti-Semitism in the same period, but would convince us that without more of this legislation anti-Semitism will only grow.

This is sheer nonsense. “Legislating for tolerance” may sound good, but it is, by its nature, a perversion of legislation. Legislation is properly concerned with justice. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08571c.htm It is justice that protects the innocent and prosecutes the guilty. Justice that demands that people are judged by their character and their deeds, not by their race or religion. Justice, indeed, that demands limited legislation and limited government. Tolerance has come to mean the exact opposite of all of this.

When a nation exchanges justice for tolerance, it will have to tolerate injustice. When open-mindedness is replaced by tolerance, power slips from the people to the government - and, in their desire for modernity, Europe’s governments are busy undermining this very democracy and freedom that we associate with the modern nation.

Related Topics:  United Kingdom  |  A. Millar receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free gatestone institute mailing list