By Madeleine Kearns
Thursday, November 05, 2020
From Magna Carta (1215), to the Great Reform Bill (1832),
and beyond, the British constitution — unlike its American counterpart — has
not been secure and considered, but reactive and malleable. Yet throughout
Britain’s turbulent history, the state has never “exercised coercive powers
over its citizens” on such a scale as it has in response to the 2020
coronavirus pandemic. At least, that is the view of the historian and former
U.K. supreme court justice, Jonathan Sumption, one of the most learned scholars
and outspoken critics of his country’s coronavirus response.
In the Cambridge Freshfields annual law lecture late last
month, Sumption explained exactly how Boris Johnson’s conservative government
set about its “remarkable departure from our liberal traditions,” “surrendering
basic freedoms which are fundamental to our existence” and allowing healthy and
law-abiding citizens to be placed under house arrest. Sumption explained how
this hasty legislation had essentially brought about “government by executive
decree,” enforced by a police state.
Ever since lockdown measures were first enacted, critics
have documented overly zealous policing, the micromanagement of which items can
be bought in stores, and which forms of outdoor exercise are allowed. Now that
Britain is on the brink of a second lockdown, the government has suggested
keeping families from different households apart, as well as outlawing public
worship.
The manifestations of such policies can be heartbreaking
as well as absurd. Consider the recent episode of a 73-year-old woman — a
qualified nurse, no less — arrested for attempting to take her 97-year-old
mother out of a care home. This appalling episode was caught on camera by the
arrested woman’s daughter, Leandra Ashton, who explained that the family were
acting ahead of the enactment of the second nationwide lockdown, since they had
already been unable to see their grandmother for nine months. Ashton
complained: “When the rules — like so many in this period of our history — are
purporting to be in place to ‘protect’ but yet are causing untold damage to
physical and mental health then you start breaking the rules.” She added that
this was a “Kafka-esque nightmare” with “people in masks coming to take your
relative away from you.”
Freedom of religion is similarly under assault. Though
Magna Carta lays out that the established church “shall be free and shall have
all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable,” the current Tory government
takes a different view. Never mind that there is next to no evidence to suggest
that churches, most of which have enacted COVID security measures, have been
responsible for the spread of the virus, they will nevertheless be closed.
Theresa May, a former prime minister, summed up the problem well in Parliament:
“My concern is that the government today, making it illegal to conduct an act
of public worship, for the best of intentions, sets a precedent that could be
misused for a government in the future with the worst of intentions, and it has
unintended consequences.”
Is it really surprising that latent authoritarians have
recently been crawling out of their shells? Across various parts of the U.K.,
there are those who would seek to use the current changes to push forward laws
which flagrantly undermine basic individual liberties. Scotland’s justice
secretary, Humza Yousaf, suggested policing private dinner-table talk that’s
deemed to be hateful. He isn’t the only one with such ideas. England and
Wales’s Law Commission, which is an independent organization tasked by
Parliament to review and recommend legal reforms, has come up with a 500-page
consultation report on hate laws suggesting that “hate speech” uttered in a
person’s home should be a potential crime.
In his lecture, Sumption warns of Brits’ over reliant
“belief in the benign power of the state” and criticizes the willingness with
which they have surrendered their freedoms. He is right. The government’s
measures go well beyond the temporary quarantining of infected people during a
public-health emergency. Brits must defend their rights now, before it is too
late.
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