Authoritarian Britain

 

Our current Conservative government has been ready to use a variety of tools at its disposal to suppress dissent and views that it considers unacceptable. For, example, museums have traditionally had considerable autonomy and curatorial freedom. When Oliver Dowden was secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 2020-2021, the government was distinctly hostile to those who held negative views of the British Empire and British involvement in slavery, and to movements such as Black Lives Matter. The Conservatives much preferred positive portrayals of British imperialism, to emphasize British involvement in the abolition of slavery, and to deny that institutional racism exists in the UK. Dowden wrote to Museums to tell them that any that receive government money should reflect the general views of the British public (implicitly those approved by the government). Dowden also refused to renew the appointments of some museum trustees of decidedly anti-imperialist views.

 

The censorship of unwelcome views can be extended even to those whom the government has wronged. For example, the government itself has accepted that many British citizens of Caribbean origin (members or descendants of the “Windrush Generation”) were wrongly deported, denied healthcare, dismissed from the jobs and left penniless because of gross government errors and discrimination. The government has praised itself for its determination to right the wrongs it had committed. A monument to the Windrush Generation has been erected in Waterloo railway station, compensation has been paid (slowly and inadequately to the extent that recipients have died waiting). In return, the Windrush Generation is expected to be grateful: lack of gratitude will be punished. For example, in the last financial year a number of Windrush organizations were to receive grants of £10,000 for programmes to support the Windrush victims, but officials were ordered to check that none had expressed opinions that rendered them unworthy of government largesse. Two were found to have retweeted articles from newspapers critical of government policy, so the grant programme was suspended.

 

Our government is also redefining the boundaries of civil rights to reduce, or withhold altogether, the civil and human rights of those deemed unworthy of full protection. This discriminatory approach has been applied to the right to protest. Groups protesting against the fossil fuel industry, those who finance it, and the government that subsidizes it are particularly out of favour. New restrictions have been introduced, the government argues, to protect the rights of the public not to be inconvenienced by protests. But the restrictions have been targeted not at all protest, but rather at methods recently used by anti-fossil fuel groups. There is already legislation that the police can use to clear protests that, for example, obstruct the highway by people gluing themselves to the road or chaining themselves to railings and so on. However, now the mere possession of something that can be used for such purposes with intent to use it in a protest is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.

 

As a matter of policy, the government has steadily reduced the incomes and living standards of public sector workers, from nurses, doctors and ambulance drivers, to teachers and officials who issue passports, for thirteen years. When inflation exceeded 11%, these workers decided that enough was enough and voted to strike. Union rights have been eroded for decades, but until now, although the legal requirements to call a strike have been tightened, the right to strike itself has not been challenged. The government’s first reaction to the strikes was to refuse to negotiate and to threaten unions with legislation to mandate “minimum service levels” (already achieved by negotiation in the case of health workers) in the event of strikes, on pain of enormous financial penalties for the unions.

 

The government judged, perhaps mistakenly, that the public would tire of striking public sector workers, but has been on safer ground when creating and exploiting animosity towards refugees. Those who arrive on what are described as “small boats”, in fact inflatables unsuited for the purpose, across the English Channel are now declared to be illegal for choosing that method of entry to the UK. These refugees, most of whom seek asylum, are, the government argues “jumping the queue” to enter the UK ahead of others who politely wait in refugee camps or detention centres elsewhere for the UK government to grant a small number refugee status. They are further said to be misbehaving by not claiming asylum in the first safe country which they enter when fleeing persecution, despite the fact that international conventions agreed by the UK stipulate no such requirement. The government and its MPs further portray these refugees as a thoroughly bad lot by asserting that they are not really refugees fleeing persecution because they are “all men” (which of course is not true: many are but not all). That this is a specious argument is disproved by the fact that a majority of those who enter the country in this way and who claim asylum are granted it by the same government that denounces them as not being “real refugees”.

 

New legislation proposes to detain all who arrive in boats and to return them to their country of origin or to a “third safe country” such as Rwanda. Unaccompanied children not be detained (but children who arrive as part of a family group will be imprisoned with their family). Thus, accompanied children are granted lesser rights than unaccompanied children. As UK child protection law requires, unaccompanied children will be provided with a safe and stable place to live until they are 18 years old, at which point, however, they will be deported. This raises two important human rights and child protection questions. Firstly, detention of children who are part of a family group is a very significant and retrograde change of existing government policy, which was introduced in law by the Conservative Cameron administration. No other child in the UK could be treated in this way. Secondly, the expulsion of unaccompanied children at age 18 contradicts current child protection laws, which require the government to provide ongoing support until the young woman/man is 25. Thus, in order to (as the three-word government slogan goes) Stop the Boats, the government is discriminating against children simply because of their manner of arrival and whether or not they arrived with family members.

 

The question of refugees and immigration, leads neatly on to sustained pressure from the Conservative Party to undermine the autonomy, and indeed as some would wish, to abolish the BBC altogether.  The BBC has long been a target for the hostility of members of the Conservative party and the privately-owned media in the UK. In the case of the former, they much prefer the generally automatic support afforded to the Conservative Party, especially by the majority of newspapers, and correspondingly hostile coverage of the Labour Party. At its best, the BBC has an unpleasant habit of questioning government policies and actions, and on occasion of exposing governmental malfeasance (in the case of both Labour and Conservative governments). Since 2010, Conservative administrations have reduced the funding the BBC receives from the license fee, obliged the BBC to take on additional obligations (e.g. providing free licenses for people over 75, previously funded by the government; paying the cost of the BBC World Service, likewise previously funded by the government).

 

The BBC has received the message: if it is deemed not to be “impartial” in its coverage of the government, the BBC will suffer severe consequences. The Director General appointed in 2020 instituted new “impartiality” guidelines. Whenever an adverse comment, however mild or reasoned, is made about government policy or actions, a presenter reads a government comment or response. This might seem reasonable if a political opponent of the government has made a tendentious or unsubstantiated comment about the government. However, if, for example, a scientist is interviewed about the causes of increased pollution of rivers, caused by the government’s failure to implement policies to control pollution, the news item will end with a government statement along the lines of: “Since 2010 we have invested record amounts in pollution prevention and are committed to ensuring that our rivers remain healthy and support a diverse and thriving range of wildlife.” While the scientist will be questioned and challenged as to the accuracy of the research findings, the government statement is read without criticism, comment or analysis. In effect, the BBC becomes a government spokesperson.

 

Recently, Gary Lineker (for my American friends: a former star footballer, now the BBC’s presenter of football coverage) criticized the government’s proposed anti-refugee measures. Lineker noted that the numbers of refugees that arrive in the UK is tiny compared to the numbers accepted by many European countries, and commented that the language used by the government is comparable in its intent to the language used by the Nazis in the 1930s. This provoked instant uproar from the government and its supporters. Lineker was (inaccurately) accused of comparing Conservative party policy to that of the Nazis (this is not what he said). The remarks of one football commentator were presented as conclusive proof that the BBC was riddled with anti-government bias. Moreover, Lineker is “only a football commentator”, “not a historian “, and therefore not entitled to his opinion. The BBC’s Director General took fright and announced that Lineker would not present football programmes at the weekend. Linker’s fellow commentators and the crews that make the programmes refused to participate if Lineker was suspended. A compromise was reached and Lineker returned.

 

In general, government rhetoric is designed to promote intolerance, hostility and fear. Asylum seekers are not real refugees, but queue jumpers or bogus asylum applicants. If you disapprove of her immigration policy, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman asserts, you are unpatriotic and in favour of open borders. Or even worse you are a lefty do-gooder. Or even worse, you might eat tofu and read The Guardian. If you voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, you are a “remoaner” and doing your best to sabotage Brexit (which needs no sabotage to be a patent disaster). And, as my MP wrote to me, you are “anti-democratic” for not accepting that Brexit is a wonderful thing.