A few days ago, a man was arrested in Leeds for holding a cartoon legally published, and legally on sale in the UK, that he had enlarged from Private Eye*. This is the cartoon in question:
The man tried to explain what he was showing, but was handcuffed, taken away in a police van and held for six hours. He was released after being questioned by anti-terrorist police.
For friends outside the UK, Private Eye, is a magazine first published in 1961. It publishes humorous articles and cartoons making fun of, and exposes the wrongdoings of British politicians.
I understand the UK has no actual "First Amendment," as we call it, that legally protects freedom of speech. Is that an old policy from the Monarchy? Over her in the USA, free speech is being severely tested by our despotic president, who uses propaganda the way Nazi Joseph Goebbels did. But the First Amendment will win in the long run.
ReplyDeleteThe UK has no written constitution, which our politicians often tell us is an advantage because it gives us flexibility to adapt to change (consider, for example, our very different histories of gun control). Our rights are a mix of precedent/tradition, documents such as Magna Carta, international treaties (e.g. European Convention on Human Rights), the traditional rights (set by precedent more than anything else) of Parliament and the traditional role of the monarch. Mr Trump might have become a dictator much faster here than in the USA. Let's see what happens.
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