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POET ON POLITICS: BRITAIN, CHARNEL

HOUSE OF LIBERTIES

Michael Blackburn

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BRITAIN, CHARNEL HOUSE OF LIBERTIES

It's the accumulation of small things that aggravates and finally makes one snap. Bit by bit over

the last dozen years our own government has been waging a guerilla war against us, slicing

away a freedom here, a liberty there; adding a fine here, a punishment there, inventing new

crimes for us ('environmental crimes', anyone?), extending the power of the state into everyarea of our private lives.

What were our elected representatives and their advisers doing when they lobbied hard in

Brussels for the innocuous sounding Directive 2006/24/EC (don't they all sound so harmless,

worthy and dull?) compelling the recording and retention of the details of all our phone calls

(landline, mobile, internet) and all our internet activity (emails, visits to websites, etc)? Which

is now part of British law, because EU law is superior to our own (think on that a while).

What kind of representatives are they who vote to keep their own expenses secret and have

their home addresses not made public when they're busy passing laws that demand increasing

amounts information about our personal lives - our finances, our children, our dealings with

our own and other people's children, our health, our travel plans, our formal and informal

working arrangements, our private and business communications?

What kind of government corrupts the charitable sector by funding its favourite charities to

lobby it in favour of its own causes, and even sets up its own charities to further its agenda?

What were our hard-working MPs doing when they allowed over three and a half thousand

new offences to enter the statute books, thus expanding the scope for us all to transgress, sufferfines or imprisonment and be marked as law-breakers?

What kind of morally-atrophied troglodytes think it's OK to take and retain the DNA of

innocent people; to blather constantly about justice then to ignore the ruling of a court that tells

them they are acting illegally?

What kind of people think it's acceptable to parachute an unelected, ennobled body into a

government post, to pass squalid laws spatchcocked together for PR purposes, then to be found

breaking those very laws herself, only to be fined half the total amount permissible and still to

be allowed to keep her job?

And what have the media been doing while all this time? Where have our independent-

minded, highly-trained investigative journalists and broadcasters been while our liberties were

systematically shaved away?

What has the BBC, supposed bastion of our national culture, been doing? Covering its quivering

backside while kissing the rod of government, that's what. Vacuous nonsense about celebrities

and sport often takes precedence over important but governmentally-embarrassing items.

Even its old-fashioned mission to inform, educate and entertain has been twisted to fit the

pompous, officious values of New Labour. It's primary function now is 'sustaining citizenship

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and civil society'. 'Citizenship', now there's a word that makes me retch. It fills me with the

same nausea as other 'progressive' appropriations, such as 'community', 'public' and 'safety'. Just

add the word 'committee' and you'll get my drift.

In the meantime writers, artists and academics wanting to visit the country find themselves

deported at our airports for minor mistakes incurred in fulfilling the expensive requirements ofthe new immigration system enforced by the Border Agency. Canadian singer Alison Crowe,

Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, and Russian classical pianist Grigory Sokolov, have all

been refused entry. Recently the writers Hassan Najmi, Ouidad Benmoussa and Dorothea Rosa

Herliany were prevented from entering the UK to attend the Ledbury Poetry Festival. There are

many others. In the skewed cyclopean vision of the government, and the Border Agency, these

are all obviously untrustworthy people against whom regulations must be applied without

regard to decency or common sense.

And where are our writers and poets? How many have even been aware of what's going on, let

alone written about it, talked to each other about it, tried to bring it to public attention? Back in

the 1980s there were scores, probably hundreds of us politically or socially engaged to some

extent. Have we been reduced to automata, sleepwalkers, quislings? Or have we simply been

guilty of trusting our representatives and public servants?

One thing is certain. We have been traduced. Our lives and our country have been stolen from

us by the very people entrusted with their care. That corruption comes right from the top. And

we have been deceived by the fourth estate, who have willingly ignored the evils being

committed or actively colluded in them.

All of these people have reduced our country to a charnel house of liberties.

We know what they think of us, in what contempt they hold us.

It's about time they understood that we know them for what they are: scum.

(The unexpurgated version), Michael Blackburn, 2009