The Free Society is here, and not a moment too soon

Monday February 4, 2008

In a mad, mad world, can The Free Society offer a quantum of solace, asks former MSP Brian Monteith

Thank goodness for The Free Society. It is long overdue and I look forward to helping it provide solace, inspiration, leadership and a generous helping of common sense and humour.

Solace, because with the interminable and what at times seems like the inevitable march of the liberty-thieves there has to be somewhere for people to turn to share their experiences, seek help and find reassurance that they are not alone in wishing to oppose the erosion of our freedoms.

Inspiration, because there are lots of good ideas that need to be swapped, shared and developed so that people campaigning about identity cards can help those fighting the EU’s restriction on vitamin supplements or the local council’s Gestapo-like persecution of a cheese producer.

There’s no need for us to re-invent the wheel when there are perfectly good examples of how to do things that have been found to be successful and with a little adaptation can be used again.

Leadership, because there is little evidence of co-ordination between various campaigns to defend one liberty or another that have, in fact, a great deal in common. I hope The Free Society site can, by bringing people together and helping us all learn from what each other’s problems are, help us to work more closely and, on occasions when it makes sense, to openly co-ordinate and run mutual events.

Non-conformism

And humour, because if there’s one thing that has, for me, always marked out the doomsayers, the obsessionists, the persecutors, the ‘Little Hitlers’ and the malevolent power grabbers, it’s their complete lack of humour. On the other hand I tend to find that those wishing to defend diversity, variance, individuality, non-conformism and other types of free-living have a tolerance that allows them to laugh at themselves and with others.

Humour is, of course, also a great weapon in debunking myths, slaying spurious claims often founded on junk science and upsetting the earnest do-gooders that mostly do bad.

So I welcome this site and what it stands for and look forward to contributing to it. For a start I think we have to recognise that such is the onslaught against our hard-won freedoms that, although there are many things that we may not care for ourselves – such as cigarette smoke in bars, the ugliness of rolls of body fat or the catching of fish and then actually eating them – it is in our own interests to defend smokers, burger-munchers, and anglers because the denial of their freedoms makes the loss of the ones we cherish far easier and therefore far more likely.

Bully state

This is no coincidence. Over the last 30 years politicians and campaigners have increasingly sought to restrict our freedom in areas such as smoking, eating, drinking and other lifestyle choices. Today, the idea of a benign nanny state in which nanny tries to shape our lives in our ‘best’ interests is history. The nanny state has become the bully state.

The lessons learnt about anti-smoking campaigns in Australia, the United States and Ireland have been studied and presented at seminars held to ensure that each new campaign is adapted for the next battle. With such lobbying often victorious the usual suspects, be they politicians, so-called experts, media commentators or just the busy-body stormtroopers, move on to the next ‘deserving’ cause – such as restricting the availability of alcohol, changing the recipe of our favourite foods or forcing us to carry a card with our own personal number.

Well, I agree with Patrick McGoohan’s character in The Prisoner when he said, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I am not a number, I am a free man!”

Limited

I enjoy a cigar maybe once a week, I cook my own chips in beef dripping, use raw eggs in steak tartare, prefer unpasteurised cheese (and alas) and am a sucker for a large fry-up. These are all my own conscious choices and I intend to live life they way I want to and, especially as there are many others would gladly share these experiences with me, I do not believe it is selfish of me to do so nor do I see any reason why I should be limited to practising some of these delights to within the four walls and roof of my home.

But we are no longer safe at home. The idea of the nanny state where nanny – who of course knows best – can attempt to shape our lives in our ‘best’ interests is history. It is now the bully state that we are confronted with.

Not only are new laws being passed restricting our actions, little room is left for common sense exemptions and cultural practices while whole armies of health police are being recruited (at our own expense) to persecute landlords, customers and people going about their daily business.

In the name of fighting against the evil that is smoking the strategy is to deliberately de-normalise this every day behaviour, stigmatise the pursuit so that having a pack of twenty is enough to make people pariahs, never mind actually lighting up. In Scotland, actors on stage or in a film studio playing Churchill, Sherlock Homes or performing the opening scene of Carmen, cannot light a cigar, cigarette or pipe. Cab drivers are (and have been) prosecuted for smoking in their own car during private use if it is later used as a hire car, and hookah bars – where tobacco is rarely consumed – cannot now exist as other substances are also banned from being smoked.

Denormalisation

Where this campaign of denormalisation has gone with smoking – so too will it go with alcohol and foods. Already the Scottish Parliament has restricted the hours that off-licences can open in the morning without any evidence that it was necessary or would be of benefit. Extra taxes and additional laws are continually being called for to limit what we can eat, drink and smoke – extending into our homes and on to our own land.

Criminal records are promised for transgressors – and when this is tied up with ideas such as the identity card the degree to which our lives will be monitored and ultimately controlled increases exponentially.

We must, therefore, fight fire with fire, we must identify the links between the different bans and restrictions and fight against those that we might even be sympathetic to – if we don’t our own pastimes will be next on the list.

That’s why this campaign is so important and that’s why it has appeared not a moment to soon.

A member of the Scottish Parliament for eight years (1999-2007), Brian Monteith is vice-chairman of the English Speaking Union Scotland and policy director of The Free Society. He writes regularly for many newspapers including a weekly opinion column for the Edinburgh Evening News.