Punk appears to have breathed its last. Joe Strummer has sadly passed away, bearing with him the wistful memories of teenage rebellion. As for Johnny Rotten and Malcolm Mclaren, they have long been no more than eccentrically barbered English eccentricities, as threatening to the social order as the Marquess of Bath. And as for cutting-edge music now, the act of the moment is Ms Dynamite, a rapper who preaches against drugs, worries about the state of the NHS and enjoins sexual continence on her fans. She is about as subversive as Claire Rayner.

There is, however, one sense in which punk has been triumphant. We are now well on the way to having anarchy in the UK.

Last week Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Woolf, decreed that since the prisons were too full he would now have to stop sending criminals to jail. First-time burglars would no longer serve a custodial sentence. Even though these criminals had, until last Thursday, been thought to deserve up to 18 months in prison they would in future receive only a “community sentence”.

For invading someone’s home, relieving them of their property and leaving them in terror the judicially approved penalty is now a little light litter collection and a pep talk with a probation officer.

Perhaps one should not be so flippant. There is, after all, a tough side to community sentences. What they mean is that while convicted burglars remain at liberty whole communities are sentenced to live in fear. And if they want to see law-breakers removed from their areas and punished in accordance with traditional justice? Well, that’s tough.

Lord Woolf is, undoubtedly, a humane, intelligent and courteous fellow. And entitled to respect on those counts. But ultimately the authority of any Lord Chief Justice rests not on his personal qualities but on respect for the legal system over which he presides. When the law is enforced in a weak and arbitrary fashion, its authority corroded because its guardians will not uphold it, we are all the poorer. And by much more than it costs to secure more prison spaces for offenders.

Burglary is not a trivial matter. A Home Office study in 2000 established that burglary cost the UK £2.7 billion a year, more than any other crime except murder, serious wounding and car theft. The average burglary costs £830 in stolen and damaged property. If burglars are not securely in jail we can be certain that some of them will offend again, and the cost of that crime will fall not just on a criminal justice system short-sightedly trying to save on prison costs, but on innocent householders who have been denied the protection they deserve.

The Lord Chief Justice’s decision is, however, much more than just the falsest of economies; it is another step in the progressive corrosion of our legal system. Instead of protecting people, and property, by upholding durable moral certainties it has become a mechanism for indulging passing political fads.

At the same time as the courts are giving up on the principle that prison is an effective means of dealing with thieves, Parliament and the police are growing attached to the idea that the courts are a suitable place for punishing those whose views, or hobbies, are offensive to their tastes.

The Metropolitan Police’s most energetic campaign this Christmas is not against burglars or muggers or indeed anyone likely to make off with your property or violate your person. Instead the villains of the season are those who may give voice to offensive sentiments. Around London this winter the Met’s new poster girl, Commander Cressida Dick, is imploring us to shop anyone whose language is considered hurtful. If you catch someone abusing another “because of what they believe in” then you should provide the force with “a name, address or even a description of the offenders”.

Putting to one side the thought that if Commander Dick had been around in the 19th century she would have had Charles Darwin up on a charge of gratuitously offending those of us who are Christians, one has to ask what respect we can have for a law that does not respect our own ability as adults to cope with unwelcome views.

Once the law becomes a mechanism for controlling unsavoury expression, rather than a means of restraining harmful behaviour, it is no longer a social cement but a moral quicksand. And, unbelievably, one in which bewildered individuals have recently been caught. With the mud left to stick. Men who in the past would have been thought of simply as eccentrics are now being arrested and treated as criminals.

The pro-hunting campaigner Robin Page was taken into custody last month for using provocative language to declare that he wanted the same rights for foxhunters as those enjoyed by other minorities. A Suffolk vet, David Dugdale, was arrested last week for “using threatening words” at a pro-hunting demonstration outside the House of Commons. They follow the melancholy example of Harry Hammond, a street preacher who was fined £300 for holding up a placard that denounced homosexuality and lesbianism. What sort of law is it that fines anyone for daring to voice an unwelcome thought? And yet will not jail the unwelcome intruder who breaks into your own home?

It is ultimately respect for the law, firmly and fairly applied, that keeps anarchy at bay. If the law will not protect my property by taking those who steal it off the streets then why should I continue to respect it? If it becomes a means of enforcing one, limited, set of acceptable opinions then how can I be certain that mine are among those that are worthy of respect? What sort of law is it that cannot defend my free enjoyment of either private property or public discourse? The sort of law an anarchist might design.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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