These days it’s not enough to talk or write about something. People don’t
notice. They haven’t got time. You’ve got to do something visual: You’ve got
to make a statement by proving you can be stupid on a scale never seen
before.
We’ve seen many types of desperate behaviour to which people will lower
themselves for celebrity status, but we’ve never seen anyone deliberately
attempt to become a criminal to point out how far from real-life experience
and how authoritarian our “democracy” has become. Well, not for a while
anyway. So there was nothing for it. I would have to turn my back on the
law. In the interests of the greater good, of course.
My descent into this new shady criminal underworld began when I arranged to
meet a man called Neil Goodwin one bright morning in Parliament Square.
Protest and the right to free speech have always seemed to me to be part of
our national DNA. It’s perhaps not surprising then that another of this
nation’s great traditions, the tendency towards eccentricity, was soon being
employed to fight the government’s exclusion zone that has banned
spontaneous protest for a radius of one kilometre outside the seat of our
democracy, the Houses of Parliament.
I arrived on time and found Neil dressed, flawlessly, as Charlie Chaplin’s
tramp. He whispered: “I’m not supposed to talk, and my girlfriend says
she’ll leave me if I get arrested many more times, but do you fancy going up
to Downing Street?” He’d actually been in the cells the day before for
holding up a sign by the Cenotaph that said: “You have the right to remain
silent.”
Crowds of tourists seemed to think that he was some kind of official
attraction and began to ask for photos as he hobbled up Whitehall with me in
tow. Neil duly obliged. A few tried to give him money afterwards but he
motioned them away. As we got nearer Downing Street he leant over to me and
said: “Chaplin was the man, you know.” A few minutes later I began to
understand exactly what he meant.
The tramp is not one of the most widely loved icons of cinema for nothing.
Despite many of Chaplin’s films being over 70 years old and having had no
major cinema release in generations, everyone still knows and loves his
character. The tourists by the entrance to Downing Street laughed and
clapped as Neil took up his spot outside the gates. They queued to have
their photograph taken with him, but the police were not amused because he
soon produced a sign from his rucksack that said “NOT ALOUD”, which because
of the ludicrous nature of the government’s new Serious and Organised Crime
and Police Act’s exclusion zone meant that he was breaking the law.
Within minutes an armed officer called over to him.
“You can’t stand there, mate. It’s illegal.” Neil shrugged as though he didn’t
understand. The policeman tried again. “You can’t demonstrate.
Move along or you’ll get arrested.” The crowd of people began to boo at the
policeman. “Doesn’t he have the right to remain silent?” I offered. The
crowd laughed. The officer angrily looked at me.
“Are you trying to be funny, mate? Who are you? Are you with him?” I shook my
head and he turned back to Neil, who was doing his best to look scared,
which was drawing sympathetic noises from the crowd. One called out: “Leave
him alone, he’s only standing there!” Someone else put in: “It’s a free
country, isn’t it?” Neil shook his head with a rueful smile and the crowd
began to applaud and cheer.
The policeman spoke into his radio. I decided to explain to everyone that
because he hadn’t got permission from the police “Charlie” was breaking the
law for holding an illegal demonstration. A man behind me laughed. “You’re
joking, aren’t you, mate?” Others seemed astounded. One woman looked at me
as though I was deranged. “You can’t be serious?” she said. “Protest can’t
just be made illegal!”
The policeman rounded on me: “Look, who are you? Can you just move along?” I
refused and pointed out that I wasn’t breaking the law. He became contrite
and lowered his voice. “No, you’re not breaking the law, I’m just asking you
out of courtesy if you’d move along because you’re adding to this
disturbance.” I refused again and he said into his radio: “There are two of
them holding an illegal demonstration. Can I have back-up?”
At this point, again to a vast array of boos from the crowd, another armed
policeman emerged and asked Charlie his name and if he had any ID. A group
of lads who looked like builders began to laugh, and one called out: “What’s
his name? His name’s Charlie, you muppet!”
Again the swelling audience fell about. The policeman pleaded with Neil to
move a few yards away to stop the crowd blocking the entrance to No 10.
Charlie shuffled along, only for another two officers to approach him and
ask again if he had any ID. Neil let go of his sign, revealing that it was
chained to his wrist (so it wouldn’t get confiscated like the last one) —
cue more laughter from the crowd — and began theatrically to look through
his pockets. Eventually he found a scrap of paper which he unfolded as if he
had all the time in the world and turned it's contents towards the crowd.
“NO COMMENT” was written on it in large black letters.
There must have been 50 people at this point and they all began to cheer. Even
the armed policeman laughed. “Well, he is funny, I’ll give him that.”
Two officers then ushered him a few yards down the street. Neil was given a
piece of paper that outlined the exclusion zone and explained about section
132 of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act, which solicited a
huge guffaw from sections of the crowd. The policemen told Neil that if he
was still there in half an hour they would arrest him. Neil shrugged his
shoulders.
Part of the crowd began to disperse. More tourists emerged and had their
pictures taken, but none could believe that he was about to be arrested. One
came over and chatted to me to learn what was going on. I explained that in
a few minutes’ time Charlie was going to be taken to Charing Cross police
station for holding his sign. The man was incredulous. “They can’t arrest
you for just standing there, can they? What about our rights?”
He was about to see exactly what had happened to our rights. A police van
pulled up, the two uniformed officers emerged, and Charlie Chaplin was read
his rights and manhandled into the back of the van.
As he was carted off in a police wagon the funny side of Section 132 of SOCPA
seemed to go with him. The crowds seemed unsettled, too. Their laughter gave
way to bewilderment and shock. If only the architects of SOCPA and all the
MPs who voted for it in parliament had been on hand to explain to us all why
there was nothing sinister about a man dressed as Charlie Chaplin being
arrested outside Downing Street for carrying a sign that said “NOT ALOUD”.
I’d had enough. It was time to get off the fence and put something on the line
myself.
As I walked away down Whitehall in disgust an idea began to amble around
inside my head. This law, to steal an old-fashioned English phrase, simply
“wasn’t cricket”. So it was surely time for an illegal cricket match to take
place in Parliament Square. A cricket match for the “Ashes” of the Magna
Carta on St George’s Day perhaps. Oh yes. I liked the sound of that . . .
and what about a teddy bear’s picnic in Parliament Square, too.
Voltaire once quipped: “I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the
death your right to say it.” The use of a quotation from a Frenchman to
define what it means to be British may offend some, but then that neatly
sums up the contradictory nature of the British people. Sadly, today no one
can claim that Voltaire’s words speak for this country any more.
On August 1, 2005, to the widespread shrugging of shoulders across the land,
it became illegal to hold a spontaneous political demonstration outside the
House of Commons — as what happened to Neil demonstrates. The nation’s
apathy towards losing the right to free speech at the seat of its
government, something supposedly as intrinsic to this “green and pleasant
land” as warm beer and Freddie Flintoff, posed the question of what, if
anything, does Britain actually stand for today?
Twenty miles from London, along the Thames, you will find a field opposite an
island in the river. The field contains a monument erected by the American
Bar Association. In the field next to it there is a memorial garden to John
F Kennedy commemorating his role in the civil rights movement. Why on earth,
you may imagine, are there American monuments in fields by the Thames? There
are no other monuments. There is nothing to commemorate anything British.
Perhaps an important figure in American history was born there? Nope. The site
is far more important to the American people than that. On that unmarked
island in 1215 something was written down that more than 500 years later
became the fifth amendment of the American Bill of Rights. “No freeman shall
be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the
lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we
sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.”
For Americans this became: “No person shall . . . be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The original document
was, of course, the Magna Carta.
Nearly 800 years ago King John was held to account by a group of rebel barons
who demanded a charter of liberties to protect England from his unfair and
erratic behaviour. That was when the principle of a power higher than the
sovereign was established. That higher power was the rule of law.
The Magna Carta has since been described as the most potent symbol of freedom
under law in western civilisation. It is something, you would imagine, that
even our embarrassed nation would manage to be proud of. At the very least
you’d think we might have one of those blue plaques down there somewhere.
“Liberty under law started here” perhaps, nailed to a nearby tree. It would
be nice to have something to commemorate the birth of British freedom, but
there is nothing.
So I thought I’d better go out and find the Britain of our dreams, sometimes
known as Albion.
My original idea was to write a guide to some of the most absurd ancient
legislation still on the statute book. I’d had this great idea to go round
the country on a crime spree, breaking as many silly old laws as I could
find: imagine if Fred Dibnah met Bonnie and Clyde.
There are hundreds of these ridiculous laws still in force in Britain. For
example, to this day it is illegal to flag down a London taxi if you have
the plague. In Chester you can’t shoot a Welshman with a bow and arrow
before midnight, but you can after midnight. It’s also against the law to
beat a carpet in the Metropolitan police district. Neither can you carry a
sack of soot along a path in a place called Congleton, and it is still
unlawful to get within a few hundred yards of the Queen without wearing
socks.
However, in the process of researching these laws I couldn’t help noticing
another glut of legislation that seemed even more ludicrous. Most of our
silly laws have trickled onto the statute book over centuries, but this
particular set had all come from our current government. And when you meet a
man who got arrested after eating a cake with “Freedom of speech” written on
it in icing, and someone else who has a criminal record for holding a banner
made of fridge packing in Parliament Square that had “Freedom of speech”
written on it in Biro, the idea of breaking the Adulteration of Tea Act of
1776 starts to seem a little frivolous.
Of course, once I started lifting up this legal concrete slab in the garden of
England all sorts of other creepy crawlies emerged that cast doubt on the
health of the nation. Of course, on paper Britain is doing rather well for
itself. There are more billionaires in the UK today than ever before, there
are more shiny things to spend our money on than you could possibly imagine,
and we do appear to have some standing in the world at large. But who else
lives in Britain apart from all the high-flyers, overachievers and
entrepreneurs who help us stay members of G8, the club for the most
economically powerful nations on earth? How does Britain seem to everybody
else who lives here?
You know, the other ones. You and me. Those of us floundering in the highest
levels of debt in Europe; the ones afraid of poverty in retirement; the ones
being forced to work 40-plus hours a week with only four weeks off a year;
the ones terrified of violent crime, of their children being adversely
affected by the MMR jab; the ones suffering from depression because they
can’t handle the stress of their jobs; the ones Carol Vorderman is hoping
will consolidate their debt so she can keep her no doubt lucrative
advertising contract.
To find out, I went on a journey around Britain to meet some of the people
still fighting for Albion among the uniform high streets, no-go estates,
monochrome offices and shopping malls of Britain.
I found an unlikely selection of eccentrics to guide me on my journey. People
like the pensioners who let off stink bombs to force an extension to a
public inquiry. The hairy history expert who got paid to have custard pies
thrown at his beard by Ant and Dec. The world-famous fisherman with a
penchant for firing homemade rockets into space. The man who enjoys howling
like a wolf in his back garden. The Robin Hood of the squatting world who
gets into empty buildings and hands the keys over to homeless people who
can’t afford anywhere to live. The woman living on the roof of a bus station
in Derby. An activist who organises picketing campaigns outside the homes of
drug dealers. The former MI5 agent reduced to peddling conspiracy theories
to complete strangers about 9/11.
Now I don’t usually go round practising criminal behaviour. Although that’s
not to say I wasn’t outgoing and interesting when I was younger. I drank
alcohol before I was 18. I stole a rubber once when I was 12. I’ve taken
illegal drugs, broken the speed limit while driving, been drunk (although
not while driving), ridden my bike on the pavement, and skateboarded where
signs strictly prohibited me from doing so.
But the protest exclusion zone outside the House of Commons was different.
This was one of those laws you could actually get a criminal record for
breaking. Up to that point in my life I had also managed to exploit the
middle-class force field that put the police off the scent if I was ever up
to no good.
My friend Greg took this idea one stage further. If the police ever paid him
any attention while he was driving to a rave in the possession of illegal
powders he would simply turn on Radio 4 before they asked him to wind his
window down, “because it formed an impenetrable bourgeois sphere that the
police simply couldn’t penetrate”. But as it was, I didn’t mind being
arrested. You see, it was all part of my plan.
Cecil Rhodes once wrote that being born an Englishman was like winning first
prize in the lottery of life. Now clearly sentiments like that are rooted in
the British Empire, which it has become rather politically incorrect to
admire today, but there is still an element of that quotation that has
always made me feel a certain sense of pride.
Whenever I heard it the empire was certainly not what dominated my thoughts,
just the simple idea that the things in life that mattered were still valued
here. Looking around the nation in the 21st century, however, Rhodes’s words
seem hollow and out of date.
When my girlfriend Rachel and I started a family the future into which our
country was heading began to preoccupy our minds.
It wasn’t just the question of civil liberties being eroded, although that
weighed heavily enough, it was the maternity ward with invisible midwives
where our son was born; the grotty, leaking community centre down the road
where the government’s Sure Start initiative was being implemented; our
badly lit and nerve-racking local train station; the grimy local swimming
pool threatened with closure; and the community police officers taking a
breather in our local park instead of proper old fashioned bobbies walking
the streets.
If you have the good fortune to be alive, you’ll certainly have spotted the
huge disparity between the way we are told things are and the way your
experience proves them to be, whether it’s the difference between what the
brochure said about your holiday and the holiday you experience when you get
there; the pert, tight, 17-year-old bottom enclosed by that pair of size 6
jeans on the billboard by the bus stop as opposed to the way your
30-year-old size 14 bum looks in them when you get home; or the politician
who tells you what you want to hear then mocks your naivety as soon as your
back is turned.
Rachel and I were becoming terrified that our son would grow up in a country
stripped of its values and sense of place. I was determined to do what I
could to preserve what I felt this country stood for so that my son could
experience it and enjoy living in Britain too.
You may not think the idea of my deliberately becoming a criminal went down
well at home, but Rachel was rather pleased by the change of direction my
journey had taken. Breaking new laws rather than old ones meant that, among
other things, I would no longer have to contract bubonic plague before
attempting to hail a London cab.
In fact, the enthusiasm that seemed to fill her at the prospect of my being
given a lengthy jail term made me think that she was quite keen to get away
from me for a while. Despite such misgivings I took her enthusiasm as
nothing more than simple, unconditional support. And then my criminal life
began. With a teddy bear’s picnic. In Parliament Square.
© Dan Kieran 2007
Extracted from I Fought the Law, to be published by Bantam Press on May 7 at
£9.99. Copies can be ordered for £9.49 including delivery from The Sunday
Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585
I was with you until you said something about those poor people who have to work 40-hours per week with only 4 weeks off per year.
I'm in the second week of my two weeks off per year and I work 50 hours in a typical week. Laziness is not a virtue.
Andrew Fry, Hamilton, Canada
Oh dear. I thought it was just here in the U.S. that the Constitution and its foundational documents had been reduced to blotting paper.
I would not have expected this from a Labour government.
However, most Americans would feel fortunate to have to work only forty hours a week and have four weeks paid time off.
Robert , Spokane, Washington / USA
An excellent article, mourning the loss of our once-great British way of life that inspired so many other countries and attracted their admiration. However, the author himself seems to have let old standard slide: he mentions his "partner and his son" - marriage, especially if children were a part of a life together, was also the norm. It is in these "small" ways that the rot has, undoubtedly, set in.
Kim, Bath, Somerset
Excellent article.Tony Blair as made this Country fit for Lawyers.
A Walton, Leicester, England
Goodbye Magna Carta
Magnificent article, expressing the views of many people in what is left of this country. Civil liberties and democracy itself has never been under quite the attack we are seeing today, from people we had supposed, at the time of the General Election, to be acting on behalf of the Nation's interests in preference to their own agenda.
Let us all hope and pray this insidious chipping away of our traditional way of life is soon brought to a halt before more damage to our country becomes irreparable.
Mike, Warwickshire, UK
I read articles like this and get such a deep sense of frustration. I am British, no-one could take that from me, yet I feel as though I am not in a position to influence any of this. Our politicians are low class tricksters. Our great social achievements (e.g. NHS) are in ruins. Our history and culture has become a picking ground, a decaying carcass, rather than a healthy body of example.
If I try to petition lawfully I am indeed mocked for my naivety, or worse blatantly ignored, which just inspires the rebel in me. We pride ourselves in being British, good old decorum. I say Revolution; or we have become a weak, herded and milked people. Yet I feel strong individually knowing I am made of British steel, British intelligence and together peaceful and intelligent reform is not beyond us.
I will only live and die, and indeed pass on to my children, proud to be British if there is drastic change in my lifetime.
Balls to the silly laws made for continued oppression.
Paddy, Swansea, Wales
Great article. It brings me back to the age-old argument about the need for a written constitution which will make it impossible for low grade politicians to behave in the way they have in recent times. This is something that we really have to do and the sooner the better. The constitution must address the issue of the electoral system and end the nonsense of a party winning an overall majority on the back of the votes of 21.6% of the electorate as happened in 2005.
Linked with this is our other great national problem – the fact that our MPs are such low calibre. It is difficult to think of more than about 20 of them who could be so successful in the real world outside of the Westminster village. The next generation (Cameron, Osborne, Miliband ....) simply do not make the grade. They are totally career focused, image obsessed and lacking in substance - just like Blair.
At the very least, a proper constitution would limit the damage. That may be the best we can hope for.
Jim Cavanagh, Chorley, Lancashire
Pat: It is a much ignored fact that National Insurance is NOT a pension, NI contributions are payed straight to those currently drawing a pension. NI relies on those in work supporting those out of it, the more people there are in work, the greater the amount of money that can be paid. This is why it seems highly unlikely that people of my generation (born in the 80s) will even receive such a pension, whatever the government says, as by the time I reach retirement age (at 70) there will not be enough young folk to support it. This is why I have little problem living outside the UK and not contributing.
Gilman, Shenzhen, China
On a visit to Runneymede last year, I too noticed that there was nothing to recognise where the Magna Carta was signed and what it means to be British. I was incensed by the Americans taking over our spot to exhalt a dead President. What right do they have to do that?
Another interesting point is that apparently there are British "subjects" and British " citizens" living in this country. Do you know which you are? I was directed to my passport by a Canadian Travel company, who informed me that if I was a "subject" I would need a visa to enter Canada!! Luckily for me I am apparently a British "citizen", presumably because I was born here. I dont know the qualification for being a British "subject" !!
This was a good read.
Ann Kirk, Littlehampton, England
Mr Burke, aptly named. The rest of his letter is so silly it really is laughable.. Destroy the UN, it had imploded long before Bush did anything. What are you Bush haters going to do when he is gone? The problem here and in the UK is the lack of respect for traditional values, and the rise of people with " Visions ". The 60's culture is what is wrong.
Desmond Taylor, Houston, USA Texas
We are now living in a fascist police state and nobody seems to have noticed. The events of 9/11 are key in understanding what is happening in the world around us. The bogus war on terror that is being fought against unseen enemies, has allowed the government to erode our civil liberties.
Both political parties are working towards the same goal "A New World Order." They're not even trying to hide the fact from us anymore.
Look around, no protesting, asbo's, DNA databasing, GPS fitted into everyones vehicles, CCTV watching your every move, biometric detailing.
I'd like to know how CCTV cameras that ridicule you in the street for misbehaving, don't fall foul of the same laws that prevent us from protesting publicly.
Google Aaron Russo's Freedom to Fascism for a better understanding of what's to come for all of us.
Helen, liverpool, England
“No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the lawful judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.”
It is the law of the land, that is the problem. It passed through the sovereign law-making body of this country, Parliament, and was granted Royal Assent which means that following it is following due process.
This is the problem with countries that do not have proper checks and balances. We have an over-mighty executive which passes profoundly unjust laws through a rubber-stamp legislature. That is far less of an exaggeration than it used to be and that fact is very scary.
A properly written constitution may well be the only answer. Of course with the current set of politicians getting a properly written constitution would be quite the trick. It is more likely we would end up with a profoundly obscure and unjust mis-mash worse than the situation now.
David Newton, Leamington,
It is Magna Carta not the Magna Carta, this was pointed out in the Feedback column a little while ago and The Times promised not to make this basic error again. Clearly this has been forgotten.
Amelie, London, England
Traditional British respect for the rule of law went down the tube when we followed George Bush in his illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq. That, in turn, effectively destroyed the United Nations - that great institution, which had been America's attempt to persuade the world to adopt universal democracy, and the rule of law, after WWII. But cowboy habits die hard, and George Bush simply couldn't resist turning the UN into the saloon bar of Deadwood City: Saddam was a "baddie", so he had to go. This state of international lawlessness will now present British Conservatives with the dilemma of choosing between the rule of law on the one hand, and the Atlantic Alliance on the other.
Edmund Burke, Kingston upon Thames, England
The criminalization of an entire nation is under way here.
So who needs to break any laws.
To the debate about what makes us British could be added freedom of expression, now we can cross this off our list.
Andrew E., Llanelli, UK
Most people in this country, the ones in debt, fearful of crime and pension loss are excluded from the political process anyway. This is controlled by faceless groups in political parties and unions who decide who can represent us. Most of the representatives are lawyers so why be surprised when they make lots of law and obscure what is happening with spin.
When this government was first elected I saw people on TV clapping and cheering. When asked why they had voted in favour of Labour many said 'It's about time we had a change.' If that is the extent of involvement then maybe we get what we deserve. We need to be able to vote against candidates we think are unsuitable. Perhaps then they will explain in advance what they are going to do with the power they wield.
Paul Groom, Croydon, United Kingdom
first time reading the Times on line
a very god piece!
clifton Morris, london, England
Thank goodness for people like Neil Goodwin and Dan Kieran!
Like Cecil Rhodes, I believed I had won the lottery by being born British, unfortunately, like many of my generation, when I reached retirement I realised I'd lost my ticket.
The only freedom left to us seemed to be to sell up and move to a country where one could still afford to live on the State Pension - contributed to for 44 years.
Pat Thornton, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaira