Prejudice derived from Labels

Prejudice to my mind arises out of the persistent habit of people, even so called well educated and enlightened people, attaching labels to others they may not have even met. A modern tendency seems to be that only one side of the label will be read, if at all, and even that may be confined to the large print. Even where an individual attempts to give an indication of what sort of person they are by using recognisable terms, the utterance is quickly reduced to a text which neatly fits onto a small label. Any other subtleties or major distinctions let alone a civilised discussion as to what the individual might actually believe are cast aside. For example, should a person describe themselves as a Christian Anarchist, for the majority of people this will probably be seen as a joke.Declaring oneself a pre-Marxist English Socialist, or a Leveller, or come to that matter, a Marxist would induce puzzlement rather than mirth. To begin to understand any of this self styling the recipient will have to ask a series of questions and do a bit or reading. Much easier therefore to reach a conclusion along the lines that the person is either a nutter or a Commi and to move on to the next person in the canapé line. Much easier than putting your prejudices to one side to find out what it’s all about. Better to judge them and establish another new prejudice of your own.

Over the years I have had so many labels stuck on me it’s a wonder I can still get into off the peg clothes. I have in my time been called many things, my favourite being a ‘faceless anarchist’ which appeared in an edition of the old Daily Herald circa 1963. Whilst this no doubt appealed to a sub-editor the fact that it had more to do with abuse rather than any facts, and showed that it had great potential as a label which to most people would be very sinister. I wonder if the editor had bothered to read anything on the subject and new anything about the different schools. If he had done some reading he would have seen that there are probably as many schools as there were anarchists.

Some labels can be a good starting point for a discussion or a title for an essay about an individual, but they are nothing more. I confess that mislabelling often occurs from a failure to fully explain oneself, but more commonly from a misplaced belief that the listener will want further and better particulars. This ignores the natural laziness of people, ‘No thanks, I only need the label with the brand name, the fact that it is produced by slave labour is too complicated a burden to take on’. And so it is that all Christians, Moslems and Jews will be afflicted by the ignorance of those who should no know better and be lumped in with the worst and most easily targeted adherents of a particular faith. The will go for anarchism, communism, liberalism and socialism and conservatism. Try to combine ideas from both the religious and the political worlds and for some you might as well be trying to convince Dawkins that there is such a thing as a Religious Scientist!

The danger is of course that many people will jump to a whole bundle of conclusions which doesn’t matter if the person doing it is the average ‘Saloon bar Johnnie’. (I always rather like that label).Unfortunately he could also be the local Special Branch Officer or one of his ‘Blairite’ reincarnations who acts on the label and the erroneous conclusions thus drawn. Until recently this was not a major threat but with the increasing powers and power of the police jumping to conclusions can have serious consequences for the person so labelled. Being shot on a tube train for example.

Consider this true story. A friend of mine had always been interested in amateur radio and pop music and with the advent of the Pirate Radio stations he got to wondering what would be involved. He had a brief chat with a work mate as to what would have to be done. Firstly a boat would be needed to get beyond the three mile limit, a generator source would be needed for the valve based generator and a rather large aerial would also be needed. He also mused that such a station would be very useful to his mates who were all ‘Ban the Bombers’. A few weeks later he was called in to the local police station to be asked questions about a stolen police radio transmitter. Needless to say my friend had stopped his musings as soon as he thought about bobbing up and down in a small boat in the English Channel but enough had been said to ‘bring him to notice’ as the police euphemism goes. In some totalitarian systems today he would have executed by firing squad the next day without all the fuss of an interview.

It could of course not happen here? Of course it could because of peoples preparedness to add labels of convenience when their political ambitions so require it. That is why when someone starts to draw all kinds of conclusions from one piece of information about me, without even knowing me beyond the glancing canapé factor; I feel that I have learnt more about the labeller already, than he will ever be prepared to learn about me.

Blogging By Candlelight Again ( See an early old blog) and the Length of Blogs

Those few who have seen these blogs may have been put off by their length alone, never mind the content. Yesterday one professional journalist gave voice on radio to her opinion that she was depressed by twitter and the blogosphere with the vast amount of banality it encourages. Sorry, I must have missed something in the popular press and have failed to discover the high minded content hidden behind the yob headlines of the red tops. I try to avoid banality, inevitably fail, but at least I have used more words in achieving it when it occurs. I have purposely built some banality in for the journalist concerned, although I have not dignified her by managing to remember her name. She is probably a very good journalist for all I know, but I also think that journalists do not have a monopoly of valid viewpoints and, even in my case, I am entitled to think that there is just a chance that something worthwhile might trickle down from my viewpoint on these beautiful hills.

This is all prompted by the fact that everything I want to write about seems to demand about 600 words. Sadly the blog posted just before this one could have taken even more words, but I think it was well worth a few more words than usual.

It was inspired by the blog I now provide a link to and I am very grateful to its author for having made me get round to writing something I have been meaning to do ever since I started inflicting my blog on unsuspecting surfers. If you ever thought civil libertarians protest too much then take a look at:-

http://monaxle.com/2009/07/08/section-44-in-chatham-high-street/

If you think this is an isolated incident try to rent out Taking Liberties directed by Chris Atkins. It is also widely available to purchase on DVD. See where all the new authoritarianism has come from and where it is all going. We have been through oppressive times before, but never with so much technology in the hands of those who also have all the power. Not voting, keeping quiet and watching your fellow citizens put into vans will lead in turn to your trip in the van, by which time there won’t be anyone left to write a blog about you. All rather far fetched? Yes it might be, and lets hope so, but do you really want to take the risk? Perhaps the power of the people’s internet technology must now be applied in favour of civil liberties so as to counter the State technology and rules which steal them. It is working with consumer campaigns that have already been successful against M&S, HSBC and now a mobile phone directory inquiry service. Mark Thomas has already started. Why should politicians with so much power need to worry about your liberties when they have been so busy of late taking so many liberties of their own? No more than the general citizenry who never go out late and never experience the use of police powers exercised against them. From my experience, down too many years I care to remember, they will not have found the encounter a model of customer service. As great libertarians of the past have said, the best citizens are those who are critical of their government and the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Being critical should not lead to your loyalty being questioned. The dream is still worth keeping alive. Banal? I do hope so, but I still believe such things nonetheless.

Dacier

Who are the Subversives Now?

According to the OED a subversive can be someone who seeks to demolish or turn upside down or overturn and so if your views or actions are seen as having this effect expect to be on the awkward squad list kept by your local Special Branch Officer. I would now like to add the names of various politicians and police officers to that list since they are now the new subversives. The power of the people has been turned upside down, if it were ever the other way round, and this stolen power is now increasingly used against them.
According to our own publicity the United Kingdom is described as a ‘liberal democracy’ .This means different things to different people. What it means to me is a system based on that old fashioned phrase, rarely used now by politicians of the Blair years, and even more rarely, understood, ‘The Rule of Law’. I do not know who taught Tony Blair British Constitutional Law or indeed if he ever studied it to become a barrister, before that is, he became a failed Prime Minister, but if he did, he seems to have been unconvinced by its core teachings.

This is surprising because the Rule of Law is fairly simple to grasp, even by those who merely gargle at the fountain of knowledge. Basically, government is to be by law, rather than the whims of rulers or their officials, all are equal before the law and have access to it, and it is the courts, not government officials, who rule on the interpretation of law. There are one or two fuzzy edges about where administrative tribunals and the like fit in, but these are no longer seen as a threat to good government. The threat to the Rule of Law today seems to come from our elected governments which seem ever eager to create more and more discretions for more and more ‘officials’. The keenness for privatisation and the ‘war on terrorism’ has combined to blind our politicians to what they are doing.

The point which the Blair generation and many of its apparatchiks either never learnt, or chose to forget, is that in seeking to protect our Liberal Democracy from the enemy within or without, you risk destroying the thing you cherish. It is rather like getting the balance right in the countryside. Once a beauty spot is discovered all sorts will rush to see the beauty and unwittingly destroy it with their traffic jams, car par, gift shops and theme parks. Stop everything happening and you deny others the chance to experiencing what only an elite few could enjoy. In the context of civil liberties if you get the balance wrong and make things too easy for the police we all pay the price through facing more and more difficulties, especially if you want to be a participating and critical citizen in the political process.

The product of the Blair years is a path to the destruction of liberal democracy. I never understood the phrase, ‘Town Air is free air’ but the meaning fell into my lap in a small museum a few years ago. When people were more or less enslaved by feudalism the big change would be that of somehow becoming a ‘freeman’. One route would be to acquire a small strip of land in a town, since that brought the status of freeman. How that was achieved I have no idea, but when I go into our big towns today and see the tooled up police walking the streets, followed by their reserves in the form of Community Support Officers, followed by the private security guards, thug wheel clampers and the like, and see it is all being observed by the CCT cameras on every street corner, in every shop and at every car park, station and shopping mall, ‘town air’ is now suffocating. The dust which spread out from the Twin Towers is no longer grit but has been atomised by our politicians and has blinded them. Those politicians who have wielded power both before and after 9/11 in an attempt to impose Law and Order, have subverted the Rule of Law. They, not their critics, are the subversives now.

Dacier