Both I, and the Freedom Association which I have the privilege to Chair, have been fulminating for sometime about the steady erosion of our liberties in Brown's Britain.
We have noted the proliferation of pretexts which minions of the State may use to gain access to our homes (the Englishman's home no longer being his castle). We have seen the spread of surveillance cameras so that our every move is watched.
We see the growth of the government's DNA database, so that a significant proportion of our fellow-citizens are registered on it - not all of them by any means felons. We see the forces of law and order marshalled against the victim, not the criminal. We see the NHS database, which but for the incompetence of the government's ham-fisted attempts to set up the computer systems, would by now have assembled the medical records of most of our citizens in one data-base where it could be hacked into at will by hackers, journalists, health insurance companies and so on. Leaks of personal data held by government have become so commonplace as scarcely to command headlines.
We know that our movements can be monitored by our mobile phone records (which journalists can reportedly obtain for a few pounds), by our credit card records, by our sat-navs, and very soon by the black boxes which the government will require us to carry in our cars to facilitate punitive road charging fees, and perhaps automatic speeding fines. Number-plate recognition means that when driving, most of our journeys are recorded.
We have seen legitimate anti-terrorist legislation (RIPA - the "Investigation of Regulatory Powers Act") called into action to monitor trivial transgressions like the way we use our wheelie-bins, or whether parents really live in the catchment area of a popular school.
We've heard Labour apologists soothing us with the mantra "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". Try telling that to the thousands of people whose government records contain false information.
Yet in spite of all this, did we really believe, deep in our hearts, that This England which we know and love had become a Police State? If we didn't, we do now. The arrest of Damian Green MP, Tory Immigration spokesman, merely for doing his job, acting in the public interest and calling the government to account, is a wake-up call. The threat has become reality before our eyes. And the craven, supine behaviour of the Speaker of the House, Michael Martin, in allowing anti-terror police into the House of Commons without let or hindrance, to ransack the office of an Honourable Member, and to remove the tools of his trade, would surely have the Speaker's more distinguished predecessors turning in their graves.
Maybe it's time to buy a gun and a large supply of canned food and retreat to the hills in survivalist mode. Or better yet, we could vote out this corrupt and incompetent Labour government. One of the first tasks of an incoming Conservative administration will be to restore the integrity of parliament and the liberties of the citizen. Roger Helmer MEP, Chairman of The Freedom Association.
