“The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population – the intelligent ones or the fools?” – Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
Do you REMAIN confused, or does the Brexit decision LEAVE no room for doubt?
We British heretics may or may not have it all sorted before referendum day in a week’s time on Thursday 23 June, but should we really care? Why bother even turning up to vote in this rare exercise of true democracy, bearing in mind that it’s not going to liberate children or launch a Kind revolution? Sure, this vote makes a change from the usual sham democracy in which the big issues are decided by professional politicians at the behest of media moguls, corporate lobbying, and noisy, self-promoting, porky-peddling humbugs.
On the other hand, is democracy all that great? After all, a considerable proportion of the populace are ignorant idiots. The demos is swayed by demagogues. The people are always wrong. They have no idea how to evaluate complex evidence and arguments; they care only about their own interests and those of others like them, voting along race, class or other identity lines rather than putting the general good of the whole nation first.
Every thinking person has understood all this, from Plato (channelling Socrates) to modern times. Even the early leaders of that supposedly great democracy the United States of America were no big fans. It was John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, who spoke of democracy’s tendency to degenerate into “the tyranny of the majority”, a criticism later endorsed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America, and John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty. But I doubt the concept could be more vividly explained than by the economist John T. Wenders, who said in relatively recent times that “Democracy is two coyotes and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”
As for the Kind franchise, we are probably outvoted more like a hundred to one, and the coyotes are not interested in our suffrage; they are just happy to see us suffer.
Nevertheless, the Brexit vote is a genuinely Big Deal. It is going to decide loads and loads of really important stuff, with a potentially major impact not just on the British economy but also the European one and even global prospects for growth in the next few years – just look at the wobbles and panics caused by Brexit’s predecessor Grexit, even though it didn’t actually happen because the Greeks got cold feet.
And economic prosperity is not even the biggest issue. It is also about the importance of national sovereignty (and, yes, democracy) versus claims that peace and security, plus international cooperation on such vital matters as climate change and tax havens are better handled at the European level. Also, while the European Convention on Human Rights is not formally an EU matter, commitment to the fundamental rights in question is distinctly an issue that separates the leavers from the remainers – as does signing up to the social and economic rights set out in the European Social Charter, which covers employment standards relating to working hours, equal pay, disability, trade union membership and much more.
Take Back Control is the mantra of the Brexiteers. To those in business, especially buccaneering types of the less scrupulous sort, it means cutting out “red tape”, which actually translates into trashing the Social Charter safeguards. But the working public who stand to benefit from regulations – which are vitally important to us all as consumers, too, when it comes to such matters as product reliability and safety – hardly seem to notice the threat of their removal. That’s because Take Back Control is sold to them as being about stopping the foreigners coming in – a message that must sound particularly appealing if you don’t have much in the way of skills or education, and fear being outcompeted in the labour market. With so much concern over immigration, not all of it unwarranted, Brexit looks a very real possibility.
By comparison, Prime Minister David Cameron’s slogan for Remain sounds clunky and unconvincing: Stronger, Safer, Better Off. A sustained blast of Project Fear statistics and expert opinion on the dire consequences of leaving the EU, including the strong advice of President Obama, seem to have cut little ice, and the positive case for continued membership has been muted.
The campaigning on both sides, though, has been outrageous, making the whole shebang look like a talent show for who can tell the most floridly blatant lies. We already have Would I Lie To You? on the BBC but it is all about telling improbable fictions in a cleverly plausible way. The referendum carnival of fools, by contrast, is more Britain’s Got Liars, where the contestants score highly – or hope to – for being even more stridently and stupidly implausible than their opponents.
What seems to have happened is that genuinely intelligent figures on both sides, not least the famously erudite Boris Johnson leading the Brexit charge, have dumbed down their rhetoric to chase the enormous Ignorant vote, in the hope that the Ignorant (especially the Ignorant and Stupid) will believe anything if you shout it loudly, often and preferably in spectacular fashion – a tendency that must surely have reached its high tide, so to speak, in a “naval battle” yesterday on the River Thames in London, when a substantial fleet of Brexiteer vessels was outgunned by a cunning Remain volley of extremely loud soundbites from pop star Bob Geldof. His side had fewer boats, and they were much smaller, but honorary Sir Bob knows a thing or two about blasting out noise with megawatt electronic systems. All in all, quite possibly the best maritime entertainment for us Brits since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588!
Dazzled by the apparent triumph of showmanship over substance, we might easily conclude that the country has gone to the dogs and we would be better off emigrating. Well, there’s a case for that, and I’ll come to it.
Oddly, though, I have been quite impressed by the overall standard of debate, and I find myself deeply engaged in the arguments rather than alienated. Daft claims have been made on both sides, but they have also been challenged and rebutted in the course of this long campaign, not just by the leaders in head-to-head debate but also in direct engagement with the public in televised question and answer sessions, some of which have allowed the public to pursue their own particular issue with supplementary questions after the initial response. So we have heard from employees and entrepreneurs with a wide range of skills and trades, from every quarter of the UK.
In my humble opinion – and this time I really do mean humble, not scornfully elitist – their contribution has been brilliant. They have probed the competing lines of argument sceptically and skilfully, bringing to the table all manner of local and expert knowledge. As such, it has been a great advertisement for democracy. Of course, these studio-audience affairs are very stage-managed. Vox pop soundings taken in the nation’s pubs and market squares among random unprepared potential voters tend to revive one’s doubts that the public at large are really up to making such a big decision. But take it they will. For those who like democracy, this has the great merit that for better or worse the electorate will own the choice they have made, and may become more engaged with public affairs in future as a result. Even those of us who continue to worry about the downside of the universal franchise must admit that it is probably here to stay, so it makes sense for us, too, to hope for a more participating and better educated populace.
I have not yet indicated which way I will be voting, and I do not intend to. Some may think it is implied in what I have said above, which is OK by me. But why would my choice be of any interest? While I feel I can claim some expertise on Kind issues, my knowledge of economics, and of what goes on in Brussels and Strasburg, is relatively slim. So your guess is as good as mine, or maybe better.
One could, I suppose, take a specifically Kind point of view, focusing on the future for children in or out of Europe. What sort of attitudes and education would they be exposed to in a Brexiteer-led, “independent” Britain? That sort of thing. We could also bring the future for Kinds into our purview. Would a separate Britain be even less tolerant? Should we worry that even our most basic human rights, to life and freedom, would be under threat?
Again, I think heretics here can speculate on these matters as well as I.
But there is one issue, free movement within the EU, that affects those of us who are on the Sex Offenders Register (SOR). A few words of comment may be in order on this as I have some relevant personal experience and have done a bit of digging too.
The general debate has of course focused on how to limit immigration, a debate influenced enormously by the massive recent influx of refugees and economic migrants crossing the Mediterranean into the EU from the Middle East and North Africa, bringing with it the fear of importing foreign criminals, including jihadis and sex offenders of the type seen in Cologne: men under the impression that white girls are sluts and who treat them accordingly.
If Brexit Britain takes extra measures to pull up the drawbridge against such people – which in itself is a perfectly reasonable objective – it would hardly be surprising if the EU were to reciprocate, clamping down on SOR people.
As I know from what happened to me last year when I went to the Netherlands and France, information is passed about those on SOR to the EU border authorities. I have to notify the police a week in advance of foreign travel and these days when you book a flight you have to give your passport details. So when I arrived at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, it was obvious they knew who I was: I was taken aside and asked a good many questions about my purpose of visit and schedule before they eventually let me in.
Could they have stopped me entering the Netherlands under the present rules? As I understand it, under the Schengen Information System (SIS) rules, to which the UK is a party even though we are not part of the Schengen free travel area, border control officers can only detain (for up to three hours) those thought to pose a high risk and when there might be grounds for an arrest. That is why, under those same security rules, Britain only stopped the very small figure of around a thousand individuals (according to former Home Secretary Alan Johnson, speaking on BBC2’s focus on immigration) coming in from the EU last year. Bear in mind that there were around 20 million visitors from the EU in this period. It seems I was checked under Article 36(2) after an alert put out by the British police for “ViSOR nominals”.
But if we come out of the EU, this relatively sparing approach is sure to change. Instead of a few minutes’ worth of questioning (which I also faced when leaving France, on the French side, to return to Britain), there will be the much greater likelihood of new rules coming in, such that one could be turned back to the UK at the EU border. So, it could become a really SOR point. Maybe some of us would be better off emigrating. But where to?
THIS IS A COMMENT BY “EXPLORER”. IT IS POSTED HERE BY T.O’C. EXPLORER HAS BEEN EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES GETTING THROUGH TO WORDPRESS:
Tom, I was rather disappointed by your comment about Brexit – not because of your criticism of it, but because of your apparently negative evaluation of doubt in the “experts”. Such are the words I would not expect from you!
As you certainly know, Tom, current dominant “expert opinion” – the proverbial “scientific consensus” – is not on your side (to put it mildly!). According to view supported by an overwhelming majority of researchers and practitioners in the areas concerning children, their health and their mentality, child-adult sex is invariably and persistently damaging – and never genuinely consensual. Only a very small minority of academicians openly questioned (and even smaller minority explicitly rejected) such a view. So, if one should always blindly and obediently follow the “scientific consensus” no matter what, one should immediately reject everything written on your blog as contradicting it.
Yet I do not reject your writings and opinions about paedosexuality, Tom; in fact, I found them to be pretty strong – argumentatively coherent, evidentially valid and ethically responsible. But this positive evaluation became possible only because of my general interest in controversial subjects, whether academic or public, and my readiness to scrutinise and question the “experts” – and even the “scientific consensus” itself – on this and any other issue. Without such general habit questioning “authority”, I would never appeared here, on your blog, in the first place!
So, the incidences of appeals to “scientific consensus” which I still sometimes encounter in this comment section, seems to be self-contradictory. Let’s face it: all of us, present here (well, except a few paedo-haters occasionally posting a hostile comment against Tom and quickly leaving the blog), openly defied the “scientific consensus” at least on one specific issue: the intergenerational sexuality. All of us, here, already were bold enough to doubt the proclamations of “experts”, to examine them and to found them wanting – even if about a single specific topic of child-adult sex.
But the painful problem of following authority – including the authority of (most) scientists – is that a single violation of it effectively leaves you outside the limits of “respectability”. The reason is simple – if you claim that mere laypersons can and should question the “experts” on some particular issue, you, even if unwillingly, allow and justify questioning the “experts” *in principle*. After all, if “experts” were proven to be blatantly and miserably wrong at least once – and we, common people, were smart and knowledgeable enough to identify their mistakes – we cannot but start doubting all “expert” claims whatsoever, since we now have the courage to use our own wits, not the ones of “experts”.
But everything I said above does not mean that I am a fan of “the people” and the “wisdom of crowds”: a popular “consensus” is as fallible – and, subsequently, questionable – as an academic one. General public here is no better than the professional elite – as anyone who really tries to examine the evidence will soon notice, *both* are not characterised by critical thought, careful observation or ethical behaviour. Both sides would rather prefer dogmatic pronouncements, cherry-picked (or decontextualised, or wildly misinterpreted) data and reckless coerciveness instead of them. Belief in “the educated elite” is as misguided as the trust in “the common people” – sooner or later, unquestioning faith in any form of “consensus” will inevitably lead one ashtray.
The only viable way out of elite-versus-populace dilemma is to start thinking for yourself, using your own exploratory abilities, critical faculties and moral sense, and ignoring appeals both to authority (“this is a scientific consensus, so shut up!”) and majority (“people have spoken, so shut up!”). This is what anarchism is all about – is a rejection *both* of “aristocratic” authority and “democratic” majority for the sake of individual agency and autonomy.
This is *not* to say that one should ignore opinion and advise either of academic specialists or of one’s peers; it is a very good habit to learn and listen. But one should not accept what they say without a scrutiny – and, even more importantly, without examining the alternative positions, even if such positions are as minoritarian and marginalised as the one of academicians (and laypersons) claiming that sex between children and adults can be pleasant, harmless and voluntary for both sides.
You make so many important points here, Explorer! I am tempted to write a blog on the problem of “true” knowledge. But for the moment I will try to respond with a few quick points.
There are experts and there are “experts”. Like most people, I am happy to trust my life unquestioningly to the expert pilot who flies me to my holiday destination. I would also put my life in the hands of a surgeon if necessary, but I’d probably want to ask a few questions before letting him slice holes in my body. Where sexuality is concerned, though, there are many more “experts” than experts – a fact that grossly distorts our impression of where the scientific consensus lies.
If we discount the noisy moralists who dominate politics and the media, we are left with three types of genuine experts, broadly speaking: clinical, forensic and socio-psychological. The clinical and forensic side dominates in what is presented in the media because their focus is what appeals to the moralists: they foreground the problematic cases that end up with psychiatric treatment or in the law courts. Only the socio-psychological research looks at the bigger picture. This research is much more representative but is grossly underplayed in public discourse. In this area my opinions are very much in line with expert opinion: indeed, my opinion depends on the facts such research has uncovered. As for the facts reported by the clinical and forensic experts, I respect those too. The opinions of the clinical and forensic experts are valuable in the area of their expertise but should not be taken as authoritative when they stray into the province of socio-psychological research. So, when you say I have defied the scientific consensus on intergenerational sexuality I would say this simply is not true: I could cite the names of a number of internationally respected professors who are familiar with my writing and opinions who would support me on this.
Science sometimes gets things badly wrong, but its methods tend towards self-correction in the long run. And let’s not forget that science is often spectacularly right. Without it we would not have our hi-tech world, with effective medicine, air travel, computers, you name it. It makes sense to give a fair hearing to mavericks such as the climate-change deniers; but it makes even more sense to place greater reliance on the scientific consensus. It is simply a better bet.
There is apparently a real “wisdom of crowds” but it can only be usefully brought to bear on certain kinds of problems, with a specific method. Otherwise it’s easy to end up with crowd folly, not wisdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
The “educated elite” are more likely to know useful stuff, such as how economics and politics works. They are more likely to be well informed on the pros and cons of Britain leaving the EU. But they are also more likely to know what is economically and politically in their own best interests. So the downside is that they will tend to look after themselves and their own kind, or class, rather than the nation as a whole. So, yes, it makes sense for all of us as individuals to consider all the information we can, and to work things out for ourselves “for the sake of individual agency and autonomy”. But what if we too belong to the “educated elite” whom we have just decided are not to be trusted? I guess you would consider yourself an educated man and I would say the same about myself. Like others, we too may tend to act in our own interests even if we believe we have the public good at heart.
[…] Should we stay or should we go? […]
As you are now doubtless aware Tom, the vote ended up in favor of “Go.” Honestly, I’ve rarely seen fellow progressives so divided on any issue as they have been on the outcome of the Brexit vote.
>As you are now doubtless aware Tom
Yes, it hasn’t escaped my attention. To avoid hearing about it would have required being left in a coma after being run over by a bus when the count was just starting. Some of us might wish we had been put in a coma, especially soccer fans: the voters voted to leave Europe but tonight the England team were kicked out of the continent (Euro 2016 national championship contest) after losing to Iceland of all places.
What does this all portend? The end of the world at the very least!
Nice you took up the issue, Tom. I have always wondered how the players in the teams of respectively England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are chosen. In order to play for the French national team, for example, one is simply required to have French citizenship (French passport), but as far as I know, there is nothing called Scottish or English citizenship/passport. Perhaps do they consider the place where the player is born?
Don’t forget Wales. England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all been knocked out of Euro 2016 but Wales is in the Quarter Finals at the start of next month. So the UK gets four chances of winning the championship, whereas all the other countries get only one. It’s what we call “the British sense of fair play”! 🙂
I’m no expert on all this but, yes, I think the first consideration for being eligible is which of the four “home nations” you were born in. There may be a bit of wiggle room for special circumstances but you definitely can’t play for more than one of the four teams — and absolutely not at the same time, if they are playing against each other! 🙂
Great article as always, Tom. You always talk sense, which is such a refreshing thing in these days of boring conformity. Thanks for your wonderful blog. Bless you!!!
Many thanks, Katherine!
The Brexit mind-set seems to me to be an ahistorical one: it seems to assume that the stability Europe has enjoyed since World War II, the longest conflict-free period Europe has known – is somehow the norm, the default, something that hasn’t had to be achieved.
Brexit embodies the way we start taking success for granted, and start to think ‘is this all there is?’ and want something more, something different – it’s like a child who finding himself bored with a mechanical toy that works perfectly well smashes it up in the hope that something different, something more entertaining might lie inside.
Peace and stability is like ‘good health’ – those who’ve always lived with it, don’t value it, take it for granted, almost get bored of being healthy and go out and indulge in behaviour that puts it at risk: smoking, heavy drinking, dangerous sports…
Likewise we only realise the true value of clean tap water and the electricity grid when they break down; in the ordinary course of things, we have no need to reflect too much on the huge achievement both represent.
Europe is a victim of its own success: the benefits of European integration and cooperation have become invisible to us, have become the ‘least we should expect’ from a civilised society.
Brexit is the politics of complacency and boredom.
>”Should we worry that even our most basic human rights, to life and freedom, would be under threat?”
I think we should.
There is, of course, no country in Europe that is NOT paedophobic, that actually allows children free choice in the sexuality and their partners.
However it seems that Britain is the most paedophobic country in the EU and I suspect that Europe acts as a buffer to worse emerging. There is not only the European Convention on Human Rights, but also the example of countries such as Italy and France which seem to actually like their children rather than fear them, that are willing to stand up to the multi-nationals and the marketing industries that want to dictate the nature of our children’s thoughts and desires, countries where the hysteria consistently fails to ignite into the conflagration that is the norm in Britain.
I’ve lived in several European countries – as a paedophile living in the UK, compared to other European countries, felt like living in an echo chamber of hate – the media constantly turned to full volume on the subject.
With a diminishing of the moderating influence of Europe, and the uncaging of a reactionary, divisive, fear-based Weltanschauung that leaving the EU would represent and enact – I fear that paedophobia in the UK can only get worse.
The “Brexit” debate is about how to best exploit workers, weaken labour unions, spy on “suspect” people, repress so-called “dangers to public order and to the State” (whether Islamists, climate activists or militant labour organizations), keep migrants out, hunt Romas and persecute heretics: within the EU or outside it? It is a choice between David Cameron and Boris Johnson. Spoil your vote, and say why.
“However it seems that Britain is the most paedophobic country in the EU and I suspect that Europe acts as a buffer to worse emerging”
This cuts both ways. Everyone here is discussing Brexit purely from the point of view of those living in Britain, but what about the interests of everyone else in the EU? Don’t they matter? My understanding is that Britain has always exercised a deeply pernicious influence encouraging or bullying other EU countries to be more intolerant, both on its own account and as a proxy for the US. Would the extreme volte-face of countries like the Netherlands in the late eighties and early nineties have occurred without British membership? It is surely at least questionable.
YOU STUPID FOOL! Go back to spewing your NEO-LIBERAL GUFF about Islam!
That there has been peace in Europe has NOTHING to do with the European Union, and everything to do with the tranquillising of the Major Powers by the world’s long-reigning Superpower after WWII, America; which built up a strong Germany so as to counter Russia’s urge to dominate on the continent.
“I’ve lived in several European countries – as a paedophile living in the UK, compared to other European countries, felt like living in an echo chamber of hate – the media constantly turned to full volume on the subject.”
This. Agree with your whole post as usual, but must strongly echo this.
Well, the ceiling’s fallen in and we stand amidst the rubble. Too melodramatic of me? I don’t know. Time will tell.
PS Hey Tom, don’t you have an Irish passport too?
>PS Hey Tom, don’t you have an Irish passport too?
Needs renewing, but yes. Heard in some Brexit discussion on the radio that there has already been a rush for Irish passports. I have a friend with Irish ancestry who is in the renewal queue with me. Unlike me, this is someone of entirely conventional sexuality and no problems with the law, but is the worried owner of a second home on the continent. So it’s not just those with a chequered past or skeletons in the closet who are anxious.
You mention Human Rights as an EU thing but of interest here is Luke Gittos article on “The Human Rights Act is no friend of freedom” here: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-human-rights-act-is-no-friend-of-freedom/18335#.V2SQglLLePc
He basically points out that despite having all this human rights legislation it has done nothing to stop the clampdown on our freedoms that has happened in recent times. He makes the point that human rights cannot be handed to us on a plate by the EU but they have to be fought for, constantly. I guess as the saying goes: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!”
Of particular relevance to sex offenders or those at risk of being convicted of a sexual offence (i.e. all men) it’s worth noting that EU human rights legislation never prevented the sex offender register, the expanding number of sexual offences or any other such things despite these being fairly blatant violations of the right to a private and family life as well as free speech and free expression. Heck, your own recent chilling experience with EU border authorities shows that, despite us still being part of the EU they are all the same trying to clampdown on SOs travelling – something which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
In the spirit of fighting for our freedoms perhaps we should all be joining Mike Buchanan and his protest outside Crown Prosecution Service headquarters: https://j4mb.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/i-was-hung-out-like-live-bait-after-two-years-sir-cliff-richard-is-told-he-will-not-be-prosecuted-over-child-abuse-allegations-and-slams-police-who-named-him-as-a-suspect-before-he-had-even-been-in/
Hi holocaust21!! It’s me from Twitter, have missed you and was a bit worried, so glad to see you are ok!!!! ??
Hi Katherine nice to hear from you. Yes I’m still around I gave up on twitter as I couldn’t be bothered with all the banning and them making it awkward to phone verify. I continue my campaign on my blog 🙂
Hi there! I’m not sure where to find your blog, sorry!!! Anyway really glad to hear from you and to know that you’re ok! *hugs*
Katherine, to get to my blog you can click the link on my avatar or just click the link here: https://holocaust21.wordpress.com
Thank you very much!! ???
[THIS IS MEANT AS A REPLY TO HOLOCAUST21]
Who was it who said “Rights are like dogs, they need to be exercised”?
I can’t remember, but I do think there’s a lot of truth in it. For instance, a footpath might lose its status as a right of way over time if people stop using it.
Fundamental human rights, however, such as the right to life, freedom from slavery, torture and arbitrary imprisonment, ought to be a different matter. There is good reason for them to be set in stone like the Ten Commandments, or spelled out clearly in laws of unambiguous authority, to be obeyed by all.
No country should be exempt from such standards. But by going alone, Britain would be implying it wants to discard them.
These standards were not “handed to us on a plate by the EU”, as you put it. No, they were fought for in a world war and committed to international and specifically European law, with significant British input, in the wake of genocide and other atrocities.
To abandon them would be a pointless betrayal of that struggle and the enormous sacrifices made to win the war.
>Of particular relevance to sex offenders or those at risk of being convicted of a sexual offence (i.e. all men) it’s worth noting that EU human rights legislation never prevented the sex offender register…
That’s not the way it works, holocaust21. National governments continue to enact their own legislation because they remain independent sovereign nations. Or are you saying that is a bad thing? However, if they enact legislation contrary to human rights, they can be challenged at law. Is that a bad thing?
The sex offender register could certainly face a challenge, possibly on the “right to a private and family life” (ECHR Article 8), which you mention, but I suspect “fair trial” (Article 6) might be a better way to go because being on the register is a punishment (though this is officially denied) for which no trial is granted at all: it is an automatic add-on following the outcome of certain trials.
Why has there been no such challenge, or at least no successful one? Because there is no point in mounting a challenge in the courts unless there is a significant likelihood of winning. In the present atmosphere a victory is not very likely. However, it would be even LESS likely if the matter were to be tested solely in the UK courts under a British Bill of Rights. This is because Britain is rabidly more hysterical over sex offenders in general and “paedophiles” in particular than the rest of the EU.
Same goes for free speech, which you mention, and freedom of movement. It is in Britain that politicians are itching to pass new laws against “extremism” that might be used to silence a blog such as this: the Tories have announced such a measure for this parliament.
Britain has also been in the lead in surveillance and moves in the direction of a police state. We have more CCTV cameras here than anywhere else in the world. In league with the Americans, as Edward Snowden revealed, we have introduced the capture of bulk data enabling online prying into everyone’s emails, etc.
Continental Europeans, by contrast, are much more wary of such developments: the Germans, in particular, are very keen to avoid mass surveillance thanks to their relatively recent experience (in the east) of the Stasi.
Accordingly, in my judgement the ECHR continues to provide a more secure guarantee of the truly basic rights than Britain would going it alone. As for more radical developments, such as the right of prisoners to vote, the ECHR has been in the pioneering role; Britain has been firmly on the reactionary side. Likewise, the ECHR has progressively condemned the corporal punishment of minors in a series of judgements since the 1970s, nearly all of them against the UK!
Tom you’ve made many valid points in your reply to me. That said I see arguments the other way too even if Brexit allows the UK government to go more crazy in the short term in the long term it will backfire on them as public opinion will start to turn (for example, you already see this in the US with mass incarceration and they also have a much more organised sex offender movement than us!).
Also I don’t think the rest of the EU is much less paedohysterical now. All the countries are heading relentlessly in the same direction unfortunately. They will catch up soon (for example, portugal recently introduced a sex offender register).
And, as you pointed out, whilst theoretically one could make a case against the SOR in practice it’s impossible. If they actually hear it (and the ECHR takes many years to hear a case, if they do at all) then they just say the register isn’t punishment. If the climate starts to change then I think even a British court – or parliament itself – would end up ruling against the register. Regarding prisoner voting rights I think they still haven’t allowed them to vote so UK is just ignoring court decisions
I guess I’m pretty on the fence with Brexit/EU my gut is that whatever happens it probably won’t affect paedohysteria that much.
The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU. It is a court established by the European Convention on Human Rights, which all the European countries (except Belarus, if I remember correctly) have signed.
Sugarboy, that’s true the ECHR is separate but the two are a bit lumped together quite often. In any case one of the big gripes of those on the authoritarian right is that they want to get rid of the ECHR and its rulings by leaving the EU. I can only assume they will also seek to leave the jurisdiction of the ECHR as part of Brexit.
Another factor in all this, which I should have explored rather more, is the impact of the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, which brings together in a single document the fundamental rights protected in the EU. This document is the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which includes the human rights covered in the ECHR. See here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamental-rights/charter/index_en.htm
In the words of the webpage, the Charter entrenches:
* all the rights found in the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU;
* the rights and freedoms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights;
* other rights and principles resulting from the common constitutional traditions of EU countries and other international instruments.
However, the Charter is addressed to “the national authorities only when they are implementing EU law”. Thus it applies “when EU countries adopt or apply a national law implementing an EU directive or when their authorities apply an EU regulation directly”. Ordinary national law appears not to fall within its scope.
Here is the way I see Western democracy, in a nutshell. It’s not the concept democracy itself that is a failure; rather, we’re witnessing the failure of attempting to have a democratic political system encapsulated within a plutocratic economic framework, which means our system is actually an oligarchy run by the wealthy few, who can easily use their money to circumvent the democratic process. Secondly, you hit the proverbial nail on the head, Tom, when you mentioned that a good democracy must be one where certain human rights are inalienable, so that you do not have a tyranny of the majority. This is why there must be a constitution, and it must be something where new rights and extensions of rights can be added to as time goes on, but nothing within its framework and equivalent of the American Bill of Rights can ever be taken away. If anyone in the system has the power to do that, be it a plutocratic or bureaucratic minority, or the majority, then a police state mentality and totalitarianism is always a possibility. This is why either a “pure” or direct democracy, or our current bourgeois democracy, are so often compromised and seemingly a few steps away from tyranny. A constitutional democracy, that extends to the economic realm as well as the personal – something that has not yet been tried, and which has only been possible for about the past 120 years of technological development – is IMO the goal to shoot for.
What we have now, however, is not destined to stand the test of time. I’d feel safe betting on that! But IMO, democracy itself is not to blame, but rather what we diluted form of it we’re willing to settle for.
Maybe some of us would be better off emigrating. But where to?
Well, a banana republic doesn’t look like a bad idea to me. Isn’t it in the Ecuadorian embassy that Assange is taking refuge right now? This says a lot about the amount of legal certainty and fundamental rights that are still left us here in Europe… (Tom, do you remember the good old days when a member of the PIE sought asylum in the Netherlands?)
>Tom, do you remember the good old days when a member of the PIE sought asylum in the Netherlands?
I do remember. In the end his case fell through, but he was able to live there for several years as a fugitive from British injustice.