Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

The police state creeps up on us, step by stealthy step. Every law, every restriction, is invoked for our safety and convenience. But a totalitarian state feeds on laws, twisting them to its own ends.

And the problem is, they often seem so reasonable at the time.

Not that everyone is happy about the Terrorism Act 2000. (And how interesting that it’s not the ‘Anti-Terrorism Act’. One might almost suspect some Freudian act of honesty in admitting that it is designed to provoke terror, not fight it.)

The Act has been widely condemned as another step on the path to a police state. And the problem is not just that its sometimes draconian measures will be over-used, but that they will be widely abused. In fact, that’s already happening.

On an internet forum for professional photojournalists, several news photographers complained that they had been stopped many times recently by police officers using Section 44 of the act. This is the rule that permits police officers, under special circumstances, to stop and search people on the street. Normally, this is not allowed.

For many, it recalls the bad old ‘sus law’ – a twisting of the Vagrancy Act 1824 – that was used by various police forces, but especially the Metropolitan Police, to target black youths back in those dark Thatcherite days of the 1980s. Section 44 is being abused to provide police officers with similar stop and search powers. But this time the motivation isn’t the usual institutional racism of police forces: we’re all targets now.

In the case of the photojournalists, the police officers invoked Section 44 as a way of harassing bona fide journalists going about their lawful business. Of course, such aggressive tactics are not new to photojournalists and most take the time to learn and memorise their rights. Not that it always does you much good against an arrogant and pumped-up policeman – try to argue and you usually find yourself being accompanied to the station on a charge of ‘obstructing the police’ (knowing your rights is often interpreted this way).

The point is, though, that in not a single case did these police officers have the right to invoke Section 44. It can be used only in particular circumstances. But most people simply won’t know this, and so the police are free to abuse their authority whenever it’s convenient.

This is the creeping danger: when you give additional powers to the police, or other branches of authority, they will assume more – powers they were never intended to have – by abusing the law. This has always happened, but in these times of an exaggerated menace from terrorism, the authorities are granting themselves greater and more extreme powers to oppress everyone, not just those they say threaten us.

On a lighter note, if you want an example of how useful it is to know your rights, take your cue from this filmmaker.

Note how the police officers lack the manners to apologise or admit that Darren Pollard, the cameraman was right! It is time that members of all police forces were reminded that they are the servants of the public, not their keepers.

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