This month is the 50th anniversary of The Freedom Association. We emerged as an organisation to champion individual liberty, freedom of expression and free markets and to resist the sprawling and mutating and pernicious ever-increasing size of government and bureaucracy.
Then, as now, the cause of individual freedom is vitally important. This is an undoubted truth that the public is very aware of. Recent polling carried out for The Freedom Association found that almost two thirds of the public believe that freedom of speech is at risk in the United Kingdom and that this is a concern across all sectors of opinion.
How could they not? We have clear, high-profile examples of a broken system. A system that many are beginning to see as two-tier, where some opinions or voices are completely free and others are patently not.
Then, on top of this clear example of inconsistency of a two-tier system, and I will put it that way Lord Hermer, we know that the Labour Government is looking to clamp down further on free speech by planning for what has been dubbed the “banter police”. Such an amusing term for what is, in practice, an incredibly chilling plan. Perhaps I could point to the repeated attempts in the courts to introduce a de-facto blasphemy law by the back door or Labour’s subversive efforts to hide its plans to create one. This is straight out of a Stasi handbook where neighbours were encouraged to report on conversations, and I support The Free Speech Union’s campaign against it.
But it is not just the injustices around the lack of freedom of speech that we are facing now. The shadow of State interference grows larger every year. The burden of regulation, control and manipulation of our daily lives has never been more onerous. Liberties that would have been taken for granted when The Freedom Association was formed in 1975 are now non-existent or curtailed to the point of irrelevance.
There is certainly a creeping sense that we as citizens of the United Kingdom are less free than we used to be, that we have been “nudged”, cajoled or, rather more often, forced into following the chosen demands of the State. This is usually done in the name of our own good. Choice has been taken away, the ability to freely and knowingly choose a supposedly unhealthy option is becoming increasingly impossible.
From the so-called “sin taxes” on sugar and alcohol, the new plans to force supermarkets to adhere to central, State-planned targets on healthy food sales and to endure public shame by publishing data on their “unhealthy” food sales. Naturally, despite all the State-led previous health initiatives that are focused on obesity, the obesity rate has continued to rise. State control and restricting freedoms not working? Well then, we simply must double down.
There is another mad and bad anti-freedom plan coming down the tracks. Following Rishi Sunak’s bizarre example, the Labour Government has pressed on with the so called “generational smoking ban”. It is an unworkable absurdity that will lead to a 36-year-old being legally unable to do something that a 37-year-old can.
Leaving aside the point that the ban is unnecessary and misguided, smoking has never been more unpopular. The only other country that tried to do something similar, New Zealand, quickly realised it was a huge mistake and abandoned it.
Those that would be on the frontlines of the ban – convenience store owners – have been united in their opposition, warning that it would expose them to coercive pressure from organised crime and that the ID requirements are simply unworkable. Australia’s spate of firebombing against corner shops is proof of the malign influence of organised crime and the lucrative nature of a huge and growing black market in cigarettes. Too much bad regulation and the criminals dominate.
The Freedom Association will continue to fight for freedom and against the continued overreach of State interference in all aspects of our personal lives for the next 50 years as it has the last 50. If people wish to take risks with their health, whilst in full knowledge of health facts, they should be free to do so. It is not up to the State to take that choice away.