By Graham Vanbergen: I
have spent the last two years since the last general election
attempting to raise awareness that the current incumbents in the seat of
power in Britain have been slowly and surely salami slicing civil
liberties laws to not just deprive a largely unsuspecting population
of their hard fought rights but to neuter activists and civil society
groups along the way. The Conservative manifesto is proof that our
guided democracy will morph into a new form of authoritarianism
to ensure the Tories remain in power for decades to come.
The exact definition of authoritarianism is “the enforcement or
advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal
freedom” – it’s not hard to see or feel this enforcement of obedience
effort happening right now.
This salami slicing has included new laws such as (RIPA) the Snoopers
Charter, a law designed to hack into all your devices and surveil your
entire life. Then there have been various laws passed that make it
illegal to protest without police permission, or to gather in groups of
more than three, feed the homeless and Closed Material Proceedings – or
secret courts, that have doubled in number in just one year.
I have just been informed by a diplomat that after the Manchester
bombing, the escalation of national security to ‘critical’ with the
deployment of “Operation Temperer’ is in fact Britain’s code for ‘state
of emergency’ – they just haven’t said it is so.
