Sunday 6 November 2016

Heel!

When I was growing up the townsfolk still referred to ‘Squire’ Bell and it was a given that this man, whose family had once owned much of the land on which the town was built, was looked up to. But not everybody felt that way and in a free country – a phrase that was used every day – that was their prerogative. As a mark of respect, however, many of those who wore caps, would still doff them. The class system, for all its flaws, engendered a certain sense of belonging and a rung to perch on between endeavours to climb higher. Our local lord and master, it seemed, had been a worthy one and had earned that respect.

Fifty years later, however, the world is very different. Far from the smoky back rooms of pubs and working men’s clubs, insurgency and revolt can be arranged on the fly. No furtive passing of notes or spreading of pamphlets is needed to know what’s going on (at least in part) and according to the great theme of the age, everybody is the equal of everybody else. The automatic respect for birthright is considered ludicrous and the doffing of caps is merely a metaphorical device, the physical manifestation of which may well be entirely outside the experience of most of those who use it.

Enoch Powell used the old colonial expression ‘the whip hand’ in his infamous speech and as a motif for overbearing entitlement the use of the whip appears regularly in historical drama illustrating the relationship between the pit bulls of the tyrannical and rapacious upper classes and their lowly, working class underlings. Who would defend such an order today? As you will hear every day this week, ‘men fought and died for free speech and we should remember them’ and for two minutes on Friday, all decent people will stand silent in such memory.

Freedoms. The EU’s so-called freedoms of movement, of goods, services, capital and people, are at the heart of our current big debate, but there is also at stake that very freedom of expression whose winning will be silently commemorated during the two minutes. All of which makes it a bit rich for the Bar Council to effectively demand respect for the judges who, on  point of law, have aroused anger and indignation and not a little amount of fear in the far-from-silent majority who voted to leave the EU. It is one thing to have freedom to choose; quite another to have ‘freedoms’ imposed upon us.

Claiming that disapproval of the verdict somehow challenges the independence of the judiciary is a pretty far stretch, even for those whose contempt for the underlings on which they serve judgement seems at times to know no bounds. Demanding that the government back up this demand, hiding behind the skirts of the Lord Chancellor and insisting the press have no right to criticise their opinion, only serves to illustrate what people mean when they refer to an ‘out of touch elite’.

The Poll Police - making sure everybody accepts the right verdict
It's a free country...

Nobody doffs their cap any more, not by diktat at least. The sequestered huddles of fearful Wizards of Oz; frightened little men, demanding respect and trying to use the mechanisms of state to put the little people in their place and accept the unaccountable decisions being imposed upon them? Isn’t this precisely the system that the derided ‘populist’ movements across the developed world are railing against? They are repeatedly told ‘you just don’t get it’. Well doesn’t their running to mummy demonstrate exactly this? You rule us, judge us and police us by our consent. You can only abuse this old dog so far before it bites back.

5 comments:

  1. Te photo looks like the Federation soldiers from "Blake's 7" - if anyone remembers that..

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    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_Terrorism_Centre
      (Hungarian: Terrorelhárítási Központ, TEK)

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  2. My first reaction to the newspapers strong condemnation of the judges was shock. Funny how us oldies still cling to our respect for authority and the establishment. In our youth when respect of status ruled we did respect the established order of things. Read here what has gone wrong since http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86269.

    Our respect was probably misplaced then. If not it is certainly misplaced now. So after this consideration entering my mind I thought no the newspaper harsh comments should be welcomes even if they are wrong in substance, I believe they are not, as we need champions to keep the establishment from becoming the tyranny that it wishes to become. Very much so since the advent of socialism and the progressives gaining so much influence and control over our lives.

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    1. These judges were placed in the position as a longstop nothing happens by chance in the murky world of EU marxist politics.

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  3. The game is control. Control of the language is control of the debate. Judges - clearly they must be above comment, let alone criticism! And so they are sacred. But the judgment is lamentable. Read Rod Liddle and Dominic Lawson in the Sunday times today and the true picture emerges. The little people must be controlled. But the people are biting back. Let's bite back harder.

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