Britain is very clearly in breach of the UN Declaration on Human Rights
Richard Murphy is an economic justice campaigner. Professor of Accounting, Sheffield University Management School. Chartered accountant. Co-founder of the Green New Deal as well as blogging at Tax Research UK
Cross-posted from Tax Research UK
There have been a number of reports of people being arrested for protesting at proclamations of King Charles III. Both the protests appear to have been personal, rather than organised. Neither protestor did anything more than express an opinion.
In the land of Britain’s new prime minsiter Liz Truss and, apparently, King Charles III, such protest would appear to be unacceptable.
I have already noted the absence of any apparent democratic consent to the ascent of Charles to the Throne. That troubled me. That those who wish to express their dissent about his ascension are arrested for doing so troubles me even more.
As I understand it, the reason for the multiple proclamations of the monarch was to gauge the level of support that they might enjoy. In other words, the process recognised that consent was not automatic, and might even be withheld.
This, apparently, is no longer the case. Now the proclamation is an edict that we must take or leave, without our opinion being sought, and with dissent not being permitted.
It is a standard right wing argument to suggest those dissenting from the opinion of those others with power are very rude to disagree, and must be suffering some sort of affliction for doing so. At the very least, dissent is cast as rude, and as justification for ostracism within society.
Alternatively, the person complaining must be very jealous, and so we get the narrative of the politics of envy.
Move just a little further, and the dissenter is a threat to peace, law and order and must be detained. They become a criminal.
But that is not what dissenters are, of course. They are expressing their human right to free speech, and so to disagree. This right is at the very core of all human liberties. It is the bedrock of democracy too. And that, no doubt, is why fascists and Tories alike loathe that freedom, and seek to constrain it, through legislation and inappropriate police intervention of the type seen yesterday.
I would rather we did not have a new King. I think the demands of monarchy an impossibly unfair imposition to place on anyone by accident of birth when I think none more suited to a task by reason of birth than any other. I am also a democrat, and would rather have a say in who is my head of state, and to have a chance to remove them. And I am convinced that endorsed privilege needs to be removed from UK politics when the harm it has caused is now so obvious.
And yes, I think I have the right to say that and that no one should be arrested for doing so.
As they have been, read that for what it says that we have: a fascist, police state.
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