The illusion of freedom

We are always been told that
we live in a free society, but do we?

 It would appear that a ban has been introduced on spontaneous protest within one kilometre of Parliament. According to a recent feature in the Sunday Times, as a form of low-key protest against this, a man called Neil Goodwin regularly dresses up as Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, holds a placard carrying the slogan “Not Aloud” and stands within the vicinity. This means, of course, that he is liable to get into trouble, and he has indeed been arrested several times. Many of the passing crowd think he is a tourist attraction and on one occasion, when a policeman told him to move on, one of them said, “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”, whereupon the man is said to have shook his head ruefully.

But surely in Britain, we live in a free society with the right to protest? It’s a democracy after all; we have a choice of leaders to vote for. And in between elections, there are a whole host of issues we can give our voices to in order to make a difference to the world around us, knowing that we won’t get jailed for our views or actions. So maybe our tramp is just an eccentric exception.

People power is in evidence everywhere and more and more we see individuals and groups “standing up for their rights”: minorities of every kind have a voice. The right for a woman of a certain religious persuasion to wear a black mask over her face while teaching…the right for gay couples to adopt children…it sometimes seems we have rights spilling out of our ears.

And democracy, it would seem, is proliferating with the advance of technology – through participation in phone-ins and on-line voting you can give your view on everything from road pricing to who should be ejected from Big Brother.

Again, society is so much less formal than it used to be. Everybody is on first name terms and we dress more casually than previous generations. It can be easy to believe it when we’re told that class doesn’t exist any more and that we no longer have any superiors to doff our caps to.

And what about all that freedom of choice for the consumer? The range of brands and products you can buy in any high street store or supermarket is mind-boggling.

Big business, too, is seemingly much more aware of our needs than it used to be. We have an increasing number of companies practising “customer care”, “responsible companies”, trying their hardest to please customers and employees alike. And if they do something we don’t like, we can sue them.

But we don’t have to scratch the surface very hard to see that our tramp in the first paragraph is only one small example of the ways in which our freedom is restricted.

A lapse into Grumpy Old Man mode evokes cash-strapped local councils trying to squeeze more and more money out of us and at the same time clobbering us with a barrage of regulations: smoking bans, parking fines, fines for not putting rubbish in the correct recycling container, or, as happened to one no doubt bemused man, for momentarily placing a drinks can on the pavement while tying a shoelace.

In the aftermath of terrorist attacks, we are herded like cattle to be searched at airport queues for anything that may be vaguely dangerous.