The Thought Police

The front pages of The Telegraph and The Guardian today make chilling reading.

Telegraph journalist, Martin Beckford, has unearthed a document passed by the Department of Health last month, which equates NHS staff talking about religion to harassment under disciplinary and grievance procedures.

Alan Travis from The Guardian has relayed a House of Lords report, published today, stating that Britain has constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world; a system which risks undermining our basic freedoms.

CCTV is a mixed blessing. It does help to solve and deter crime. However, putting cameras up all over the place chips away at the very freedoms we are trying to protect. The very anxious begin to think that because a lift is not equipped with CCTV, anyone travelling up and down in it is “at risk”. And the sanctimonious come out with the blackmailing line: “If you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” If former Home Secretary and ID cards fan, Charles Clarke, was travelling alone in a lift listening to his I Pod, I doubt he would be the kind of man who would break into a dance. However, some of us might. But if there was a camera there, we might think again. And who would be watching? It all feels a bit creepy.

Martin Beckford’s report in the Telegraph contains a strong quote from Dr Peter Saunders, the general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship. “One of our cherished freedoms is that of freedom of speech, which enables us to have important debates about crucial issues,” Dr Saunders is quoted as saying. “But we’re seeing a culture of thought police emerging.”

There is also a thought-provoking quote from Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic barrister who specialises in religious discrimination cases. “To what extent do you stop ordinary conversation?” he asks. “What they’re doing is saying you cannot even talk about religion and that means a whole area of human experience is cut off.”

We should stand up for our civil liberties and resist George Orwell’s 1984.