Do you have permission for that opinion?

It used to be said that in Britain if something was not specifically prohibited then by definition it was legal, unencumbered and free. If this is still the case today then such a principle is coming under sustained attack. The Defend the Right to Protest campaign has noted in politically charged prosecutions:

[There is] a now-familiar line: the courts can decide what protest should be (or should have been) and prosecute anyone who deviates from that picture – a picture now supposed to be the property of the protestors themselves.

In an earlier court case connected to the one referred to here (part of the fall-out from the Fortnum and Mason occupation) a Judge presiding insisted that UK Uncut protestors were “breathtakingly arrogant” for actively opposing government austerity, in other words UK Uncut is beyond the pale in and of itself.

Smaller, but by no means less important, is a trend for councils to start imposing charges on the right to hand out leaflets, under the provision of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 (thank you Labour!). This has been opposed in letter by members of the entertainment industry, and quite right too, but much more is at stake than gigs, fetes or comedy nights. Leafleting is a basic democratic activity. This simple Wikipedia entry cites an example of leafleting as a political tool during the American War of Independence. More than likely though leafleting is as old as printing itself.

Some councils now charge hundreds of pounds a day for the right to leaflet the citizenry. The good reason is to discourage ‘littering’. The real reasons are to make money and discourage political activity. How much is democracy worth? In some boroughs it’s £350.

We must never forget this is a logical corollary of Austerity, a ruling class movement that not only aims to prop up the ailing rate of profit but also to define the terms of our society for a generation or more. If, in times gone by, democracy was its own justification, now it must prove itself before capital accumulation.