This year will be one in which governments and religious establishments around the world will bring in sweeping changes to laws on regulation of the press, tobacco and drugs, personal data tracking, women bishops and gay marriage. But, asks Trevor Grundy, are they for the good of the people or do they threaten our personal freedoms?
“Boredom with established truths,” wrote British polemicist Bernard Crick in his classic 1962 book, In Defence of Politics, “is a great enemy of free men.” Change the word ‘truths’ into long-accepted commercial and moral shibboleths, and we’re crossing into terra incognita. Welcome to 2013.
For, after a decade of stunning change in the commercial and moral marketplaces, this is likely to be a year when all of us will be running to stay in the same place as the sands of long-cherished freedoms and traditional restraint swirl around us.
In Britain, statutory control of the press/ media is being hotly debated by politicians and the public. There is consensus that the current system of press regulation is broken and needs fixing. The question is, how? Lord Justice Leveson’s report on press standards is the seventh of its kind. William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times (1966-1981) writes: “Each successive report entertained the hope of solving the problem of regulating the competitive instincts of the news trade with the reality of the working media: none has been successful.” But statutory control of the media? For the last 300 years it has been unthinkable. Now, no longer.
In many of the richest Commonwealth countries, the once well-accepted ‘pleasure’ of buying colourfully adorned packets of cigarettes is not only frowned upon but banned. The Australian government’s decision to ban all forms of branding on cigarette packets has been upheld by the country’s highest court. The move has been hailed by cancer charities and health organisations around the globe. The Australian High Court reached its landmark decision in spite of protest from tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International and Imperial Tobacco.
In Scotland, cigarette vending machines and displays in shops will be banned as from spring 2013 after Imperial Tobacco lost a legal challenge shortly before Christmas. Meanwhile, the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to match proposals from the Scottish government to introduce a 50p minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol in England and Wales because teenage binge drinking is clearly out of control.
Some of the world’s poorest countries are calling on the USA and Britain to legalise use of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine – and even heroin. A bill to downgrade the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana was signed into law by the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill, SB 1449, introduced by Senator Mark Leno, will spare petty offenders the necessity of a court appearance and criminal arrest while saving the state millions of dollars in court and prosecution expenses. The bill treats petty possession like a traffic offence – punishable by a simple $100 fine and no arrest record.
In November, voters in Colorado and Washington State approved the recreational use of marijuana. That sent a round-robin message across Latin America, a region that faced decades of bloodshed from the US-led war on drugs. Experts said that the moves were likely to give momentum to countries like Uruguay that are marching towards legalisation to undercut Mexican criminal gangs and to embolden those who demand greater debate about how to combat illegal substances.
“The trend is towards legalisation,” said Jorge G Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who is an advocate for decriminalisation. Several former Latin America presidents have signed statements criticising US counter-drug policy, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, all of whom have called for the legalisation of marijuana.
The once-sacred right of individual freedom is being challenged (some say undermined) by the possibility of parliaments introducing a ‘snoopers charter’ that could give police and security services sweeping powers to access communications data.
The British government wants to force communications providers to keep databases of emails, phone calls and other data for 12 months. Says Guy Herbert of The Guardian: “In the 18th century, recording someone’s thoughts or speech or regulating their private behaviour without entering their property or seizing physical objects was impossible and unimaginable.” He adds: “Political liberty has only arisen because people are able to combine together to discuss new ideas and to promote them – in private.”
And on the ‘sexual/moral’ front, the 77-million strong worldwide Anglican Communion is divided by two burning issues: full Christian rights for same sex couples and the introduction of women as bishops in the Church of England and Church in Wales.
On 6 April 1895, the playwright Oscar Wilde was arrested and later found guilty of homosexual acts. By early 2013 – 118 years after Wilde’s disgrace and imprisonment – it’s likely that the British parliament will have approved legislation that allows most churches, all mosques, temples and synagogues to marry same sex couples. Consecration of women as bishops in the established Church of England is just around the corner. But gay newly-weds hoping for West African sea and sunshine should check hotel regulations before setting off on their honeymoon.
Where do we go from here?
As people in the once impoverished East End of London would say over their pint in the pub, before parts of Hackney and Shoreditch became the stomping grounds for oligarchs and Turner Prize winners: “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
