Lockdown, Burke and the long-term erosion of freedom of expression

It has become an axiom of political discourse that Britain is a polarized society. Unlike many such modish assertions there is a considerable degree of truth in that claim, though it is often exaggerated. The Brexit debate, when it ceased to be a discussion and became an unarmed civil war, had a deeply divisive effect on the nation. Its enduring consequence, reinforced by social media, has been to transform a country whose instinct was previously to bow to the majority’s will, and to find common ground where possible, into a society of potential belligerents on a permanent quest for a casus belli.

It was inevitable, therefore, that pandemic lockdown would furnish the latest occasion for conflict. When the entire country finds itself effectively under house arrest nobody feels disengaged from the issue of personal liberty. Almost certainly, some opportunist academic with a talent for churning out high-selling pot-boilers will already be putting the finishing touches to “Liberty or Immunity: From Locke to Lockdown”. We witnessed the more extreme manifestation of anti-lockdown sentiment in the middle of last month when a crowd of protesters assembled at that iconic venue of dissent and eccentricity Hyde Park to denounce the government’s containment measures. They were an eclectic bunch, voicing sometimes contradictory claims.

“I will not be masked, tested, tracked or poisoned – this will not be my new normal”, proclaimed a banner nostalgically ornamented with the CND emblem. One man claimed: “We’ve unpicked everything to do with this creation, this supposed virus.” Not with their bare hands, one hopes. Other placards linked the (non-existent) outbreak with 5G technology, Bill Gates and the new world order. Just another Saturday with the denizens of Hyde Park.

We have every right to laugh at their antics, especially the bizarre claim that it is a “fake pandemic”, but we do not have a right to shrug off some of their concerns. No matter how wrong-headed the protesters were, it is always legitimate to query any encroachment by the state on personal liberty. There are genuine concerns regarding 5G – just not the more extravagant claims of the demonstrators – as well as issues relating to Bill Gates, high tech and the new world order, a term originally promoted by its protagonists until it turned toxic, whereupon they disowned it and denounced it as “conspiracy theory”.

How representative were the protesters of British public opinion? Hardly at all, according to opinion polls, which have shown Britain to be the most pro-lockdown country in the world. In late April, YouGov found 88 per cent of respondents opposed to any loosening of lockdown; asked about how they would view a slackening of restrictions after a further three weeks, 30 per cent were in favour, 26 per cent opposed and 44 per cent did not know. Although respondents thought reopening schools should be the first priority of any exit strategy, now that it is happening it is meeting considerable parental resistance.

Even by early May, YouGov found that 77 per cent of respondents were still supportive of an extension of lockdown. At the end of April an Ipsos Mori survey recorded only 23 per cent thought the economy and businesses should reopen even if the virus was not fully contained, compared with 58 per cent of Italians. It is possible that this conservative attitude reflects the fact that the United Kingdom has suffered the highest number of coronavirus deaths of any nation in the world, after the United States, and ahead now of Italy and Spain. Granted that, with the passing of time, there is now growing impatience with lockdown, it seems likely that ingrained cultural factors are what have driven British acquiescence in exceptionally restrictive measures.

Unlike many continental countries, Britain has not experienced revolution (the coup d’état of 1688 does not count). That means its constitution has remained evolutionary rather than revolutionary. As a consequence this country retains, albeit largely unconsciously, a Burkean concept of governance. So far from discrediting the state, this un-revolutionary, organic descent of authority lends it additional legitimacy. Unless abused – as is the case more often than we like to admit – the executive outreach of the British state represents genuine authority rather than naked power. It epitomises, or mostly attempts to, the ideal of government by consent.

That is not the same thing as democracy: at least until the Reformation, many European monarchies – powerful but never absolute – also embodied government by consent. Personal liberty was maintained, but not at the expense of the common good. In Burke’s words: “Men are qualified for liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

That injunction might be directed equally at the extravagant libertarians attempting to shred society into fissiparous individuality and the tyrannical “woke” Marxists seeking to impose totalitarian repression on their fellow citizens – with university campuses, sadly, the worst hothouses of intolerance.

It is the Burkean heritage and ideal – “a spirit of rational liberty” – that motivated millions of Britons who had never heard of Burke to accept the restraints of pandemic lockdown with a degree of acquiescence not in evidence everywhere else. It is also the case that Britain has not suffered foreign occupation. In France and other countries that fell under Nazi control during the Second World War restrictive measures such as curfews are associated with alien repression. In Britain the blackout, rationing and other measures, though disliked, were acknowledged as legitimate, coming from a properly constituted government.

The ar may be a distant memory, but something of its spirit of sacrifice and standing together lingers in the British psyche. Yet immediately in its wake came something superficially similar but radically different: the ambition of ever-extending state control for its own sake, promoted by the Attlee government. It says everything about the paralysing effect of that failed socialist experiment that rationing ended in defeated, shattered Germany in 1949; by the time it ended in Britain, Elizabeth II was on the throne.

Government must possess and, when appropriate, exercise strong power; but it must be constrained to do so only when circumstances warrant it. War and pandemics represent precisely such circumstances. The government should exercise and retain exceptional powers for the full duration of any emergency such as the present; in corollary, it must be made to relinquish them as soon as the crisis is over.

It is concerning that a certain proportion of the public did not embrace lockdown, even unconsciously, in a Burkean frame of mind but, more damagingly, in the post-1945 spirit of “I have a problem, what is the government going to do about it?” It is crucial for the national well-being that such thinking should end along with the emergency. Thoughtful people who are rightly concerned about the balance between state power and personal liberty need to make their voices heard as soon as normal public life is resumed.

For despite cranky attacks on the government for doing exactly what it exists to do during a national emergency, the reality is that there has been a massive erosion of freedom over the past two decades. Freedom of expression has been crippled by so-called “hate” laws: the partisan term has even intruded onto the statute book. A free society cannot live muzzled under leftist, politically correct censorship: the hate laws must be repealed and the principle asserted that no one has the right not to be offended. In particular, freedom of thought, speech and debate must be restored to our universities.

There have always been plenty of laws in force ensuring that any incitements to violence are speedily snuffed out; but free expression of non-violent opinion is a right, not a privilege. The debate over the relative powers of the state and the citizen is set to become one of the dominant issues of the coming decade across Western society. It is a pity that those who are concerned about personal freedoms have wrong-headedly chosen to attack the state for exercising legitimate power in pursuit of its fundamental responsibility to protect the public. That will not prevent a more serious debate being prosecuted when normality is restored.