Right to demonstrate must be sacrosanct
IT’S good to share facts with other correspondents in this newspaper. On the 7th June, Mr Paul Mercer wrote to say that he agreed with most of my letter (of June 3rd) but not with facts about the BBC.
Mr Mercer says that the BBC is “biased towards the left-wing.” It would be good to see the evidence for his assertion.
The world-renowned broadcaster is meticulous with its balance.
Any Questions and Question Time (TV); Broadcasting House and The Westminster Hour (radio) have the two main parties represented. If these programs were biased, BBC audiences would repeatedly use Feedback and Any Answers to point this out. Several of these broadcasts rotate their locations to maintain balance. Fiona Bruce would resign (unlike someone we know) if she allowed a whisper of imbalance.
As for the editing, all of us who watched the BBC broadcast of the St Paul’s Jubilee service were only too aware of the boos that greeted Mr Johnson on his arrival at the ceremony. In a second broadcast of that sequence the BBC had edited out the booing. Why? Chris Mason, the BBC’s political commentator suggested that the booing had been organised by a minority – that it didn’t represent a popular view of the PM. These two examples showing sympathy for Johnson indicate a right-wing bias.
In other ways Aunty BBC is also more often than not right-leaning. Lord Lawson used to be the sole interviewee in “discussions” on the environment. The fact that his “research” on this topic was provided by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, heavily financed by the fossil fuel industry, was never mentioned. Even a play about Mrs Thatcher’s conduct of the Falklands War was not broadcast for 15 years, which shows sympathy for the right wing.
Mr Mercer also has no doubts about the Police, Crime and Courts Law that the Government pushed rapidly through Parliament. It contains constructive elements such as strengthening the law to protect children but its attack on our right to protest is described by two former police chiefs as “introducing paramilitary policing”. The police will now be able to dictate the start and end times of demonstrations and decide how loud they can be!
This will apply even to a demo by one person. So the recent 21-day hunger strike by the husband of Nadine Zaghari-Ratcliffe outside the Foreign Office could have faced Mr Ratcliffe with a stiff punishment.
Those attending a demo and even those walking in the area can now be stopped and searched “without grounds for suspicion”. And local police regulations about demos don’t have to be announced, it’s up to the demonstrators “to find out”.
The historical right of the British people to demonstrate should be as sacrosanct as the duty of any PM to obey the law. Nineteenth century demonstrations and later the suffragettes helped gain our voting rights. The million strong march in London against our invasion of Iraq showed the view of many citizens. SW farmers demonstrated outside milk factories for a fair price. Is this democratic tradition to be banned solely because of the ‘anarchists’ in Extinction Rebellion?
A football pitch area of the Brazilian Rainforest is destroyed every minute. Government authorities are deciding how far to allow sea level rise to advance into our East Anglian coastline.
The Indian hot season has started three months early, with the poor dying with temperatures over 50 degrees. Climate related storms in the UK recently? Yes, we all have the greatest sympathy for the delays in ambulance journeys (any statistics on this?) or a few of us being late for work, but ER wants to persuade governments to apply the democratically achieved agreements from Cop26 for example. ER proposes more controls for the good of the vast majority of world citizens, not anarchy. Aren’t infrequent, peaceful demonstrations one way to remind adults of what we are leaving our children and grand-children to “solve”. How many times per week do we turn away from TV, radio and newspaper coverage of the threat to humanity? I turn away – does nobody else?
Jeremy Hall
Exeter, Devon