Back in the UK...SR

When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, if you talked about a country that kept its people under surveillance, was introducing identity cards with biometric details, imprisoned people without trial, arrested protesters for wearing a t-shirt, and illegally invaded other countries to steal their resources, there would be no doubt that we would be talking about one of the Communist bloc - the USSR, China or similar. Yesterday, with the Government winning (by bribery) a vote to remove part of Magna Carta, an essential freedom that we have had for nearly eight centuries, that description now applies to the United Kingdom.

It seems incredible that Great Britain, a country that once proudly displayed its democratic freedoms to much of the rest of the world, has now become a warning to that world of what might happen if you let your liberties go beneath the exaggerated threat of terrorism. There has only been one attack on Britain by Al-Qaeda or its supporters, but it has been far more successful than Bin Laden could have dreamed. Hitler, with all his mighty forces, could not achieve what one relatively-minor attack and an authoritarian government bent on control and elimination of opposition have done.

In reality, Britain has never been the shining example of democracy and freedom that its inhabitants have believed. We've never had an elected head of state, even in the Interregnum after Charles I's death and now, eight years into the 21st century, we still don't have one. Nor can we vote for the occupants of the second chamber, and our undemocratic electoral system means that many people effectively have no vote. And neither have our attitudes to other countries been much to be proud of. The Empire initially could be partly excused as something that every other strong country was doing (having no empire in the 16th and 17th centuries would have seriously restricted trade and freedom). But that Empire lasted long after it was considered necessary and more modern times brought equally bad interventions in other countries. A century before the recent oil-based invasion in 2003, Britain had occupied Iraq for its resources. Liberty has always been a relative term in British history.

But now we seem to be firmly heading down the road towards a police state. Maybe this is in preparation for the forthcoming disruption that will follow peak oil but it is hard to imagine British politicians having the far-sightedness for that. It is probably more to do with Lord Acton's famous quotation: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

I will be leaving Britain to work abroad next month and I feel no loss at that departure. I no longer recognise the country that I grew up in. In the words of Thomas Paine:
"My country is the world and my religion is to do good"