George Orwell - Freedom of the Park (1945)
A few weeks ago, five
people who were selling papers outside Hyde Park were arrested by the police
for obstruction. When taken before the magistrates, they were all found guilty,
four of them being bound over for six months and the other sentenced to forty shillings
fine or a month's imprisonments. He preferred to serve his term.
The papers these
people were selling were Peace News, Forward and Freedom,
besides other kindred literature. Peace news is the organ of
the Peace Pledge Union, Freedom(till recently called war
Commentary) is that of the Anarchists; as for Forward, its
politics defy definition, but at any rate it is violently Left. The magistrate,
in passing sentence, stated that he was not influenced by the nature of the
literature that was being sold; he was concerned merely with the fact of
obstruction, and that this offence had technically been committed.
This raises several
important points. To begin with, how does the law stand on the subject? As far
as I can discover, selling newspapers in the street is technically an
obstruction, at any rate if you fail to move when the police tell you to. So it
would be legally possible for any policeman who felt like it to arrest any
newsboy for selling the Evening News. Obviously this doesn't
happen, so that the enforcement of the law depends on the discretion of the
police.
And what makes the
police decide to arrest one man rather than another? However it may be with the
magistrate, I find it hard to believe that in this case the police were not
influenced by political considerations. It is a bit too much of a coincidence
that they should have picked on people selling just those papers.
If they had also
arrested someone selling Truth, or the Tablet, or the Spectator,
or even the Church Times, their impartiality would be easier to
believe in. The British police are
not like the continental gendarmerie or Gestapo, but I do not think [sic]
one maligns them in saying that, in the past, they have been unfriendly to
Left-wing activities. They have generally shown a tendency to side with those
whom they regarded as the defenders of private property. Till quite recently
“red” and “illegal” were almost synonymous, and it was always the seller of,
say the Daily Worker, never the seller of say, the Daily Telegraph,
who was moved on and generally harassed. Apparently it can be the same, at any
rate at moments, under a Labour Government.
A thing I would like
to know — it is a thing we hear very little about — is what changes are made in
the administrative personnel when there has been a change of government.. Does
a police officer who has a vague notion that “Socialism” means something
against the law carry on just the same when the government itself is Socialist?
When a Labour
government takes over, I wonder what happens to Scotland Yard Special Branch?
To Military Intelligence? We are not told, but such symptoms as there are do
not suggest that any very extensive shuffling is going on.
However, the main
point of this episode is that the sellers of newspapers and pamphlets should be
interfered with at all. Which particular minority is singled out — whether
Pacifists, Communists, Anarchists, Jehovah's Witness of the Legion of Christian
Reformers who recently declared Hitler to be Jesus Christ — is a secondary matter.
It is of symptomatic importance that these people should have been arrested at
that particular spot. You are not allowed to sell literature inside Hyde Park,
but for many years past it has been usual for the paper-sellers to station
themselves outside the gates and distribute literature connected with the open
air meetings a hundred yards away. Every kind of publication has been sold
there without interference.
The degree of freedom
of the press existing in this country is often over-rated. Technically there is
great freedom, but the fact that most of the press is owned by a few people
operates in much the same way as State censorship. On the other hand, freedom
of speech is real. On a platform, or in certain recognised open air spaces like
Hyde Park, you can say almost anything, and, what is perhaps more significant,
no one is frightened to utter his true opinions in pubs, on the tops of busses,
and so forth.
The point is that the
relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no
protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how
the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large
numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of
speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient
minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. The decline
in the desire for individual liberty has not been so sharp as I would have
predicted six years ago, when the war was starting, but still there has been a
decline. The notion that certain opinions cannot safely be allowed a hearing is
growing. It is given currency by intellectuals who confuse the issue by not
distinguishing between democratic opposition and open rebellion, and it is
reflected in our growing indifference to tyranny and injustice abroad. And even
those who declare themselves to be in favour of freedom of opinion generally
drop their claim when it is their own adversaries who are being prosecutued.
I am not suggesting
that the arrest of five people for selling harmless newspapers is a major
calamity. When you see what is happening in the world today, it hardly seems
worth squeeling about such a tiny incident. All the same, it is not a good
syptom that such things should happen when the war is well over, and I should
feel happier if this and the long series of similar episodes that have preceded
it, were capable of raising a genuine popular clamour, and not merely a mild
flutter in sections of the minority press - George Orwell: ‘Freedom of the Park’ : Tribune. London; December 7, 1945
Jacques Camatte: The Wandering of Humanity
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