Keeping Things in Proportion - the Presumption of Innocence is Vital
May I just begin by saying that I am unequivocally against child abuse, and think its perpetrators should be severely punished; and that I am also against terrorism, and think its perpetrators should be severely punished. Actually, when it comes to terrorism, I am considerably stricter than my own government, or the US government, both of whom have taken part in actions which have led to the freeing of imprisoned, convicted terrorists, and to sordid deals made with terrorists or their representatives. As a result, both governments are now on cordial terms with persons and movements which derive much of their power and standing from their willingness, in the past, to murder innocent people.
I opposed at the time, and continue to condemn, these agreements and concessions, and believe they have encouraged terrorism around the world. As for child abuse, it would be hard to more against it than I am. What more can I say? And yet, can any such statement protect me or anyone else from the current weird mood, in which it seems the entire country is under suspicion?
In the current strange atmosphere, it is necessary to make such statements of the blindingly obvious before expressing any further opinion. So there, I have done so.
Two apparently unrelated events this week perplex me greatly. One is the latest introduction of wildly disproportionate checks on air travellers, supposedly to guard against a mysterious and unspecified new danger from terrorists. I suppose it is possible that these checks might one day save a life, though it will be very hard to establish this if so, because they only realistic way they could do so would be by persuading the would-be murderers not to try to smuggle a bomb on board an aeroplane disguised as a mobile phone, e-reader, tablet, laptop or hair-straightener.
The visible effect of such deterrence (much like the visible effect of the similar campaigns against honey, makeup, shampoo and shaving foam) will be exactly the same as it would have been if these things had in fact never been dangerous at all. This may well be the case. I have sought in vain for convincing proof that the supposed liquid bombs which were intended to be made in the lavatories of airliners, could ever actually have been successfully created in real life.
And then there are all the Swiss Army knives, corkscrews, knitting needles, scissors, nailfiles and so forth, confiscated in mountains during the past dozen years on the off-chance that a knitting granny has in fact secretly been trained in an Afghan fastness to hijack a plane, even though the flight-deck door is locked and never opened in flight (the single, simple precaution which, if properly observed, will ever afterwards prevent any repeat of September 11).
Then there are all the millions of pairs of shoes removed by total innocents at the unblinking command of ‘security’ personnel. Thanks to the failed underpants bomb, not detonated in 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I remain permanently surprised that we do not also have to routinely remove our underwear too, and cannot rule out some such development, sooner or later. To some extent the intrusive bodyscanners to be found at some airports *are* such a development.
I’d add that if anyone ever tried to hijack a plane I’m on, with needles, nailfiles, scissors or Swiss Army knives, wouldn’t it be a good idea if several dozen law-abiding passengers were also armed with such things, and could despatch or at least disable the hijacker with them? I’m often asked if I’d be happy to board a plane without the checks we currently have to undergo. My answer is a firm and unequivocal ‘Yes’.
Not merely do I think the chances of experiencing a hijacking or other terror incident incredibly remote compared with the other greater risks I face daily or weekly on (for instance) our terrifying roads. As I have often stated, there is just as much risk that an eagle may drop a tortoise on my head, or some asteroid or burned-out satellite squashes me as I stand waiting for a train. No 'security' is proof against that.
I think the lesson of United 93, oddly ignored, is that passengers can fight back, and, as long as the flight deck is safely locked, they (and the cabin crew) now have a huge and overpowering reason to do so. Since 2001, hijackers no longer have their only real weapon against passenger resistance, the possibility that if the passengers submit quietly the hijackers will eventually let some or all of those passengers go. Robbed of that hope and blackmail, as they now are, passengers have a huge motivation to be utterly ruthless and courageous in the aggressive defence of the plane on which they fly. I would greatly fear to be a hijacker faced with such passengers, especially if they had steel cutlery with which to fight.
As it is, if I fly, I must endure the ceaseless presumption of guilt, submit like a slaughterhouse cow to being herded, forced to wait then ordered about and compelled to perform laughably useless rituals, even forced to expose my naked body(via scanners) to total strangers, forbidden above all to laugh at this procedure. Jokes about ‘security’ are most unwise, and one major airport in the USA certainly used to broadcast repeated warnings against making jokes about security over its PA system, threatening such joke-makers with penalties of law, and flight bans. This is because those who impose the system know it (in their hearts) to be ludicrous and fear above all that anyone should publicly draw attention to this. George Orwell said something similar about the goose-step, pointing out that inhabitants of tyrannies were forced to observe this absurd march without laughing, as part of their servitude.
A sense of humour (as Robert Donat long ago pointed out in the first and infinitely better of the two films of ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’) is more or less the same thing as a sense of proportion.
I think we have also lost a sense of proportion over the supposed lost dossier on paedophilia at high levels in government. Central to this is a document handed to the Home Office by the late Geoffrey Dickens.
Readers might benefit from the following refreshingly cool analysis of this event by David Mellor who, though much-mocked for a certain incident , is an intelligent and an honest man, with a pretty good sense of proportion(made all the keener by what Max Clifford – remember him- put him through);
Take a look at it
Note that Mr Mellor is extremely fair to Mr Dickens, which in my view much strengthens his point. Even so, many who were around when Mr Dickens (God rest his soul) was still among us, might be a bit less generous. Mr Dickens was not exactly a figure of weight and moment in the councils of the nation. Read also these recollections from Steve Richards, one of the most astute political commentators in the business:
And these, from another distinguished veteran reporter of Westminster, Andy McSmith
I think these recollections all help to get the matter into proportion. Crimes should be detected and, where people are properly found guilty of them in calm, properly-conducted jury trials, they should be punished, but this must be kept within a clear, cool insistence that we stick to the rule of law and the presumption of innocence.
If you presume guilt, you destroy trust, and without trust there will be nothing to keep order except power and fear.
Peter Hitchens's Blog
- Peter Hitchens's profile
- 299 followers
