Free Speech England: Bring Back Best
In 2013 a small group of advocates for free speech in and around the UK resumed a long standing struggle for free speech which has its roots in the UK’s alignment with its slave driving, war warmongering brethren in Washington DC. Since the attack on the world trade centres we have witnessed a corrosion of civil liberties in both the USA and the UK, rights to protest heavily impeded, rights to free speech practically evaporated. Almost anything that runs contrary to the government (its the ministry of defence, its the arms trade, its pharmaceutical industry etc), such as expressions of animal/earth liberation and the like, are basically treated as a threat to national security.
Consequently legislation continues to be drafted which assaults our basic civil liberties. A massive increase of racial profiling, higher incidence of non-Caucasians finding themselves in secure psychiatric hospitals particularly people of south Asian complexion. As though human efforts to reduce animal suffering could ever be of a threat to national security. The truth is that these state protected interests are in fact a threat to the planet and everything on it and when people like Dr Best curse out and speak truth people begin to listen.
“There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.” ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
In 2005/6, the American Professor of Philosophy Dr. Steven Best was one of the first people in the U.K. to experience the deliberate abuse and misuse of Anti-Terrorist Legislation by UK’s so called democratic government. The government claims that Steven’s presence in the U.K. is not conducive to the public good for reasons of public order, these claims have no substance and are founded primarily on an exaggerated news paper report.
Furthermore, even if Best’s presence in the U.K. did pose some minuscule threat to the economy, it certainly does not follow that his presence was not conducive to the public good for reasons of public order. On the contrary given the current climate, the opposite is true. There is a need for people to rise over and above repressive laws that coerce the public and suppress civil liberties.
The fact a group of privileged political figures do not agree with the activities of the ALF, should never have been grounds for Best’s exclusion as such activities come no where close to the destruction that British and USA laws continue to facilitate. ALF ideology is all about non-violent resistance and disarmament. Violence is here considered deliberate physical harm which brings physical pain to any living thing. Dr. Best’s respect for the ALF should be respected by any democratic government and not demonised.