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Yours Sincerely,
The Secretary of State
Stunning. I was possibly being banned from the UK for exercising my right to speak out against the real terrorists whose barbarities were protected by the power of the state. I was under attack for the crime of compassion toward animals and defending the defenseless. In their hysterical, Orwellian mindset, I was deemed a threat to the “public good” and “public order.” In case I was snoozing, I was rudely awakened to the realities of the Bush/Blair regimes and the 1984 dystopia of state surveillance and totalitarian suppression of dissent. The Home Office was threatening to annul my right to free speech as well the right of their own citizens to hear controversial viewpoints.
After a thousand deep breaths, I penned my requested response.
Dear Mr. Blunkett and the Home Office:
As a citizen in a leading “democracy” hearing from a government official in another leading “democracy” that I could be banned merely for exercising my rights to free speech, I honestly am shocked beyond belief. My remarks may be controversial, but they are not illegal and do not warrant the harsh action you are contemplating.
I do not deny writing the words you cite; I posted the essay you refer to on my web site for the public, or any government officials such as yourself, to read. I do not disavow my belief in the justice of animal rights or the ALF. I respect your concerns for “public order” and the “public good,” given the intensity of passion flaring on both sides of the animal liberation issue. I hope I can persuade you that you have nothing to fear by my presence in your country. Indeed, by diminishing the opportunity for free expression, I fear that you yourselves might injure the public good and public order in England because surely this will inflame the situation there.
I support the ALF, but I do not advocate violence in the sense of causing physical harm to another human being. Because they attack the property of animal exploiters, and never the exploiters themselves, I consider the ALF to be a non-violent organization. Just to be clear, I am not a member of the ALF. I am a philosophy professor who writes about, and often expresses support for, social justice and liberation movements
It is true that I have provided an “intellectual justification” for the ALF, but then again so does any modern democratic constitution or bill of rights, so did J.S. Mill, Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with anyone who promoted concepts such as rights or justice that can be used on behalf of the ALF. Moreover, the ALF and other direct activists hardly need or await my justifications to act, so I don’t quite see how my words have inflammatory potential.
I have never incited violence against anyone. I believe that both the US and UK should allow their citizens a great deal of latitude in the exercise of free speech, including defending organizations that use property destruction as a tactic to win justice for animals. As long as my speech does not incite others to violence where there is an immediate possibility of such violence, I believe it is arbitrary, unwarranted, and discriminatory to ban me from England. I clearly did not cross this line in the essay you cite, nor have I anywhere else.
In this threatened ban, you are heading down a dangerous slippery slope. Would you also ban Professor Peter Singer, for his defense of euthanasia and infanticide, also illegal acts? Would you ban Professor Tom Regan, another leading US animal rights philosopher and activist who wrote an essay in one of my books (Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?) entitled “How to Argue for Violence”? Just where do you stop after barring from your country philosophers without criminal records?
I urge England not to make the same mistakes made by my own government. In the dark times of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration has gutted the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the name of fighting “terrorism.” After 9-11, the US government illegally detained thousands of foreigners as terrorist suspects. Except a precious few, they remain in prison without rights to legal council or a hearing of the charges brought against them. This dragnet netted only one suspected terrorist, by pure luck. Similarly, the provisions introduced under the UK’s Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 have done little to make Britain safe from terrorist attack and much to infringe on the civil liberties of those living in the UK.
It is frightening to see England follow the same path of the US in the surveillance of activists and repression of civil liberties in the name of domestic security. The recent involvement of the FBI in Britain’s domestic “security” affairs is hardly reassuring, as their specialty in the US has been to suppress democracy and disrupt political organizations.
England has a long and distinguished history of democracy that must not be extinguished. From the Diggers to the suffragettes to the animal liberation movement, struggles in England have advanced democracy, rights, and moral evolution for our species as a whole. Facing a second prison sentence in the Bastille for his satires of the government, Voltaire sought shelter in England in 1726-1729. He subsequently described to the world how much more free, liberal, and advanced England was than his native France. In the 1840s, Karl Marx was expelled from several European countries for advocating free speech, workers’ democracy, and, indeed, global revolution, but he found a safe haven in England.
Such examples of the progressive heritage of England could be multiplied many times over. I urge you to grant Dr. Jerry Vlasak, Pamelyn Ferdin, and me safe passage into your country to attend the International Animal Rights Conference 2004. This is a peaceful and legal gathering. It is this ban that you are proposing, not my words, that is “not conducive to the public good.”
If you do not respect our right to free speech, or the right of your own people to hear free speech, your words stand a far greater chance than my own of offending the public good by damaging democracy. This will have a chilling effect on free speech that far transcends my own case, for when academics and others learn they may be banished from international travel for exercising their right to free speech, they may well practice self-censorship. You may not like my free speech but it poses no credible threat to you that warrants harsh retaliations such as a ban.
