Yours truly and fellow blogger David Carr attended an awards ceremony hosted by Privacy International for its annual Big Brother Awards at the London School of Economics. When we got there my heart sank. Ok, one or two mates from the Libertarian Alliance were in the room, but my worst fears were aroused when I saw a bunch of twerps sporting George W. Bush face masks. Oh God, I thought, we’ve got the usual mix of muddle-headed Blame-America-First lefties, peaceniks and other delusional types.
But, I have to report that the evening turned out better than I, or I am sure Mr Carr, could have expected. As well as handing out these “awards” to such bodies as the Department of Education (UK) for various infringements of privacy, Privacy International also handed out genuinely positive awards to those who have protected or advanced the course of liberty over the past 12 months, including the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.
It was a genuinely wonderful moment as various lefties hissed and cringed as Telegraph reporter Stephen Robinson went up on stage to pick up the award for the paper’s A Free Country campaign. The Telegraph has opposed state ID cards, supported decriminalisation of some drugs, opposed threats to trial by jury, and also opposed the ongoing encroachments on British liberty from Brussels.
I think something very important happened last night. What we saw were a bunch of peaceniks forced to acknowledge, through gritted teeth, that there is such a thing as a non-left libertarian movement that is passionate about freedom, determined to protect it, but also savours capitalism. I think this is a meme that is going to continue infecting the body politic.
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
