Hysteria whipped up against groups like Insulate Britain masks the dark side of the Conservatives’ police and courts bill
Countries that succumb to authoritarianism rarely do so with a sudden dramatic flash, where one day freedom is there and then suddenly it isn’t. It is normally a process of attrition, of rights and liberties eroded by stealth. The political atmosphere becomes gradually more intolerant: hysteria is whipped up against dissidents, whose supposed transgressions are carefully selected to justify a new crackdown. The battle lines are defined between a law-abiding majority and an extreme fringe. This is what has happened in Hungary, governed by a party that once belonged to the Liberal International and now has set up a virtual dictatorship. It is the danger facing our own country, too.
I spoke to 21-year-old student Louis McKechnie as he made a journey from the prison gates familiar to countless rebels before him. An activist involved with climate protest group Insulate Britain, he was imprisoned for six weeks after breaching an injunction against road blockades. “I got to the point where I was more terrified of the government’s inaction on the climate crisis than I was about any repercussions the courts would give me,” he said. He was “terrified” of prison, but far from deterring him, his incarceration has made him more resolute. Along with eight fellow activists, their imprisonment was a warning to anyone seeking to take up Britain’s long tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.
