Vaccine passports for pubs threaten Britain’s crucial libertarian credentials
To say we live in very strange times is an understatement.
While words like unprecedented make less of an impact after a year of living with Coronavirus policies, it’s important that in our eagerness to get society back, we don’t turn ourselves into a nation dominated by security, surveillance and over regulation. Going to prison for ten years for protesting if causing a “serious disruption” is one of the preposterous parts of the new Policing Bill that Parliament has been debating.
Another is whether Britain should have a vaccine passport to participate in daily life.
You know that things are upside down when people in Britain are applauding measures that are considered only worthy of authoritarian states.
The British public has historically been opposed compulsory ID cards (despite having them during both World Wars) and yet here we are with various pundits fawning at what “freedom” might look like. That said, over 280,000 people signed a petition against them. A hopeful sign, liberty is still at the core of British values.
The government has said on several occasions it would not impose mandatory vaccination passports and then qualified this by saying not for domestic purposes.
Having seen numerous U-turns in the last year of coronavirus, unsurprisingly many are concerned that the latest announcement that a review would be held into them. This, from a Prime Minister that once vowed he would eat any ID card he was asked to produce.
How short their memories are.
The fact that Michael Gove is heading the review is beyond ironic, the very same minister that warned that once you give the state powers, you rarely get them back. This should all be warning enough: the idea that to go to the local pub, you could have to produce documents, is one more akin to the Cold War.
However, what we’re seeing now is that events, festivals and some in hospitality who have been hit so terribly hard, are understandably desperate to open up again.
We should applaud that sentiment. But doing so by championing vaccine passports to prove how “safe” an event is would be a grave mistake.
Clearly, private companies can make choices about what measures they take for their own security. Yet we’ve seen the last 15 years of licensing and ever-increasing surveillance and security measures that have become suffocating for many. Further, as more in the private sector push something, it often becomes de facto part of general requirements.
In a sector that is world leading and remarkably professional, it would be a tragedy if music festivals, a place where freedom is a key part of the general spirit, became the driving force for vaccine passports.
We should remember the day in December 1950 when PC Muckle, a police officer in London asked Clarence Willcock to produce his card. Willcock refused, reportedly saying “I am a Liberal, and I am against this sort of thing”.
As Parliament debates vaccine passports and votes in further police powers to prevent our right to assemble freely including “serious annoyance” we should all channel the spirit of Harry Wilcock. Otherwise, Britain may never be the same again.