I am not usually in favour of people denying free speech. With that, I suppose I should be condemning the Greenpeace demonstration at Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Mansion House speech to the massed ranks of super-rich bankers. However, I can’t and I won’t. Tory minister Mark Field’s assault – and let’s be clear: that’s what it was – on the female protester took us into new territory.
In our society, most of us only have free speech to a point. If we are employed, we cannot speak publicly about our employer other than by way of gushing praise. If you work in the public sector, it is best not to have an opinion on anything if you want to stay working there. And as for a free press, how free is free?
Of our national newspapers, only the Guardian is truly independent, owned as it is by a trust. The rest are owned by by filthy rich individuals and corporations. They are the ones who enjoy the ‘freedom of the press’, the Rupert Murdochs and Lord Rothermeres of this world. Their columns are filled by people whose views they agree with. You and I are only free to read what they allow us to read. Which brings us back to the Greenpeace protest last night.
Whilst Greenpeace is a massive worldwide organisation, it relies on creating news rather than being allowed to comment on it. Put simply, if they operated any other way, you would think they did not exist. The corporations who control world finance would like to keep it this way. As the world’s climate changes, so we find a considerable chunk of opinion sidelined and ignored.
You will all have seen the video of the female demonstrator at the Mansion House, dressed in a smart gown. She was trying to get a message across, a message denied from most airwaves. Mark Field took matters, and the woman concerned, into his own hands. In what looked like an instinctive reaction, he pushed the woman and then grabbed her by the neck, effectively dragging her from the room. If he treated a complete stranger like that, how does he treat his wife?
His excuse was that he thought she might have a gun, presumably neatly concealed between her breasts? Pull the other one, Mark, and I don’t mean her breast, although looking at the evidence, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
Several lines were crossed last night. You could argue that Greenpeace should not have peacefully protested. You could argue that alternative views should acquire better access in the media. And Mr Field could have used restraint instead of what appeared to me to be a violent assault on a woman.
Field should be sacked by his boss Jeremy Hunt, or save Hunt the trouble by quitting himself. Field was bang out of order, regardless of the circumstances which were, need I remind you, entirely peaceful.
And we need to look again, and look urgently, at how we define freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. I have thought for many years that freedom is only available to those who can afford it. Last night reinforced that view.
