Pushing water uphill. Making the case for freedom.

Freedom matters. Without it we are poorer, less happy and subject to often seemingly arbitrary intervention from the fussbuckets and worrywarts that fill the ranks of public authorities

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” Ronald Reagan

I have been watching Ken Burns’ documentary series on the US Civil War and reached the part where, at the end of episode five, the whole of Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg is read out. The last words of that address still ring in my ears: “...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Today freedom - of speech, assembly, choice, enterprise and trade - is under attack. A day barely passes without some new assault on those rights that the US Declaration of Independence tells us are unalienable.

The attacks on freedom we see every day are seldom done in the cause of power, oppression or control but rather on the basis that limiting our freedom is good for us. It will protect our health, secure our businesses, save us from radicalisation, and direct us to the right choices. Liberty is denied because the wise folk who sit in government believe we don’t know what is good for us. And those who defend liberties are either accused of a thing called populism or else told that they act on behalf of shadowy, anonymous forces of sinister exploitation. Sometimes both of these things at the same time. We are denied “government of the people, by the people, for the people” because the man in Whitehall, Washington or Brussels believes absolutely that he (or increasingly she) really does know best.

I listened to an intelligent and interesting address by Rachel Reeves, who will likely be the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer within a year and saw how the rhetoric of liberty hides, almost always, an agenda that seeks to deny liberty. Reeves presents a diagnosis of Britain’s economic ills where she rightly points to the constraints of regulation, most notably our planning system, on economic growth. But having identified the evil - planning - Reeves then goes on to outline a new and different planning approach to the economy. We do not hear proposals to tear down the worst constraints on growth but instead something called “securonomics” and an idea of a “modern industrial policy”. Reeves, having identified planning as the problem, simply proposes to introduce a new, modern and different sort of planning. Reeves terms this a “partnership” with business, something that sounds like a recipe for cronyism, corruption and rent-seeking rather than the liberty of a free economy.

I fear, however, that those of us for whom Lincoln’s words still hold real value are, as the saying goes, pushing water uphill. It isn’t just in economic policy where health, security or identity is used to deny freedoms, we see it in every area of policy. This week the UK government has published two bills both of which are designed overtly to remove freedoms and choices. One, the Football Governance Bill, has as its principal purpose preventing English football clubs from forming a league with football clubs from other nations and adds to this a purposeless instruction that these entertainment businesses should consult with their customers on what they name themselves, what uniforms they wear and where they provide the entertainment. Like so many attacks on freedom, it is all couched in kindly terms about protecting the football business from the unscrupulous and in insisting that the government is prepared to fix the business in the interests of a vocal minority of its customers.

The second bill seeks to extend the existing and egregious restrictions on people’s right to smoke a cigarette or use a vape through a gradual ban on people buying tobacco, regulations on what flavours are allowed in vapes, and the banning of disposable vapes. Every sentence of this Tobacco and Vapes Bill is an attack on freedom and choice. The Bill is a classic example of people in authority, on this occasion the public health profession, believing that because they know better it is perfectly OK to deny choice and freedom to other adults. The proposed restrictions are stupid, will create two new black markets, and will criminalise the 20 year old who buys some fags and gives one to his mate. But, even were the bill more sensible, it would still be regulating adult behaviour so as to protect adults from their own choices. Nobody in Britain smokes a cigarette without knowing the health risks. If someone, given this knowledge, makes this choice it is no business of the government to stop them, ‘my body, my choice’ surely applies as much to having a smoke as it does in any other circumstance.

Politicians still invoke the sentiments of Lincoln but, in almost every circumstance whether left- or right-wing, those same politicians seek to manage, direct and control our liberties. Or in other words, to deny us our freedom. And when people push back, we are told repeatedly that these rules are for our security and protection, for our own good and anyway it’s not that big a deal. The media enthuses about proposals for restrictions on what we can choose to eat, how we can travel, and what we can say to our mates on Facebook or ex-Twitter. We are presented with endless and largely partisan ‘fact-checking’, with specialist units in the state broadcaster dedicated to exposing ‘misinformation’, and an almost permanent obsession with ‘online harms’, a concept that is sold as child protection but extends far beyond that protection by seeking to limit privacy and free speech.

Everywhere we look in the world we see governments limiting choice and restricting freedom. Import bans and quotas restrict consumer choice and drive prices higher. Bans on forms of electricity generation threaten the sustainability of power supply. Our choice of vehicle will be dictated by the state. And the state demands a say in how we heat and light our homes. In France the government banned flights between places connected by high-speed rail, deliberately limiting choice and competition to the detriment of consumer freedom.

In the social sphere, hundreds of local councils in England have imposed PSPOs - Public Space Protection Orders - making criminal things that are not criminal ranging from having a beer in the park to kids in Bradford banned from listening to music in their cars. Pubs are told to shut halfway through the evening because it might upset the neighbours, businessmen are told they can’t open a kebab shop because there’s a school nearby, and shops are given rules about how they display the goods they sell. All of this is done for our own safety and protection, for our own good. We can’t be allowed the convenience of popping a bar of chocolate into our shopping basket at the checkout because David Cameron wasn’t able to say ‘no’ to his kids when they demanded sweets.

But when we point to these restrictions, and a myriad of other petty bans, limits, taxes and controls, we are told it doesn’t matter, this isn’t really an attack on our freedom. The cigarette bans, the food advertising restrictions, the planning controls on takeaways and the minimum pricing for alcohol, these are all saving the NHS money and protecting our health. The proliferation of cameras and ID checks are there to make us safe and to protect children. And threatening social media platforms with fines is essential to prevent free speech enabling the ‘far-right’. In Scotland a new hate crime law threatens to have comedians arrested for off-colour jokes, and in Canada new laws could result in people ‘guilty’ of hate speech being jailed for life. Everywhere we look, those words of Lincoln’s are thrown back in our faces - we have lost that idea of liberty and democracy in a mass of petty rules and regulations all designed specifically to change our behaviour by restricting or taxing our choices.

I will, I’m sure, be told that my cause is not the cause of freedom but rather a preference for licence, decadence and loose morals. Or else that those liberties I defend have an enormous cost to society. So therefore the state should take action - for my own good and the protection of society - against those things the state’s managers decide are sinful. The lectures from public health bosses about an ever-expanding collection of social ‘harms’ (from placing a bet through to having a spoon of sugar in your coffee) will be joined by others calling for travel limits to promote ‘net zero’ or new powers allowing the police to turn almost any act they decide they dislike into a crime. More cameras will spring up, more places will demand I identify myself with a piece of plastic or card, and the media will cry for more control of social platforms just in case people vote for someone like Donald Trump.

It is, as I said, pushing water uphill. I plan on continuing to try because freedom matters. Without it we are poorer, less happy and subject to often seemingly arbitrary intervention from the fussbuckets and worrywarts that fill the ranks of public authorities. It isn’t just that freedom is essential if we want to be healthier, wealthier and happier. It isn’t just that my choices, all things being equal, are none of the state’s business, let alone the business of the state’s managers. It is that Lincoln, like many others since, spoke of freedom standing by the graves of ordinary men who’d died to make that freedom possible. Denying us liberty denies the sacrifice of those men.