The beauty of UK's free speech

Posted on http:mindtheglo.be on Friday 30th May, 2008




The footage of the encounter between Home Secretary Ms Jacqui Smith and Police Federation Chairman Jan Berry at a police conference in Bournemouth demonstrates Britain's undiluted respect for freedom of speech.


At the conference, Mrs. Berry accused Ms Smith of betrayal for insisting on backdating the payment of the 2.5 percent pay rise for police officers, which amounts to £30 million when the government had no difficulty in raising £2.7 billion to bail itself out of the 10p tax debacle.

Mrs. Berry's affront might have somehow excited many others to query Smith and forced her to depart the venue of the meeting rather too early.


Berry and her compatriots are lucky to be British. I can swear that such audacity would never be welcome in Nigeria and most African nations, where the rule seems to be: the government is always right and above reproach.


In Nigeria, Mrs. Berry and all the police officers who confronted Smith at Bournemouth would have been arrested and detained before the end of the event. If that was not done, the police affairs commission would have dismissed Berry before the end of the conference.


In Zimbabwe for instance, two labour leaders have been arrested and detained for daring to say anything against the government of Robert Mugabe. They were arrested for their speeches at the May Day celebration on May 1.


Yes, that is it. While in Britain it is counted as a right for workers to speak against official injustice as a means of fixing a problem, it is a serious crime in African nations for an employee to criticise the government in any form.


That is the difference between a free government and the ones under bondage, hunger and starvation, where freedom of expression and respect for the rule of law rights remain conceptual variables.

But, that's the beauty of UK's free speech.