I’m trying to work out what the new rules are in this country. I think I’m getting there, though any Spectator readers who can assist might help me avoid an appearance at the local magistrates’ court.
On political party funding, this week’s new rules seem clear. You may collect immense amounts of money from trade unions if you are a political party protecting the interests of trade unions. But if you don’t enjoy the largesse of the unions and are a party of business, you are not allowed to receive money from people who have done well in business. Furthermore, the Labour party’s in-house brainiac, Angela Rayner, has made it clear that any person who does give large sums of money to a party that is not her own can be described as a ‘foreign dictator or fascist oligarch’. Which is also apparently not slanderous. Got it.
About what we can wear in public, the present rules are a little less clear. I have never been in the habit of wearing the hijab or the burka, but if I were having a bad hair day and decided to don a head covering, it seems that permission to do so would depend on my political or religious affiliations.
So long as you are on the correct side, you may wear a surgical mask, hoodie or terrorist headscarf
This thought is inspired by an interesting incident in Portsmouth at the weekend. The town was the site of a planned protest against illegal immigration. These have been springing up in recent weeks and the greatest minds in our government, Home Office and police appear to be trying to work out how to prevent them. One way would be to stop people from illegally breaking into this country, but of course that would be impossible. And so the relevant authorities are trying to work out how to prevent people from objecting to such mass law-breaking.
The best initiative so far seems to be to demand that anyone protesting against the illegal migrant crossings should be forced to reveal their faces. Fair enough. The sight of scores of men marching through Dover wearing balaclavas the other week did look menacing. As a result there was an order that everyone attending last weekend’s protests should avoid face coverings.
But this country still produces some ingenious people. One man – a gentleman in his seventies – turned up to the protest wearing an Islamic face covering. When confronted by a policewoman, he insisted that he was ‘gender-fluid’ and ‘converting to Islam’. For some time the policewoman looked genuinely unsure of what to do. On the one hand, she had clearly had enough diversity training to know that if a man says he is a woman then he is a woman, however deep his voice or thickset his build. This is the only sensible and humane attitude to take, and everybody with any diversity training knows that. It is also known that Islam is a religion that requires special respect – unlike Judaism or Hinduism, and certainly not (see last week’s column) Christianity. So there appeared to be a standoff in Portsmouth.
However, a crack squad of the local police’s finest decided that, on balance, the man in question was probably taking the piss. They removed him from the crowd, handcuffed and arrested him. Fortunately he/she retained their modesty throughout. A couple of days later Timothy Miller was booked to appear at Portsmouth magistrates’ court.
There are several strange things about all this. The first is that for the past three years there have been regular – sometimes weekly – protests in most of our major cities in which face coverings have been de rigueur. I don’t know how many of the protestors at the regular ‘Palestine marches’ have been men in their seventies called Timothy, but neither do the police. On top of the women wearing burkas and niqabs, a large number of people who have spent recent years screaming intimidatingly through our streets have decided to cover their faces with Covid masks, keffiyehs, hoodies and other paraphernalia. They have been permitted to do this, in protests far larger and more aggressive than anything that has happened in recent weeks in Dover or Portsmouth. Yet on this detail of the earlier protests the Labour government, the police and others have been silent.
Interestingly enough, there was a counter–protest to last weekend’s protest in Portsmouth. These protestors were escorted in by the police while waving their traditional ‘Stop the far-right’ and ‘Stand up to racism’ signs. One of the stewards of this group was wearing both a high visibility vest and a niqab. This seemed to be fine. Because, again, if you are standing behind a ‘Refugees welcome’ or ‘Smash racism’ banner then different rules apply. So long as you carry these holy signs then you are allowed to do all manner of things, including being allowed to pretend that in 2026 you still have a deep fear of catching the coronavirus. You may wear a surgical mask, hoodie, terrorist bandana or the terrorist headscarf made popular by Yasser Arafat, so long as you are on the correct side. It is on this matter that your columnist, as well as the wider public, could do with some guidance.
Just when are we allowed to wear a full face covering? The protestors in Portsmouth object to things like the alleged rape of two young girls in Norwich by seven Afghan men who are in the UK with ‘refugee status’. I don’t know why protestors might be alarmed about the alleged rape of these girls by a gang of migrant men. Presumably they have been radicalised by Elon Musk or Tommy Robinson.
If someone who objects to the alleged gang rape of minors must reveal their faces, why should people who object to these objections be allowed to cover theirs? Why should ‘pro-Palestine’ marchers, or indeed Muslim women in the UK, be allowed to disguise themselves? It used to be that either the law applies to everybody or it applies to nobody. But so far as I can work out, our laws are now contingent on a person’s identity. Can anyone– perhaps Angela Rayner – explain it?
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