SOLO-International Press Release: Britons Never Shall Be Slaves? But They Already Are!

May 22, 2008

"It beggars belief," says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo.

He means this story in The Guardian, May 20 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/20/1):

"A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word 'cult' to describe the Church of Scientology. The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion. Officers confiscated a placard with the word 'cult' on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. A date has not yet been set for him to appear in court. ... Demonstrators from the anti-Scientology group, Anonymous, who were outside the church's £23m headquarters near St Paul's cathedral, were banned by police from describing Scientology as a cult by police because it was 'abusive and insulting.'"

A flabbergasted Perigo asks: "Is this the Britain of Hyde Park Corner? Of John Milton and John Locke? Of John Stuart Mill, who said, 'If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility'?

"The same Britain allows Muslims to demonstrate with placards saying 'Death to Freedom of Speech!' Evidently City of London police are taking that advice seriously! One is not now allowed to call a dopey cult a cult, let alone an exquisitely stupid one.

"What a mockery of the words of Rule Brittannia:

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turn, to tyrants fall,
Must in, must in, must in their turn, to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish, shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

"Britons are already slaves," Perigo concludes, "to the most egregious, home-grown tyranny of political correctness. To think these are the descendants of the stout-hearts who defeated Hitler!"

ENDS

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