Thoughtcrime is now a reality in Britain

Dec 23, 2022 by Jill

by Andrew Tettenborn, spiked:

Why was an activist arrested for praying silently in the street?

A recent event in suburban Birmingham offers a stark reminder of the threat to free speech posed by Britain’s censorious state.

Earlier this month, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was standing silently in a public street. She was doing, saying and displaying absolutely nothing, apparently lost in thought. A policeman approached her. He asked if she was inwardly praying. When she said she might have been, he immediately arrested her, took her to a police station and searched her. Last week, Vaughan-Spruce was told she faces prosecution.

How did this happen? First, Vaughan-Spruce was known to be a member of a pro-life organisation. And second, she was within 150 metres of an abortion clinic, inside a so-called buffer zone. In September, Birmingham City Council introduced a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO), which makes any ‘act of approval or disapproval’ toward abortion in the surroundings of the clinic a criminal offence, on pain of a £1,000 fine. This restriction applies to any expression related to abortion services, by any method: whether by graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling, or in any other way. So Vaughan-Spruce’s alleged silent prayer was apparently enough. Someone had disapproved of her presence and asked the police to get rid of her. All the ploddingly literal-minded copper needed was Vaughan-Spruce’s admission that she might have been privately communing with her god and might therefore have been illegally praying in a restricted area.

Read here

Read also: A Conservative government should not be criminalising silent prayer by Lois McLatchie, Conservative Home