freedom

i remember several years ago going to a conference held by the radical communist party (ah those were heady days i could spend a long weekend with the rcp and then spend a week in the company of the socialist workers party...)
the rcp were more of a libertarian party than they were a party of the radical left. this stance was because many of it's members wanted to be rich and famous. in fact last time i looked one of their key thinkers and writers, mick hulme, writes for the times - which we all know as being a bastion for workers rights and the overthrow of capitalism...)

at one particular meeting hulme was chairing a discussion about how to overcome racism in the uk. when he was talking about the bnp he provided the following nugget. he was against banning a party and an organisation because of their views. the reason for this was the old saw of "i may not agree with what you say, but i defend your right to say it..." he also went on to explain that if you ban one party and organisation then it becomes just a short step before you start banning other paries and organisations.
in theory i think most of us agree with this.

(admittedly mick did somewhat undercut his argument when he went on to say that if you saw a fascist in the street and you could do you should kick the shit out of him. so in the world of mick it is bad to use political means to prevent a "political" movement but you were ok to physically assault them. so for mick might made right - which seemed to be saying actually the state can do what it likes as it has the most might. mind given where he earns his crust these days perhaps he was telling us exactly what he believed.)

any way fast forward to now and here is a story on the bbc which is about a teaching union wanting to ban a member of the bnp from being in the teaching profession.
on the face of it perhaps they are right that some one who is part of a fascist and rascist party should not be involved in the education of our children. but he is in the open everyone knows what he is and what he stands for and so he can be monitored, and there has been no indication that he has done anything wrong.

of course the unions say that these people should be banned because they are safe in the knowledge that they are protected, even though we know there are people in unions who have some pretty far out ideas. do we ban people of strong religious convictions?
once you start on people because of what you think it is a slippery slope to be on.