Adam Smith-Connor was this week convicted of a heinous offence, slapped with a conditional discharge and a costs order for £9,000. The actual crime in question? The 51-year-old army veteran was praying silently, on his own, for the soul of a child which he had, now much to his regret, aborted many years earlier. The reason this affair reached Poole Magistrates’ Court was that he had been doing this near a Bournemouth abortion clinic, and that clinic was the subject of a buffer zone order.
This episode should worry all of us, pro-life or pro-choice, if we believe in the idea of liberty. The by-law Smith-Connor was convicted under (not strictly a by-law, but it has a similar effect) effectively bans the expression of moral opinions that are entirely lawful and quite widely-held from within a sizeable chunk of suburban Bournemouth. But this conviction is particularly chilling for other reasons too.
Smith-Connor now has a criminal record – not for doing something bad, but for thinking the wrong thoughts
Aside from the conditional discharge and whoppingly high costs order, Smith-Connor now has a criminal record – not for doing something bad, but simply for thinking the wrong thoughts. The law he was convicted under makes illegal any ‘act of approval/disapproval or attempted act of approval/disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means’ – including, as it expressly says, by prayer. He had been seen to bow his head and clasp his hands together in solitary and silent contemplation. Snap!
Coupled with his admission that he regretted the abortion, this was enough to convict him. It is sinister that such a conclusion could be reached by an English criminal court.
If this lack of concern about liberty and good conscience doesn’t worry the courts, even more depressing is that it seems to worry politicians even less. Legislation comes into effect later this month, passed in the dying days of the Tory government with the support of some shamefully unconservative Tory MPs, that will extend the effect of this local law country-wide. The Tories at least saw the potential for abuse; they introduced guidance saying that, whatever the strict position in law, it should not be used against those guilty of no more than private prayer.
Not so Labour. A couple of months ago, the Home Office essentially said it planned to trash the guidance. It is pretty clear that the new Home Office team under Yvette Cooper saw exceptions for such things as private silent prayer as nothing more than a tiresome loophole to be plugged. The protection of an individual’s right to think his own thoughts and commune privately with his own God in a public place? Who cares. ‘No one,’ tweeted Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy, ‘has a “right” to pray in front of an abortion clinic – you can pray for women at home if you wish.’ Thanks a bunch, Stella. I’ll remember that.
The likely practical implications of this decision, especially when the national ban on protest goes live later this month, are just as bad. Smith-Connor’s case was in some ways unusual, since he actually admitted to the police officers that approached him that he was praying for his dead son. But what if it had been different? Many people, thus approached by officialdom in a public place and interrogated as to their private thoughts, would have an entirely creditable Englishman’s instinct to tell the official concerned in no uncertain terms to mind his own business. Would this protect them?
Possibly. One fears not, though. The lack of an admission may make it more difficult to get a conviction, but might still allow an officer to arrest that person. What’s more, under many of the local provisions like that in Bournemouth, anyone suspected of breaking any part of them, whether guilty or not, can be peremptorily ordered to leave the area, and commits a crime if he refuses. The fear is that the areas round abortion clinics will now become a kind of progressive cordon sanitaire. Anyone who does not fit in, or who is thought to hold doubtful views by the clinic staff, might be called on to answer impertinent questions and justify their presence there; in theory, they might be told that, if they refuse, they have no choice but to leave and not come back.
So much then for the right of the Englishman to go about his business and, provided he keeps on the right side of the law, to refuse to be bossed around. But if you still think such things matter, then for this government of technocrats you’re probably on the wrong side of history anyway.
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