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George Orwell’s Britain: No Silent Prayer Allowed
A woman stands alone on a quiet street. A police officer approaches and begins questioning her as to her business. She answers politely that she is standing there. Finally, he asks her if she is praying. She answers that she might be, in her own head. Would she be happy to come to the police station? No, of course she would not, she has done nothing wrong. Then the police officer utters the words, ‘you’re under arrest.’ The woman is summarily searched, read out her rights and led away to the waiting police car, all because she admitted she might be praying.Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, courtesy of-ADF UK and Catholic World Report.
This happened to Isabel Vaughan-Spruce not once, but twice. One would think that the constabulary had better things to do than arrest individuals that stand and pray silently. Policing across Britain is run by the Home Office in London. It is a nationalized police force, unlike the United States where policing is localized. There are politicians in the States that would love to see nationalized policing come to the US. Then, every decision must come from DC; that crowd would love to control all policing. Inside every Progressive there is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
Nearly two centuries after the repeal of England’s anti-Catholic penal laws, a Catholic was arrested and charged for the crime of praying inside her own head. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was detained, questioned and charged, along with Catholic priest Fr Sean Gough, whose own ‘crimes’ were to hold a sign announcing that he was praying for free speech and to drive a car with a pro-life bumper sticker. The magistrate’s court threw out the charges as the prosecution was unable to provide evidence that the alleged thoughtcrimes had taken place, but the relief was short-lived. Only three weeks later, Isabel was arrested a second time, this time by six police officers.
This has started in the United States, so the Secular Statists are not unique to the UK. You may attend Mass on Sundays and you are to remain silent on the other six days of the week. According to the FBI, if you choose to attend the Latin Rite Mass, then you are a potential domestic terrorist. You become more dangerous to the common good and the state if you pray the Rosary. The FBI said that this was a mistake. The mistake was getting caught and outed by a FBI whistle-blower.
One would think the British Constabulary would have more to do than seek out someone who does not block traffic, vandalize paintings in museums, or glue herself to some inanimate statue, museum wall, or any other work of art.
In Britain today, trust in the police is at an all-time low, following the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by an off-duty police officer. Besides the loss of public confidence, funding cuts and a lack of trained officers has left the police badly overstretched. Only 6% of burglaries, 4% of thefts and 1% of car thefts result in criminal charges, with most victims of burglary receiving no call-out from the police at all. Only 1% of rapes result in a charge and yet the police apparently have the resources to send an entire team of officers to arrest one woman engaging in silent prayer. The police can still dedicate many hours of a specialist team’s time, trawling through a journalist’s social media accounts because someone finds her offensive.
There is more:
The trouble is that freedom of speech and thought are under equally ferocious attack in Britain, and in the very settings where such freedoms should be most ardently protected. With tedious regularity, stories find their way into the British press, detailing cases of individuals forced out of jobs and publicly shamed for the nebulous crime of causing offence; a teacher humiliated in front of her pupils for addressing her class (at a girls’ school) as ‘ladies’; a maths teacher banned from the profession for ‘misgendering’ a pupil; a police chairman sacked for questioning whether or not senior police officers should wear rainbow lanyards; an eminent scientist publicly vilified and forced abroad for cracking an ill-judged joke; a Catholic doctor’s competence questioned because he is…a practicing Catholic.
Does this seem familiar? It should because it’s happening here.
At the time of writing, journalist and campaigner Caroline Farrow faces another court appearance over ‘misgendering’ and other comments she may or may not have made on social media. The police are pushing to be given powers over Farrow’s personal life that one would expect to be reserved for convicted paedophiles and gangsters. These powers (and the list is not exhaustive) include: allowing an ‘Offender Manager’ to prohibit her use of any social media without written permission; giving the Offender Manager access to all her passwords and PIN numbers; granting police officers the right to enter her home at any time between 8AM and 8PM; the right to seize all electronic devices for inspection at any time. These attacks on Farrow’s privacy and personal freedom have been described by the police as ‘an appropriate course of action.’
You can read the entire story by clicking on the link at the beginning of the essay.
You have been warned.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
I read about this after Isabel’s first arrest. I put myself in her shoes.
Cop: Are you praying?
Me: Could be. On the other hand, I could be contemplating what I might say if a dimwitted flatfoot walked up to me and started asking impertinent questions. Or baseball. I think about baseball a lot.
From my limited knowledge of ordinary British folk, these stories are regarded as absolutely stonking mad but also somehow remote, as if they are happening in a parallel world. They appear in the Telegraph, a steady-on sober publication that does not present the world as entirely daft and unfixable. Daily life is normal and untroubled by visits from the coppers who want access to your phone and such. Doesn’t happen to anyone you know. None of this stuff ever comes up in daily village life.
Yet.
Policing speech is bad enough, but unspoken thoughts? Although, would they be concerned about silent prayer if they didn’t believe that prayer has power?
Coming soon to a blue state or city near you.
The explanation for thus is relatively simple. Closing cases like burglary, theft, and evidently rape in the UK is hard and requires actual work. It’s like in the US where police spend inordinate amounts of resources on traffic police because they generate revenue and people generally pay their traffic fines, but try and get them to solve a theft from your home and you’ll be sorely disappointed. So much easier to give you a ticket than to chase down stolen property after all. Which, of course, encourages more property theft.
We just spent two weeks in England and I concur with James’s assessment. Outside London, no one seems particularly troubled by what’s happening. On our first day in London we witnessed a thief stealing an older woman’s credit card from a teller machine. The people we told the story to were saddened and outraged by what’s happening with criminality, but we never discussed pro-lifer’s arrests or transgender madness with anyone. I’m not sure they know it’s happening, even though I find their media to be more honest than ours, generally.
We had a brief conversation with some Brits in Cornwall about free speech and the cancelling that’s going on here. They were surprised and outraged that people aren’t free to have differing opinions, although the consequences tend to be social rather than legal (loss of employment, censorship on social media, . . .). It would have been interesting to bring up this example in Britain.
As I said elsewhere, the big story while we were there was Home Secretary Braverman “dodging” a speeding ticket, and the resignation of a television host because his brother was found to be a pedophile. Guilt by association? Western civilization is in its death throes.
Arrested for praying silently to herself? You have got to be kidding me . . .
Cop (to Stad): Sir, are you praying?
Stad: No. I’m wondering why some *ssh*le is bothering me.
I wonder how many Muslims have been charged with silent prayer . . .
Thanks for the info, Doug.
So Britain is an evil nation. This is no surprise, right? So are we.
It is important to remember this, I think. Many people want to think well of our country, and of our closest ally. The false religion of We Won The War holds that we and the Brits are the saviors of the world. We were actually the saviors of Stalinism.
Or perhaps it should go:
Cop (to Stad): Sir, are you praying?
Stad: No. I should be. Thanks for the reminder.
Well, I don’t believe in collective guilt, nor do I believe in collective salvation. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Britain has done what we have not. The decision has been made in Britain to no longer provide puberty blockers to children.
One of the most over worked and self-contradictory phrases is; ‘The Common Good’. The common good must be good for every individual, if not it is not a common good. There are flawed human beings in every nation, and they come in every color, and ethnicity.
A bit more to it than that – the host was also revealed, IRRC, to have had a same-sex relationship with a staffer that had started when the lad was . . . youngish. I think he resigned knowing that would follow the news about his brother. I think.
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
Winston Smith
Good point. I think about it every time someone appeals to “common sense.”
I’ve been told that police abuse in America is not all that common. Is that wrong.
Don’t they have a family dog to shoot, or is that just an American thing?
Good Lord!
Lord, this world is in great need of your Divine intervention. I know that you promised never to send flooding rains again, but something big needs to happen to waken up the unGodly who have corrupted your Creation and who continue to mock your great statutes and ordinances.
Marantha!
Well, I don’t believe in collective salvation as a theological matter.
If we’re going to judge countries and governments, and especially if we’re going to undertake foreign wars to force other countries to follow our ways because we think that we’re the “good guys,” then we need to assess whether our country and its allies are a force for good in the world. We are not. We are a force for evil.
Silent prayer is persecuted. Perversion and depravity is openly celebrated. Goodness, we’re right in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah Month right now. We undermine family and motherhood at every opportunity, and we export this anti-human ideology to other countries.
It is appalling, but true, that Vladimir Putin is a better defender of Christianity and Christian values than any leader in the West. A former Commie. How did it come to this?
I think that the answer is simple. The answer is Liberalism, of all varieties, including the libertarians and conservatarians.
Putin uses it as a means to an end – The politicians in the west would do the same if the citizens pushed for it more than. Most pols will put their finger in the air to see which way the wind blows.
They’re Tories, not libertarians.
Furthermore, if you think the Libertarian Party of the USA does badly at election time, you’ll weep when you see how many votes the Libertarian Party UK is able to muster:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(UK)
TL;DR – Very few UK voters have any interest whatsoever in genuine liberty.
The Libertarian Party USA doesn’t merely do badly during election season. They do badly ordering pizza for the strategy meetings too.
My recollection is he was married (to a woman) and having a gay affair, but there were hints that pedophilia may run in the family. . .
A Brit claiming to think about baseball? Book’em.
I am but a poor displaced Yank, unschooled in the ways and customs of this sceptered isle. You’re on the prod for an international incident, mebbe?
She has had run-ins with the police before regarding protests. I suspect they were gunning for her, such that British police can ever really gun for someone.
It is worth noting that for all the glories of the Magna Carta, our rights to speech are not the same as those of any other nation (as far as I know).
Don’t misunderstand me, the gendarme strong-arm was contemptible and like unto fascism.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t legal there.
I don’t think it could happen here any time soon – we are quite jealous of our freedom of speech and historically allow a lot of stuff that makes me squirm.
If mugged or assaulted, would it help to claim your assailant was praying aloud during the assault? Would that interest the police?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the competition of Church and State across history, various popes and antipopes, how Henry VIII appeared to strike a formula that allowed him to absorb both property and conscience, how Napoleon appeared to be able to play the jacobins and the Church off each other, how Canada appears hell bent (PI) on exterminating Christian institutions and how useful civil litigation appears to have been in that…. And then of course there are those American Catholics and how you can destroy pregnancy counseling centers because it’s dark outside. That Benedict option is starting to look plausible.
I can foresee pulling up EWTN on a Tor browser…
They will hunt us down and kill us
Not if they were yelling “Allahu Akbar”
We tend to think that we are safe unless and until the commies and perverts are a majority. But once a plurality or outright majority submits to the Party out of convenience or pain avoidance, many of the ‘normals’ will begin to support repression because those annoying types who stand on principle also remind the cowed majority of their cowardice and complicity. It will all be better if no one raises a fuss and morality does not create inconveniences and demands for sacrifice.
Conformity is seductive, not disrupting school board meetings, not being the parent who wants the drag queens out of story hour, not being pro-life… The Party has mastered the art of making life uncomfortable for the potentially dissident majority and promising comfort for those who conform. Imagine being brave enough to be the only one at the 2015 ESPY Awards who did not stand and applaud Jenner’s “bravery” for coming out. I don’t think there was anybody that brave.
Cops instinctively hassle people who cause friction. Groups of young black men or chicanos, hippies back in the day, and now normals who pray or support Israel or oppose mandatory perversion in the curriculum. Don’t stand out, disagree or make a fuss, like the right sorts of people.
From A Man for All Seasons (1966):
The Duke of Norfolk:
Oh confound all this. I’m not a scholar, I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not but dammit, Thomas, look at these names! Why can’t you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship!
Sir Thomas More:
And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?
I do wonder if praying out loud is ok . . .