Letter to my MP and responses.
Graham Marsden, 31 Aug 2006 13:34:33
Hi there,
Here's the latest letter I have written to my MP (Mike Hancock, Lib Dem)
and his reply and my subsequent response...
* * * * *
Dear Mike Hancock,
It is with regret that I find I have to write to you again as I note
that this Government is going ahead with its plans to create a "Thought
Crime" by making possession of "violent porn" a criminal offence.
This decision is based their interpretation of the results of a deeply
flawed "consultation" document which drew entirely fallacious
comparisons with Child Pornography and which made claims that since the
proposers of the law found such imagery "abhorrent", it should be banned
to protect the rest of us.
This document was not only criticised by members of the Spanner Trust,
but also by Rabinder Singh QC (a leading Human Rights lawyer), the BBFC
and Channel 4 Television amongst others.
The definitions of what the Home Office claim to be "violent porn" are
entirely subjective and the only way they will be tested is when some
poor soul is hauled in front of their court to have their reputation
destroyed even if (or when!) they are found to be not guilty.
This law is a pernicious attempt to control what individuals in this
country are permitted to see, based on nothing more than the personal
opinions of members of the Government and that is a breach of basic
Human Rights and I urge you to impart this to your Parliamentary
Colleagues and suggest that they the implications of this law before
people are locked up for looking at "dangerous pictures".
Yours Faithfully,
Graham Marsden
* * * * *
Thanks for your email and as you are (obviously!) aware we had a
detailed email exchange about this at the time of the consultation so
you know where I come from on this.
I have to say today we have a rather terse press release from the Home
Office which says: "Under new laws announced by Home Office Minister
Vernon Coaker, it will be illegal to possess pornographic images
depicting scenes of extreme sexual violence. This would include, for
example, material featuring violence that appears to be life threatening."
So it is difficult today to know still exactly what the Home Office is
proposing and what the exact form of the legislations will be.
While as you know I (and am sure many Liberal Democrats) share your free
speech concerns, we do differ over whether nothing should be made
illegal or if you like everything (i.e. all adult pornography however
extreme) should be legal which is I think basically your viewpoint but
not mine and as I said last time I can conceive of material -
particularly realistic life-threatening violence in a sexual context
that I would want to outlaw.
At the moment, as we discussed, distribution of material that goes
beyond an R-18 rating is illegal but not its possession. And there is a
case to made that if society has deemed that some material should be if
you like "illegal" and not be distributed than its possession, given
that we essentially cannot control its distribution on the internet,
should be made illegal. And the Home Office have said that what they
propose to outlaw is possession of material that goes beyond R-18 material.
There remain for me two hurdles. The first is whether the Government
succeeds in defining what it what it wants to outlaw in terms of extreme
material. They also, as we discussed before, need to define how
realistic it needs to be and how they define the journalistic and
artistic defences to showing it. As you I think from your email, are
aware, Channel Four pointed out in their submission that they have shown
some quite extreme material in a journalistic/documentary context which
has been deemed to be within the broadcast/Ofcom guideline which are
obviously more stringent than those for R-18 videos. I guess given they
are now coming forward with these laws the Government think they can
frame these definitions legally. But as we said before it is a difficult
definition to draw up and as I say I cannot and I suspect many of my Lib
Dem colleagues cannot come to a definitive conclusion until we see
exactly what is proposed.
The second problem is that people who "accidentally" come across such
material should not be prosecuted and this again is quite a tough one -
one could foresee someone downloading a video off the internet and only
once it is downloaded would someone know it is illegal and then it is
difficult to differentiate between whether they kept it for a long time
and then deleted or deleted it immediately. And indeed how long do they
have to keep it for it to be an offence? And I am not sure that could be
reliably ascertained forensically from a computer.
As you point out Rabinder Singh QC has also said that in his opinion
there is quite a large question mark over whether these laws will be
compatible with human rights laws and although he has come to an opinion
that they probably won't be, I guess you can't come to a clear opinion
until the exact form of the legislation is known. Obviously the
Government will either need to frame something that is within the Human
Rights legislation or it will be open to challenge and indeed a
prosecution could be (ultimately) successfully defended by recourse to
the Human Rights laws. It is perhaps disappointing that we don't have a
written constitution like America but these laws are, at least at the
moment, the ultimate and essentially only legal defence of free speech
and human rights against laws that go too far.
While we don't fully agree on this issue, thanks once again for getting
in touch and I hope that helps again in outlining where I am coming from
and I suspect that we will continue to have an exchange of views as we
learn more of exactly what the Government proposes!
Best wishes
Mike Hancock
* * * * *
Dear Mike Hancock,
Thank you very much for your reply to my e-mail.
I appreciate the points you have made, however I do not feel you have
quite understood my position. It is not that I necessarily consider that
"all adult pornography however extreme should be legal" but that this
proposed law is based on entirely subjective opinions of what is
"acceptable" or "abhorrent".
Where the Home Office says "it will be illegal to possess pornographic
images depicting scenes of extreme sexual violence. This would include,
for example, material featuring violence that appears to be life
threatening" the important word is "appears".
I cannot believe anyone could consider it reasonable that, if someone
were to take a pornographic photograph involving consenting actors that
"appears to be life threatening" they would not be jailed for the act
involved, but they would be jailed for possessing the photograph! This
would be a nonsensical situation.
These proposals are a retrograde step in that they would extend the law
into an area it has never gone before, ie making it illegal to possess
pictures of acts which are not, in themselves, illegal! This is, of
course, entirely different to the case of child pornography where the
images portray illegal acts with non-consenting subjects (a fact that
the Home Office's biased consultation completely failed to mention).
You say that "Obviously the Government will either need to frame
something that is within the Human Rights legislation or it will be open
to challenge and indeed a prosecution could be (ultimately) successfully
defended by recourse to the Human Rights laws" and I agree that is true,
but in the mean time some poor soul will have had their life and their
reputation destroyed along with all the attendant stress of being hauled
through the courts and being tried in the media and that, in my opinion,
is no way to ascertain the validity of a law.
I would also remind you that, of course, Graham Coutts, the murderer of
Jane Longhurst (except that may now become "man-slaughterer" as his case
is going to appeal) had been engaging in breath-play games and drawing
nooses on photographs of women long before the internet was available,
so it seems that "violent pornography" is simply being used as a
scapegoat and this is just an excuse to increase censorship.
On that matter, you say that "there is a case to made that if society
has deemed that some material should be if you like "illegal" and not be
distributed than its possession, given that we essentially cannot
control its distribution on the internet, should be made illegal",
however I cannot agree with this.
For a long time in this country it was illegal to distribute a picture
of an erect penis or to show sexual acts, yet, even then, it was not a
criminal offence to possess such material. The law in that situation has
now, at last, been relaxed (without the country turning into raging sex
maniacs!) yet these proposals want to make you a criminal simply for
*looking* at something that someone else doesn't like.
This is not just ludicrous, it is a very dangerous precedent because it
goes beyond "protecting the public" and into the realms of State
Censorship where you can be locked up for possessing something that the
State doesn't want you to have. Countries such as China have laws like
this. I wouldn't expect them in this country.
Finally, you say "I guess given they are now coming forward with these
laws the Government think they can frame these definitions legally", but
from my point of view, this is just a desperate attempt by a failing
government to grab some positive headlines and make look as if they are
"doing something" in order to placate Middle England.
The fact that innocent people who simply have different sexual tastes
from the norm may end up being jailed seems unimportant to them.
We may disagree on whether or not "extreme material" should be
restricted, however I hope we can agree that, whatever the case, these
proposals are most certainly not the way to go and I urge you and your
Parliamentary colleagues to consider the dangers that the represent and
fight to ensure that they never reach the statute books.
Yours Faithfully,
Graham Marsden.
rovacs, 31 Aug 2006 14:15:49
For an MP he seems relatively sane-what a contrast to the Goggins and Coakers(sound like a pair of dodgy lawyers in Dickens). I can't see this legislation being significsantly amended in Committee somehow-which is often the way utterly rotten laws can become marginally less rotten. I may be wrong-but the hysteria manufactured on this issue-like smoking-would mean it is a brave MP who defends what has been speciously demonized. The problem with all this is that fine tuning over definitions and such is really not the answer-though tragically,initially this is probably the best to expect-and it might help save some poor saps from jail under Bliar's "Dangerous pictures Act".
No,legislation of this kind,based on utterly flawed justifications and the ideology of the police state is wrong in principle. It Cannot be allowed to exist-if it does this ceases completely to be a free society. Not to mention the precedents it sets for them to ban anything their "Babbit" morality and God bothering finds "offensive". Criminalizing possession of conscensual fictional material-looking at something,should not make a person a criminal-full stop. This is such a glaringly unjust,logically indefensible proposal that it screams defiance at human rights committments. I believe there is a department attatched to the Lord Chancellor's office which is meant to scrutinize legislation to see it doesn't offend and ignore-that they comply in other words-with their human rights obligations. They certainly should be brought into this ASAP.
Mr Hancock's point about a Constitution is well taken. Every day Anthony Blair rules us we can see the wisdom of the guys who drafted the US Constitution. Unlike the European Convention and the HRA there are none of the weasel like prevarications that may allow the likes of Blair to get away with draconian despotic laws. You have free speech,you cannot be jailed for looking at anything-no matter how much the authorities may hate it you are defended by the Supreme Court in that. Basically this lot has the power to pass a law ordering everyone to paint themselves green and jump off Tower bridge and nothing can prevent them. The Convention-on a major matter like this legislation,may prove to be a paper tiger,a poor guarantor of the most basic right you can have in society-not to be imprisoned for looking at consensual material on the grounds of subjective moral disapproval.
Author wrote:
> Hi there,
> Here's the latest letter I have written to my MP (Mike Hancock, Lib Dem)
> and his reply and my subsequent response...
> * * * * *
> Dear Mike Hancock,
> It is with regret that I find I have to write to you again as I note
> that this Government is going ahead with its plans to create a "Thought
> Crime" by making possession of "violent porn" a criminal offence.
> This decision is based their interpretation of the results of a deeply
> flawed "consultation" document which drew entirely fallacious
> comparisons with Child Pornography and which made claims that since the
> proposers of the law found such imagery "abhorrent", it should be banned
> to protect the rest of us.
> This document was not only criticised by members of the Spanner Trust,
> but also by Rabinder Singh QC (a leading Human Rights lawyer), the BBFC
> and Channel 4 Television amongst others.
> The definitions of what the Home Office claim to be "violent porn" are
> entirely subjective and the only way they will be tested is when some
> poor soul is hauled in front of their court to have their reputation
> destroyed even if (or when!) they are found to be not guilty.
> This law is a pernicious attempt to control what individuals in this
> country are permitted to see, based on nothing more than the personal
> opinions of members of the Government and that is a breach of basic
> Human Rights and I urge you to impart this to your Parliamentary
> Colleagues and suggest that they the implications of this law before
> people are locked up for looking at "dangerous pictures".
> Yours Faithfully,
> Graham Marsden
> * * * * *
> Thanks for your email and as you are (obviously!) aware we had a
> detailed email exchange about this at the time of the consultation so
> you know where I come from on this.
> I have to say today we have a rather terse press release from the Home
> Office which says: "Under new laws announced by Home Office Minister
> Vernon Coaker, it will be illegal to possess pornographic images
> depicting scenes of extreme sexual violence. This would include, for
> example, material featuring violence that appears to be life threatening."
> So it is difficult today to know still exactly what the Home Office is
> proposing and what the exact form of the legislations will be.
> While as you know I (and am sure many Liberal Democrats) share your free
> speech concerns, we do differ over whether nothing should be made
> illegal or if you like everything (i.e. all adult pornography however
> extreme) should be legal which is I think basically your viewpoint but
> not mine and as I said last time I can conceive of material -
> particularly realistic life-threatening violence in a sexual context
> that I would want to outlaw.
> At the moment, as we discussed, distribution of material that goes
> beyond an R-18 rating is illegal but not its possession. And there is a
> case to made that if society has deemed that some material should be if
> you like "illegal" and not be distributed than its possession, given
> that we essentially cannot control its distribution on the internet,
> should be made illegal. And the Home Office have said that what they
> propose to outlaw is possession of material that goes beyond R-18 material.
> There remain for me two hurdles. The first is whether the Government
> succeeds in defining what it what it wants to outlaw in terms of extreme
> material. They also, as we discussed before, need to define how
> realistic it needs to be and how they define the journalistic and
> artistic defences to showing it. As you I think from your email, are
> aware, Channel Four pointed out in their submission that they have shown
> some quite extreme material in a journalistic/documentary context which
> has been deemed to be within the broadcast/Ofcom guideline which are
> obviously more stringent than those for R-18 videos. I guess given they
> are now coming forward with these laws the Government think they can
> frame these definitions legally. But as we said before it is a difficult
> definition to draw up and as I say I cannot and I suspect many of my Lib
> Dem colleagues cannot come to a definitive conclusion until we see
> exactly what is proposed.
> The second problem is that people who "accidentally" come across such
> material should not be prosecuted and this again is quite a tough one -
> one could foresee someone downloading a video off the internet and only
> once it is downloaded would someone know it is illegal and then it is
> difficult to differentiate between whether they kept it for a long time
> and then deleted or deleted it immediately. And indeed how long do they
> have to keep it for it to be an offence? And I am not sure that could be
> reliably ascertained forensically from a computer.
> As you point out Rabinder Singh QC has also said that in his opinion
> there is quite a large question mark over whether these laws will be
> compatible with human rights laws and although he has come to an opinion
> that they probably won't be, I guess you can't come to a clear opinion
> until the exact form of the legislation is known. Obviously the
> Government will either need to frame something that is within the Human
> Rights legislation or it will be open to challenge and indeed a
> prosecution could be (ultimately) successfully defended by recourse to
> the Human Rights laws. It is perhaps disappointing that we don't have a
> written constitution like America but these laws are, at least at the
> moment, the ultimate and essentially only legal defence of free speech
> and human rights against laws that go too far.
> While we don't fully agree on this issue, thanks once again for getting
> in touch and I hope that helps again in outlining where I am coming from
> and I suspect that we will continue to have an exchange of views as we
> learn more of exactly what the Government proposes!
> Best wishes
> Mike Hancock
> * * * * *
> Dear Mike Hancock,
> Thank you very much for your reply to my e-mail.
> I appreciate the points you have made, however I do not feel you have
> quite understood my position. It is not that I necessarily consider that
> "all adult pornography however extreme should be legal" but that this
> proposed law is based on entirely subjective opinions of what is
> "acceptable" or "abhorrent".
> Where the Home Office says "it will be illegal to possess pornographic
> images depicting scenes of extreme sexual violence. This would include,
> for example, material featuring violence that appears to be life
> threatening" the important word is "appears".
> I cannot believe anyone could consider it reasonable that, if someone
> were to take a pornographic photograph involving consenting actors that
> "appears to be life threatening" they would not be jailed for the act
> involved, but they would be jailed for possessing the photograph! This
> would be a nonsensical situation.
> These proposals are a retrograde step in that they would extend the law
> into an area it has never gone before, ie making it illegal to possess
> pictures of acts which are not, in themselves, illegal! This is, of
> course, entirely different to the case of child pornography where the
> images portray illegal acts with non-consenting subjects (a fact that
> the Home Office's biased consultation completely failed to mention).
> You say that "Obviously the Government will either need to frame
> something that is within the Human Rights legislation or it will be open
> to challenge and indeed a prosecution could be (ultimately) successfully
> defended by recourse to the Human Rights laws" and I agree that is true,
> but in the mean time some poor soul will have had their life and their
> reputation destroyed along with all the attendant stress of being hauled
> through the courts and being tried in the media and that, in my opinion,
> is no way to ascertain the validity of a law.
> I would also remind you that, of course, Graham Coutts, the murderer of
> Jane Longhurst (except that may now become "man-slaughterer" as his case
> is going to appeal) had been engaging in breath-play games and drawing
> nooses on photographs of women long before the internet was available,
> so it seems that "violent pornography" is simply being used as a
> scapegoat and this is just an excuse to increase censorship.
> On that matter, you say that "there is a case to made that if society
> has deemed that some material should be if you like "illegal" and not be
> distributed than its possession, given that we essentially cannot
> control its distribution on the internet, should be made illegal",
> however I cannot agree with this.
> For a long time in this country it was illegal to distribute a picture
> of an erect penis or to show sexual acts, yet, even then, it was not a
> criminal offence to possess such material. The law in that situation has
> now, at last, been relaxed (without the country turning into raging sex
> maniacs!) yet these proposals want to make you a criminal simply for
> *looking* at something that someone else doesn't like.
> This is not just ludicrous, it is a very dangerous precedent because it
> goes beyond "protecting the public" and into the realms of State
> Censorship where you can be locked up for possessing something that the
> State doesn't want you to have. Countries such as China have laws like
> this. I wouldn't expect them in this country.
> Finally, you say "I guess given they are now coming forward with these
> laws the Government think they can frame these definitions legally", but
> from my point of view, this is just a desperate attempt by a failing
> government to grab some positive headlines and make look as if they are
> "doing something" in order to placate Middle England.
> The fact that innocent people who simply have different sexual tastes
> from the norm may end up being jailed seems unimportant to them.
> We may disagree on whether or not "extreme material" should be
> restricted, however I hope we can agree that, whatever the case, these
> proposals are most certainly not the way to go and I urge you and your
> Parliamentary colleagues to consider the dangers that the represent and
> fight to ensure that they never reach the statute books.
> Yours Faithfully,
> Graham Marsden.
Graham Marsden, 07 Sep 2006 23:23:07
Hi there,
mrlucky@fastermail.com wrote:
> For an MP he seems relatively sane-what a contrast to the Goggins
> and Coakers
Even more importantly, he's actually willing to *listen*.
The correspondance is on-going and I think I'm doing a good job of
convincing him that criminalising possession simply will have no benefit
or worthwhile effects at all.
The bit about a UK Constitution is an interesting discussion in itself,
but not one for this campaign.
Cheers,
Graham.
Teddy, 08 Sep 2006 01:53:25
Sandra Gidley, MP for Romsey, has been one particular Lib Dem vociferously supporting the proposals; from a "womens' rights" angle, as far as I can tell. I wrote to her today, but I'm told she doesn't bother with non-constituents, so it may not even get read!
T.
Author wrote:
> Hi there,
> mrlucky@fastermail.com wrote:
> > For an MP he seems relatively sane-what a contrast to the Goggins
> > and Coakers
> Even more importantly, he's actually willing to *listen*.
> The correspondance is on-going and I think I'm doing a good job of
> convincing him that criminalising possession simply will have no benefit
> or worthwhile effects at all.
> The bit about a UK Constitution is an interesting discussion in itself,
> but not one for this campaign.
> Cheers,
> Graham.
demolitionred, 08 Sep 2006 22:27:43
I'll pass that onto the people co-ordinating MP lobbying and see whetehr we can srustle up a feminist constituent...
thanks.
Author wrote:
> Sandra Gidley, MP for Romsey, has been one particular Lib Dem vociferously supporting the proposals; from a "womens' rights" angle, as far as I can tell. I wrote to her today, but I'm told she doesn't bother with non-constituents, so it may not even get read!
> T.
> Author wrote:
> > Hi there,
> > mrlucky@fastermail.com wrote:
> > > For an MP he seems relatively sane-what a contrast to the Goggins
> > > and Coakers
> > Even more importantly, he's actually willing to *listen*.
> > The correspondance is on-going and I think I'm doing a good job of
> > convincing him that criminalising possession simply will have no benefit
> > or worthwhile effects at all.
> > The bit about a UK Constitution is an interesting discussion in itself,
> > but not one for this campaign.
> > Cheers,
> > Graham.