Every so often something is presented in the news that seems at first glance to be perfectly reasonable. One such is the government’s announcement regarding a smoking ban in public. In the UK many workplaces have become smoke free as a result of successful civil lawsuits in the nineteen-nineties following illness claimed to have been contracted through passive smoking.
It all sounds so reasonable. After all, smoking is hazardous to health. Nicotine is a deadly poison, so why imbibe it? And more crucially, why allow people to force others to imbibe it? However, the issue of passive smoking is not really pertinent to the point I’m making here. The crucial wording used by the government in its announcement is this:
Caroline Flint, the public health minister, confirmed that the policy would be vigorously enforced with the assistance of informers from the public.
“I don’t think we are talking about brigades of people out on the streets,” she said. “What we are talking about is an intelligence-led approach to enforcing the law.”
If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, then you have learned nothing from 20th Century European history. How did the Gestapo manage to catch so many dissidents? It certainly wasn’t because they were all-powerful, they lacked the personnel to be fully effective during the early days of the Nazi terror. Rather they used informers; people who, fearful for their own safety, would report their neighbours for crimes against the state, whether real or imagined. More recently the Stasi ran a similar operation using approximately 300,000 informants. The collapse of the Berlin wall and the old East German state was supposed to be an end to the Stasi but their spirit lives on, it would seem. Perhaps we will be seeing local committees for public safety being created. I’m sure the treasury could find some set-up funding.
You might be inclined to think that this is modern Britain we are talking about, not the police state that existed in East Germany or for that matter, post revolutionary France. Well, that’s true enough. And smoking is a trivial matter. But so is long hair on men but north Korea is making use of it to enforce conformity with what the state decides is right and proper. The British state has decided that smoking is not right and proper and wants to use informers to help with enforcement. Today, it is smoking that offends the state’s sensibilities. What will it be tomorrow? There’s plenty to choose from. It may seem the right thing to do; informing on the neighbour who uses a mobile phone while driving or speeds past breaking the speed limit – but what if the state decides that something perfectly legal today is not tomorrow and decides that your neighbours’ “intelligence” is enough evidence to take action against you? Maybe it was that triple cheeseburger and large fries that will get you into trouble with the health nazis. All that cholesterol will be a drain on the NHS’ resources – and it is for your own good, after all.
It all seems to be so paranoid, so unrealistic, so, well, Smiley’s People. But it has happened elsewhere and given the authoritarian bent being exhibited by our present regime, it starts to become a real possibility. If you are a smoker, it is sooner than you think.
You’re right – it’s the thin edge of the bloody wedge. What irritates me about the whole smoking situation is that scientific studies have proved that tobacco is a dangerous good, and yet governments worldwide still allow its sale. Why? Hefty taxes. If they don’t want people to smoke, they shouldn’t sell the damn things in the first place.
A comment by an addicted smoker ~:-/
I see that one local council in Kent is to introduce a £75 fine for dropping a fag end in the street. If that is the only place people can smoke, what are they supposed to do ? Swallow them ?
”'{Longrider replies} I understand that Manchester is doing likewise. I can understand the desire to reduce litter. Providing that there are sufficient waste bins and notices so that people know the score, I don’t have a problem with that… I do have a problem with demonising smokers and using informers to track them down. What a nasty society we are in danger of becoming.”’
I agree John, If you can only smoke in the street there needs to be something in place to accomodate this…
I think the £75 thing is difficult to enforce unless you accidently drop a butt infront of a policeman. According to studies, the most commonly-found litter is in fact, cigarette butts. This is not surprising.
To put a figure on this, it is estimated that 122 tons of cigarette butts, and ciggy packets are dropped every day across the UK. People seem to think that cigarette filters are biodegradable and made of cotton. But in fact, they are made of cellulose acetate. this stuff takes around 12 years to biodegrade…… Worrying isn’t it.
”'{Longrider replies} Who needs policemen when we have the omniscient CCTV camera to capture every indiscretion on video footage? And where there aren’t any cameras, there will be the government’s fifth column of informers. Euch!”’
In new York it is fairly common to see people stubbing their cigss out on street furniture before chuckng them in the nearest bin.
We were in Co Mayo last year where the fine for throwing tabs out of the car window is 2,000 euros, and the fines for landlords allowing smoking in pubs are massive.
Invest in patio heater businesses…they had them in every pub yard in Ireland.
I’m in that position again Mark where I rescind my Labour membership. 3 times I’ve been here but have always held off, I guess out of respect for the great old guys in Labour like Tony Benn and to a lesser extent, Gordon Brown who stand for the basic tenets of Socialism. I keep hoping that when GB gets in, he will rein back these more worrying aspects of the New Labour ideal but I fear the rot may have set too far in already.