Hysteria, Hypocrisy, Privilege and Police Power in a time of Covid

An Australian Manifestation

There is currently much outrage on social media about a Victorian woman, who has identified herself as Zoe Lee Buhler being arrested and handcuffed over her attempts to organise a gathering in Ballarat to protest the Victorian lock-down laws. All the usual suspects, including the “dead-but-won’t-lie-down” former shock jock Alan Jones have jumped to their keyboards to express everything from insurrectional outrage against the Victorian government to WTF whining about heavy handed police and the mistreatment of a pregnant woman.

Blogger Carrick Ryan https://www.facebook.com/realcarrickryan/ this morning raised a more rational voice. He says

In every State and Territory in Australia, and in most places around the World, if you actively encourage people to break the law, you are committing a crime.

If you commit a crime, Police are allowed to ask a magistrate for permission to search your home to gather evidence of your crime.

Being pregnant does not absolve you from criminality.

Offering to take steps to mitigate the effects of your crime (deleting the Facebook event) does not absolve you from your crimes.

This woman knew she was encouraging thousands of people to break the law, the fact she is shocked there are consequences for that smacks of privilege.

For the 100th time, conscientiously objecting to a law does not exclude you from it. There are a lot of laws I don’t like that I am obliged to obey because the majority of my fellow citizens don’t agree with me. That is how a society works.

I partly agree with Carrick Ryan, but only partly, and I hasten to say that I am not in any kind of sympathy with people who question the necessity of the lockdown. I think they should all be arrested and kept in a safe place so that they, and the rest of us are protected from their madness.

Having said that there are two points at which I part company with Ryan.

Firstly, it is true that conscientiously objecting to a law does not exempt you from it, but the fact that there is a law does not mean that it has to be obeyed. That is a recipe for authoritarianism. Laws once enacted do not become sacred objects, inviolate and immutable. Legislators, being human, make mistakes. Community attitudes change and laws which were once perfectly acceptable become outdated, obsolete, or anachronistic. Daylight bathing in and around Sydney Cove was a proscribed act (Sydney Police Act,1833) and that law remained in place until 1902. In the last few years, the law was honoured more in the breach than in the observation and when a severe drought made the Randwick Council think that sea bathing would help conserve water it decided to overturn the law. In this case, both flouting the law and administrative convenience led to the law’s demise.

But what of current or recent law. Disobeying a law which we consider to be unjust or immoral (because it creates disproportionate harm), or unlawful (because it conflicts with a law with higher legal authority) is, a in a free and democratic society, a civil right — even as Thoreau put it — a civic duty. There is nothing intrinsically wrong, and there may well be many things right about disobeying a law, but such disobedience always carries consequences which those who disobey must be prepared to endure. For example, when I was in Britain, I and many others withheld that percentage of our income tax that would have gone to military expenditure on the grounds that we would withhold our body from military service and therefore should also withhold the fruits of our labour from military use. As a consequence of this action I was arrested and held on remand. Sadly, I was not able to argue my case in court because someone paid the outstanding amount before I could be heard. (I suspect my local Tory MP was responsible for this because he did not want the argument for a Peace Tax to be heard). My point is this — civil disobedience is a right — but it is a right that carries consequences and those who exercise their right to challenge unjust law must be prepared to bear those consequences to further their cause. If I had been found guilty, I would have been prepared to go to gaol because I believed my cause to be just. Zoe Lee Buhler has no grounds for arguing that she should not bear the consequences of her civil disobedience — and her ignorance of the law and her pregnancy are not “get out of gaol free cards”. Indeed, being willing to endure the consequences — arrest, fines, imprisonment — may well be a mark of one’s commitment to the cause. Ryan is right — complaining about the consequences and claiming that one should not have to endure them smacks loudly of privilege.

My second point of departure is in some way more important. Although Ryan (a former police officer) says that he would not have handcuffed Zoe Buhler he concedes that there might have been reasons for doing so. Laws, whether they are just or unjust, must in a free and democratic society, be applied and enforced with the minimum amount of violence necessary. Violence is the infliction of pain and I suspect that handcuffing causes any person being handcuffed some degree of pain. Because of damage to my elbow and shoulder I cannot voluntarily put my hands behind my back without a great deal of pain so I can imagine that having my hands forced behind my back and secured there would be agonising. Even when it is absolutely necessary handcuffing is a form of violence and it is incumbent on those who have the power to handcuff people to do so only when it is absolutely necessary. In the 1960s to the 1990s I took part in many non-violent protests and was arrested for doing so a number of times. Not once was I handcuffed — not when I had chained myself to the gate at Government House, Adelaide, or to the fence at Greenham Common or when three officers lifted me from a prayer position during the fight against the Hindmarsh Island bridge. I have no idea whether it was necessary to handcuff Zoe Lee Buhler. From the footage I have watched there did not seem to be an overwhelming reason to do so. It concerns me that these days the use of handcuffs by police officers seems to be an unquestionable first step in any arrest, and as small as it may be, it points to an incremental increase in the use of violence by those we charge with applying and enforcing the law. That increase we must resist if we are to preserve our free society and not plod along the road to authoritarianism.