Positively Dangerous

Peter Hitchens writes: 

The best film of the autumn is Official Secrets, in which Keira Knightley plays the brave and principled GCHQ worker Katherine Gun.

She was appalled to discover the organisation had been asked to gather information that might be used to blackmail members of the UN Security Council into supporting the stupid Iraq War, and leaked the e-mail making this request. Brave and brilliant legal advice saved her from going to prison.

But not all opponents of bad government policies are as attractive and easy to defend as Ms Gun. I would like to put in a word here for a former Labour MP Chris Williamson, who has just been banned from standing as a Labour candidate, apparently for expressing an opinion. Hold on tight and wait for the end. 

He said he thought Labour had been ‘too apologetic’ about anti-Semitism. Well, first, this is a point of view. You may not share it, and I may not share it, but it is one someone could legitimately hold without himself being a racial bigot. Whatever happened to ‘I disagree with everything you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it’? 

But I think there’s more to this. I think Mr Williamson (who I do not know and with whom I share few opinions) may really be in trouble because he has dissented from the near-universal view that this country should attack Syria because of its alleged use of poison gas. 

This is, as I know very well, a very sensitive area in which to tread, and if we lived in a despotism – which of course we don’t – it would be positively dangerous to do so.