I bow to nobody in my admiration for Roger Helmer but on this topic I'm afraid that I must respectfully disagree.
I have no doubt that to Roger and many others the burka is a symbol of repression and that they find it repellant. However, I also have no doubt that there are many women in this country who wish to wear the burka of their own volition and their beliefs are equally firmly held. The former are free to think as they wish. The latter are free to dress as they wish.
As a matter of fact, I dislike the connotations of the burka myself - but I regard my own attitude on the clothes others choose to wear as a matter relevant only for my own views and outlooks, not as something on which the state should legislate. If actual abuse or repression happens somewhere, then the state should find evidence of it and prosecute it. Otherwise, it's none of the business of the authorities what people wear.
So I agree with Damian Green - I think that to allow the state to govern dress would be to yield too much power to the state.
People seem insistent on going beyond such simple statements of principle, drawing comparisons with costume in other areas. If that appeals:
- Wearing a swastika might mean that one is a Nazi, or that one is in a production of Cabaret, or that one is a Balinese Hindu. In any case, I wouldn't ban it.To say so does not mean that I approve of Nazism (I don't), or like Cabaret (I do) or have a view on Balinese Hinduism (I don't).
- Wearing one's trousers with the top around one's mid-thigh certainly, I think, means that one's an idiot. But the government should not ban that either.
There is or should be a big difference between judgments we are entitled to make ourselves in our lives - intellectually, morally, emotionally - and what the state can decide, legally. This is one issue that falls under the former, not the latter.
The government should not be able to tell us what to wear.
Alex Deane is the Director of Big Brother Watch
CentreRight's own Mark Wallace has some very good analysis on this elsewhere
