The BIG Balaclava debate! ***UPDATED***
The David Vance BriefingRead More
They say that you’ve got to hide your love away, but what about your face?
Is it wrong to cover it in any circumstances?
There was an incident in Dover at the weekend that I wanted to talk about because, although you may have seen the images, I’m not convinced that the obvious conclusion is necessarily the right one.
Hundreds of masked men, many dressed entirely in black, suddenly appeared around the Port of Dover and blocked roads leading to Britain’s busiest ferry port. They were protesting against illegal migration and chanting “Stop the boats”. The protest caused traffic disruption and media outrage.
It was quite a spectacle and, inevitably, the balaclavas became the story.
I’m not interested in defending the people involved because I don’t know them and I certainly can’t speak for their motivations. But they appeared to be people thoroughly fed up with Government’s continuing refusal to control cross channel illegal migration and that matters when considering what happened. Millions will share those frustrations!
Let’s get a few things clear from the start. The protest remained non-violent, there were no arrests and after a few hours the protesters left and normal traffic resumed.
Nigel Farage, however, was having none of it and described the spectacle of masked protesters as “disgusting”.
Do you agree with him?
Some will say that Farage had little choice but to condemn what happened. He leads a political party that wants to govern Britain and the last thing he wants is Reform being associated with groups of masked men dressed in black blocking roads. That is perfectly politically understandable.
Others will look at his reaction and see yet another example of Farage distancing himself from people who, whatever you think about their methods, are protesting about precisely the issue he himself has spent years warning about.
My own take is somewhere in-between!
I don’t think wearing a balaclava is ideal and, please remember, I have lived in Northern Ireland for a long time and am only too aware of what men in balaclavas have done. There are very good reasons why people instinctively recoil when they see groups of men dressed identically in black with their faces concealed.
It looks intimidating and perhaps, to some extent, it was intended to.
But that still leaves us with the much more interesting question of why they felt the need to hide their faces in the first place?
I can also remember refusing to wear ANY face coverings during Covid and the Police coming to my house to tell me off me for having the temerity to do so! Back then covering your face was presented as a civic virtue, whereas now it can apparently be taken as evidence that you are some sort of extremist. Funny how quickly these things change, right?
So why would these men at Dover choose to wear balaclavas?
The answer seems simple enough. They didn’t want to be identified, either by the authorities or by the army of amateur detectives who patrol social media looking for people whose political opinions they dislike. Maybe they feared being photographed and plastered across social media? Perhaps they worried that somebody would discover where they worked and contact their employer. Might they simply have decided that attending a protest against illegal immigration whilst displaying their face was potentially terminal to their future employment prospects?
Do you blame them?
Because THIS is where I think the argument gets more interesting.
We tell ourselves that we are living in a free country. We celebrate the right to protest and insist that peaceful political dissent is one of the foundations of British democracy. But how meaningful is that freedom if participating in the wrong sort of demonstration could cost you your livelihood?
You don’t actually have to be arrested or prosecuted, and you certainly don’t have to be convicted of anything. All that may be required is a photograph, a name and an employer. You will be doxxed as somebody identifies you online, discovers where you work and starts demanding to know why the company continues to employ a person who holds such allegedly unacceptable opinions. It’s quite likely that your employer may decide that defending your freedom of expression is simply more bother than it is worth.
There doesn’t need to a courtroom for you to lose everything,
If you’re a man with a mortgage, a wife, children and a job, then maybe you conclude that the only way to publicly express anger about an issue is by concealing your identity.
Isnn’t that what is REALLY disturbing here?
I don’t want to see our streets filled with men wearing balaclavas. Quite the opposite. I would much rather live in a country where people felt sufficiently secure in their liberty that they DIDN’T believe it necessary to cover their faces before expressing a political opinion!
Instead of just asking “Why are these men wearing masks?”, we should also ask what has happened to Britain that makes some political protesters frightened to show their faces?
I have one final point to make on this one..
For years we have watched disruptive protest become almost normalised when carried out in support of fashionable causes. Roads have been blocked, traffic stopped, buildings targeted and public events disrupted. We are frequently invited to understand the protesters’ frustration, even when their tactics cause enormous inconvenience to everybody else.
However when the subject is illegal migration, the language changes. The anger is no longer something to be understood; it becomes something sinister that must immediately be condemned. Funny that!
None of that means the Dover protesters were right to block roads, nor does it mean that dressing in black and wearing balaclavas was politically clever. In fact, I think the masks probably damaged their message because those images inevitably became the story. Instead of discussing why hundreds of people were sufficiently angry about illegal migration to descend upon Dover, we ended up discussing scary-looking men in balaclavas.
Farage should nevertheless be careful about simply dismissing these people. There are millions of people in this country that believe the political system has failed spectacularly on immigration. He has spent years speaking directly to them. He just cannot reasonably expect every manifestation of that anger to arrive wearing a Reform rosette and carrying a politely worded placard. That’s not how the real world works!
There is a difference between understanding why people are angry and endorsing everything angry people choose to do. That’s the distinction I would make here.
I don’t like the balaclavas and I don’t like the quasi-military appearance. I really don’t want political demonstrations here degenerating into anonymous rival groups confronting one another on the streets.
But neither am I prepared to look at these men, call them “disgusting” and consider the matter closed. I can’t do that.
I want to know WHY they came to Dover, WHY they were angry and most importantly of all, WHY they believed that showing their faces whilst expressing those lawful views was a risk they were unwilling to take.
The masks really aren’t the most troubling thing about what happened in Dover on Saturday. We should be much more concerned about the Britain that persuaded them to put the masks on. Let that sink in.
UPDATE
Since writing the above last evening, I woke up to the news that there were further (mostly unmasked) protests at Portsmouth which is where 170 illegal migrants were landed by the RNLI. We saw the most awful scenes of Police doing all they could to ensure these unwanted migrants got to coaches to be then sent off elsewhere into England. Can I just say, for the avoidance of ambiguity, that I absolutely SUPPORT the protests here. These are patriots, sick off what is happening, and they are now rising up against the malign Government. You cannot blame the protesters, they are not “disgusting” and if ever you wanted to understand WHY we need to repel all cross channel invaders, read this headline. Imagine that was your son and you then see the Government, the Police and the RNLI bringing in even more barbarians.
I don’t say this lightly but I will say it. Civil War is coming unless this is all stopped.
Please take a moment to support my work
I publish regular political analysis, overlooked history, and original commentary that you won’t find in the mainstream media.
Free subscribers receive every article I publish.
Paid subscribers receive everything above, plus The Saturday Briefing — my exclusive weekly analysis launched at the weekend.
Each edition will pull together the week’s most important political developments, highlight stories the mainstream media has ignored, and explain what they really mean.
If you value independent journalism and want to help support my work, I’d be delighted to have you on board.
