Telegraph
May 2, 2014
Over the weekend, a candidate was arrested for addressing his potential voters. Clear aside the incidental details, scrape away the mitigating circumstances, and ponder that elemental fact. Paul Weston, standing for election to the European Parliament (against me, as it happens, in the South East) was arrested in the middle of a speech on the steps of the Winchester Guildhall.
When such a thing happens in Burma or Belarus or Bahrain, we report it in suitably shocked tones. Yet here it is happening in Britain, without any discussions on the Today Programme, any Amnesty vigils, any complaints from Liberty. To repeat, a candidate was arrested for making a hustings speech.
It is perfectly true that the candidate was attempting to provoke. He almost certainly set out with the intention of getting himself in trouble, thereby publicising his message and winning sympathy votes. He was quoting, through a megaphone, a passage written by the young Winston Churchill 1899, which says disobliging things about Muslims. Sure enough, as Weston must have been hoping, the few headlines there have been have focused on this aspect of the story: “Man Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill”.
This isn’t about the provenance of the speech, though. Churchill’s words are not Holy Writ. He was a an extremely prolific author, and was just as capable of writing bilge as anyone else. Nor is it about whether you agree with Weston.