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Cover up or be arrested

December 1998

Recently joined Mike Vincent expresses the feelings of (probably) a majority when he writes from Oxford:

Dear SUN,

I am absolutely disgusted to see what the National Trust has done to the environment of Studland; I am really appalled by it all. I think they should be stopped from further vandalising the natural beauty of Studland. For years we have been walking nude throughout the area without causing offence, but last year I was warned by two policemen that I must only go nude inside the red posts, and if I did not cover up I would be arrested. I would have thought there were plenty of real criminals around without the police bothering with us nudists, but then I suppose we are an easy target for them.

Mike Vincent

We're not the only ones. A letter-writer to the Bournemouth Echo recently asked where the police were while a bus-shelter directly opposite the town's Winton Police Station was being comprehensively wrecked by a gang of drunken vandals. The answer was elsewhere in the same issue of the paper - they were 'targeting' motorists who had parked in side streets facing the wrong way, who are (I'm sure you will agree) a Major Threat To The Future Of Civilisation As We Know It. The trouble is, 18 years of implacable advance towards a police state has not yet been checked, and if the new Crime & Disorder Act, due to come into effect this year is anything to go by no effort is being made by this New Improved Government to check it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Despite having been warned as long ago as last February by the Howard League for Penal Reform that the Act breaches European human rights legislation, the Home Secretary has so far refused to make corrective amendments. The new Act gives police and local authorities unbelievably draconian powers which are likely to be seized upon with gleeful fervour especially in reactionary areas such as Dorset, notwithstanding that Dorset Police's clear-up rate for burglaries is one of the lowest in the south. Still, at least with the incorporation into UK law of the European Convention on Human Rights, we shan't have to travel all the way to Strasbourg to fight - challenges can be heard in London.

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