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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