Private Members’ Bill to Ban Burka

Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, yesterday tabled his private members’ bill entitled the Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill in an attempt to ban the burka and kindred facial coverings such as the niqab. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), it does not command the support of his party or any other in the House of Commons, and is widely expected not even to be debated as he came 17th in drawing lots for the right to sponsor a bill.

Mr Hollobone is quoted by the Independent as saying:

I think it is inappropriate to cover your face in public, whether it's a burka, a balaclava or anything else. . . We are never going to get along with having a fully integrated society if a substantial minority insist on concealing their identity from everyone else.

His bill is bound to elicit the usual squeals of hysteria from Muslim lobby groups and those individuals and organisations of a politically correct disposition. In fact, such totalitarian voices have already attempted to silence Mr Hollobone, for the Northamptonshire Race Equality Council complained to the police about his remark about burkas earlier this year in which he stated that wearing them was "the religious equivalent of going round with a paper bag over your head with two holes for eyes". This is factually unquestionable, and yet this unaccountable Stalinist quango attempted to criminalise him. Such organisations should be disbanded, and the legislation which provides them with their mandate repealed.

Another much more powerful and equally unaccountable quango is currently attempting to destroy the BNP through a politically motivated court case. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is using its legal mandate to prosecute thoughtcrime to claim that the party’s constitution remains in breach of the 1976 Race Relations Act. Apparently, even seeking to represent the interests of the indigenous British is deemed ‘racist’ and unacceptable by this thoroughtly anti-British anti-national organisation. Naturally, the Guardian is delighted that the BNP finds itself in this predicament, which could see its financial ruin and subsequent destruction.

Returning to the question of the proposed burka ban, I am glad that Hollobone has tabled his bill despite the unlikelihood of its acceptance. It is deeply worrying however that sinister undemocratic forces operating with a legal mandate in Britain have attempted to criminalise him and his views. Freedom of thought and expression has long been criminalised in the UK, and I see little prospect of this changing under the current administration of politically correct Tories and Liberal Democrats.