The spectre of benign totalitarianism

Back in the Cold War 1950s my father’s favourite quotation was “If fascism comes to this country it will come disguised as anti-fascism”. But for him, he said, the saying had come to mean, “If totalitarianism comes to this country it will come disguised as benign liberal democracy”.

I had reason to respect his judgement. He knew first hand what fascism — and communism — were about. He had spent a decade as a Soviet secret agent. As his MI5 file (now declassified) puts it “there is not the slightest doubt that [Torode] is one of a very small group of senior and trusted Comintern couriers”. The Comintern was the ruthless body Stalin created to police comrades around the globe, ensuring they adhered strictly to the Moscow line. Father’s main task had been to risk his life going in and out of Nazi Germany carrying money and instructions to the underground German party.

He broke with all that in 1939 over Stalin’s infamous Nazi Soviet Pact. Like Orwell, he came to believe that communism and fascism were essentially the same, two heads of a multi-headed monster. Eventually he became a respected trade union general secretary and a pillar of the Attlee/Wilson Labour Party. But he always feared that totalitarianism could creep up on a functioning democracy like ours, almost by accident.

I was reminded of his anxiety by the latest round of “advice” — the rules, regulations, restrictions and legal requirements issued last week from the Downing Street bunker. It is pretty obvious that the line between advice (which you can accept or reject), and the law of the land (which you can’t), has been deliberately blurred for months. Presumably this has been done to discombobulate us and make us queasy about doing anything which might offend the powers that be.

We are living through an unprecedented pandemic and the Government’s intentions are benign, however much you may feel it is muddled, misguided or plain useless. But look at what is now being required of us in England. (The rules are different in other parts of the UK). First the Rule of Six. You can not meet anywhere, not even in your own home, with more than five other people. Your own home! Fine for a first offence? £100. Repeat offenders will get escalating fines up to £3,200. If you are supposed to self-isolate, and are caught out, similar penalties will apply. Organise an unapproved gathering and it could cost you £10,000. There are suggestions (i.e. off-the-record briefings) of a 10 pm curfew. There are warnings that another full lockdown might well be on the cards if we don’t do as we are told. And you can probably forget about Christmas.

And then we come to the new army of Covid marshals. Their task will be to police, denounce and issue on-the-spot fines. By what authority, it is still unclear. There may also be a hotline to enable curtain-twitching busybodies to phone and denounce their neighbours. I know that this is not part of a totalitarian conspiracy, but even so this sort of stuff is reminiscent of the restrictions on freedom imposed by Stalin and Hitler. And it was the Stasi’s misnamed German Democratic Republic that perfected the totalitarian ideal of rule by block wardens.

Boris Johnson told the nation last week that “premises and venues where people meet socially will be legally required to request the contact details of every party, record and retain these details for 21 days, and provide them to NHS Test and Trace when required”. I doubt the President of Belarus has awarded himself such draconian power.

All this is justified by the Emergency Powers Act, which among other things gives the Goverment the right to ban “unnecessary” social contacts, forbid any gathering, stop the free movement of people round the country, and cancel elections. It also makes sweeping powers, previously granted by Parliament under anti-terrorism legislation, available to the Government for any other purpose.

The Act was rushed through both Houses of Parliament in three days back in March, without serious examination and the Commons has since become even more of a toothless tiger with only a sorry, socially distanced handful of MPs sitting at any one time. Shamefully, the sort of lively and effective Parliamentary scrutiny that was available even in the darkest days of World War Two is now lacking.

The truth is that we are now living in a country ruled by decree. Perhaps this is a reasonable price to pay for controlling the virus. Most polls show that many people seem to think so. But it is worth remembering that everything Hitler did when building his domestic power was legal. Why? Because he bounced his own emergency powers act through the Reichstag. It was called the Enabling Act, and it enabled him to do whatsoever he wished.

Boris is not a dictator in waiting. But it would be nice if Parliament got its mojo back and subjected him to a serious degree of scrutiny. The row over the Brexit (Breaking Treaty Obligations) Bill shows that MPs can still raise merry hell when they put their mind to it. It is high time they all got back en masse into the Chamber and did their democratic job on the pandemic as well. Covid-19 and its looming economic legacy are crying out for serious Parliamentary oversight, not benign totalitarianism.