Nothing To Fear

A month or so ago I planned on travelling into London to catch the end of the Taking Liberties exhibition at the British Library. I'd suddenly got it into my head that I just had to have a look at the Magna Carta before it got chucked into a furnace or wherever it is the government plans on taking it to be destroyed. I'd even talked my mum into coming with me and before I knew it a day out had been planned.
The day I intended to go was the day after the Convention On Modern Liberty and it was partly that event that had inspired me to attend the exhibition in the first place. It was also indirectly responsible for me abandoning all my plans and going to a craft fair instead.
A couple of nights before we were due to go, and after having read some of the articles and blog posts folks had written in the lead up to the convention, I suddenly became frightened about going to London. It wasn't a sudden horror of being blown up by terrorists on the underground that got my stomach churning. It wasn't the prospect of aggressive beggars that sent my heart into palpitations. Nope. I was terrified of being stopped and searched by the police.
Initially this fear seemed absolutely irrational. After all, I've nothing to hide, right? I don't have a beard. I prefer a small shoulder bag to a gigantic rucksack. I carry a mobile only under duress. Why on earth would the police be remotely interested in me?
But the thing that kept gnawing at me was that I do not own anything even vaguely resembling i.d. If I was stopped and searched at the train station, as I believe the scuffers now like to do I couldn't produce i.d. even if I wanted to. And I gradually convinced myself that the simple fact I wouldn't be carrying any identifying information would be enough to get me carted off to Paddington Green.
Of course, I was being ridiculous. Right? There's no law that actually compels me to carry i.d. whilst travelling (YET)But there's also no law against photographing drain covers and that still gets a fella arrested. There's also no law against lighting a fag near a police van but that apparently get's you smacked with a big stick, knocked to the ground and denied appropriate medical assistance.
The point is that the prospect of an unlikely, but still entirely possible encounter with the police, no matter how minor, left me feeling so fearful that I abandoned my plans. The possibility of not being able to defend perfectly run-of-the-mill aspects of my life in the event of police questioning worried me so much that I chose to avoid London altogether.
And if I could be put off simply travelling into London to go to a museum based on a few Henry Porter articles and youtube videos of people being threatened with arrest for asking questions, then imagine how much easier it will be to frighten people out of attending protests or other high profile events if you face the prospect of kettling, being arrested on spurious terrorism charges and "polite, proportionate and pragmatic" policing in the form of a baton in the back of the legs and a hard shove to the floor.