The current British government is, let’s be frank here, a bit crap at a lot of things. It’s crap at running the systems that deal with healthcare, immigration, social support and so much else, as anyone who has dealings with Britain’s public services or has observed the country’s immigration problems will well know.

But, there is one thing that the current British government has shown that it is supremely good at and that is creating martyrs for free speech. This British government seems absolutely determined that nobody will utter an opinion that is not ‘approved’ and are willing to use the big stick of the State to bring that situation about.

The last few weeks have seen a veritable avalanche of high profile cases where people have either been excluded from the United Kingdom because their views would offend Britain’s Muslim guests, or who have been gaoled under highly shonky and notably illiberal ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’ laws. The banning from the UK of the conservative and Islam-sceptic personalities Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone and Lauren Southern along with the imprisonment of the leadership of Britain First, Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding, have all garnered massive amounts of often negative publicity for the Government. People throughout the world are seeing the British government censoring people, mostly on the grounds that the might upset the Muslims, and are starting to treat those imprisoned or banned from the UK as martyrs for free speech.

Although I personally carry no torch for any of those excluded from the UK or for Britain First and in some cases find myself in disagreement on some points with them, the way that the British government has treated these people is truly appalling. This treatment is now so bad that the attention of the world is now on Britain’s lack of freedom to speak ones mind on a number of issues without fear of arrest. I have to say that to my knowledge, none of those banned or gaoled in these particular instances were inciting violence or involved in terrorism, they were banned or imprisoned merely for ‘wrongthink’ or for the sort of nuisance offences that could and should have been dealt with by either a bind over, a fine or a community sentence.

In my own opinion, I think that the British government have made huge mistakes with all of these cases. The actions taken against those ‘wrongthinkers’ is so fundamentally unjust and so obviously the work of a government who wants to keep the lid on Britain’s current problems, that it has created martyrs for free speech that people are starting to rally behind. If the government had dealt with Britain First in a different way or had let Ms Southern, Ms Pettibone and Mr Sellner come in and say their pieces, then the vast majority of the world would have paid little or no attention to them. Yes, the political anoraks such as myself may have turned out to hear them speak or read their stuff, but we political wonks are a small proportion of the population, the vast majority of Britons would just have carried on their daily business.

However, by using the brute force of the State against people who are basically no real threat to the Realm, the Government has instead highlighted many of the problems that they are trying to play down or hide. These are not only the issues with the lack of freedom of speech in the UK, but also the problems, especially the Islam-related problems, that the government seems to be trying to hide from the populace for fear that the social pot may boil over. This ‘boil over’ may occur when a critical mass of people realise just how high a cost Britain and its people are paying for government Islamopandering, a price that can be measured in rapes, jihad attacks, religious extremism and violence, vastly inflated welfare bills and political corruption. This partly explains why the government is so desperate for the majority of people to not realise the extent of the problems caused by government policy in the areas of migration and Islam.

The British government, rather than allowing open debate on a whole gamut of matters, including Islam, has instead reached for the censor’s blue pen and also strong-armed people into silence in order to encourage more compliance with the Government’s viewpoint. There are dozens and dozens of people who are either in gaol or who have suffered some other legal punishment, not because they’ve actually harmed another person or damaged property, but merely because they’ve expressed a negative opinion about migration or Islam or some other aspect of government social policy. This sort of thing has been going on for years often out of the sight of the vast majority of non politically motivated individuals. A Facebook or Twitter post for example criticising Islam can almost be guaranteed to elicit a visit from the local police who will either arrest the alleged miscreant of ‘hate speech’ charges or will give intimidatory ‘words of advice’ to them. In most of these cases there is a small on line press article or a small piece in a local newspaper about their convictions, which means that most people ignore these cases and just carry on as normal.

But, the most recent cases are changing that. The widespread coverage of the above cases is starting to gain the interest of those outside of the political circuit and are helping to turn ordinary Briton’s attention to the dire state of freedom of speech in the UK. The UK government to be quite frank has got themselves into a ‘Streisand Effect’ situation that is entirely of its own making. The enhanced coverage of the high profile cases I mentioned earlier are waking people up to the realisation that they have very few rights to voice their concerns about some of the bad things that are happening in the UK today.

I have little doubt in my mind that if Ms Southern, Ms Pettibone and Mr Sellner had been allowed to speak or even enter the UK, then most people would be completely unaware of their existence let alone their views. Now, because of the UK Government’s stupidity and urge to authoritarianism, this situation is very different and there are probably more people who are aware of these people and their views and may even find themselves in agreement with them in some cases.

The British government has made a serious rod for their own back here. They have used inappropriate weapons against those who exhibit ‘wrongthink’ and by doing so have exposed themselves to ridicule and accusations of double standards, especially when they expend so much effort on the people above, but allow 400+ alleged former jihadis to enter the UK without too much of a problem.

It’s never a good policy for a government to create martyrs to which people who are disgruntled can rally around. It didn’t work for Pinochet or the satellite states of the Soviet Union, it’s not working for Iran, or for any other despot who reaches for the ban-hammer or who imprisons dissidents, eventually the martyred individuals become a form of shorthand with which people can use to voice their opposition to government policy. Martyrs are like seed crystals in a lab experiment, suspended in a solution of a similar substance these seed crystals attract the substance and grow bigger because of it and in some cases will not grow at all without the seed crystal. I predict that the UK government may end up with a far bigger political and social problem on its plate because of the way that they’ve acted, than if they’d left the people who have been targeted alone to do their thing and then go away again.