Harry's actions appear to have repeatedly and continuingly, contravened the Harassment Act, yet the police have not arrested him? However, ordinary people are being arrested, charged and sentenced across the country, often for comparatively minor infringements, or for what, in less politicised days, would have been regarded as regular family or social life, while a member of the Royal Family is publicly making a mockery of Parliament, the judiciary and the public, by making it clear, that there is one rule for the mighty and another for the lowly!
If you are powerful enough, it seems that you can make your family's and other people's lives a misery, expose their most intimate secrets, conversations, and sexual activities, hound and harass them, publish books about them, offer numerous interviews being critical of them, to be viewed by billions, accuse them, humiliate and abuse them, put them in fear of their safety, their reputation, their future, making millions of pounds in the process, and nothing is done about it.
Indeed the media collude with and exacerbate the harassment, by ensuring Harry's every attacking word is writ large and his every accusation is given the widest publicity, while, in contrast, they shame and hound ordinary citizens in the same position.
Often, following a Harassment conviction, a restraining order is put in place. The curiosity in Harry's case, is that it is as though the members of the Royal Family who are 'the victims', in the firing line, have been given the restraining order, preventing them from sharing their truth and their facts. They have remained silent.
These anomalies are intriguing. Harry feels strongly about how he has been treated and wants the world to know. He should 'spare' a thought for the thousands of ordinary people who have been silenced from telling their truth and sharing their facts, either by restraining orders, injunctions, non disclosure agreements etc. He should also 'spare' a thought for the millions of extra revenue he has provided to the very media, of which he is so critical, as his latest revelations form irresistable clickbait.
However, there is an unexpected payback for those wrongly 'criminalised' by the biased legal processes, that confounds the 'control and coercion' of the system.
The lowly, who end up convicted, rather than millionaires, and end up silenced, not like the Royal Family out of choice, but out of necessity, can discover unintended benefits.
First, as 'criminals' they are relieved of any future jury service. This can well save them from having to serve an inadvertent sentence of months of mandatory jury service. They are free, never having to suffer one of those invasive requirements to be retained at 'his majesty's pleasure', whether they like it or not, to sit in stuffy court rooms, exposed to the psychological manipulation of the competing barristers and having to cook up some subjective and unreliable conclusion as to a defendant's fate. Further, their family, entirely disenchanted with the judicial charade, can themselves also present as incapable of doing jury service, so affronted are they by the injustice meted out to their nearest and dearest, and adamant they will never provide their support to it again. So the system may steal a few weeks of a wrongly convicted person's life in community or other service, as a sentence, but the pay back is that that they can win back months of their life as a consequence.
Second, the question of silence. There is an attractive power in the Palace's choice not to enter the circus in which Harry is performing, as equally there is a repellent weakness about the naked disclosures pouring from Harry's being. It seems that with every new revelation, poor Harry is diminished and with every lack of response, the Palace is strengthened.
The Crown Jewels that every individual has in their Jewel house, are the truths, the experiences, the facts and the life that they alone have lived and are living, with their loved ones. Harry tried to attain to such when he said to Tom Bradbury, that what he would say to his brother in the future was private and he hoped would never be disclosed, without realising the irony that he had just spent the interview disclosing so many of his family's previous private discussions.
Perhaps the inversion of the law by letting Harry run amok as a potential criminal harasser and the palace as victim, being under some self chosen restraining order exposes the gratuity of the Harassment Act.
Harry has said his worst in the worst way possible. The Royal Family has said nothing. No need for parliamentary acts, police, arrests, convictions and restraining orders. Just ordinary life on an international stage.
But for us proletariats, harassed by the mighty and their meddlesome playground laws, the payback is that the system may catch a mouse in one hand but lose the cat in the other and silence offers, not a restriction, but a welcome protection for our crown jewels.
One further aspect is disturbing, particularly given the liberalisation of drug laws in a number of countries. In my lifetime's work as a priest, I have sadly had to officiate at a number of the funerals of those who have died through drug addiction. I have met many others who have become paranoid and mentally disturbed because of their habitual use of drugs. Cannabis has been a main culprit, either as an entry point to more serious drugs or as the only drug used. Either way, what is seen as a harmless pastime with no alarming consequences, seems to lead to a deterioration of mental health and a general psychological disquiet.
Harry's admission to using drugs, and his use, even recently of Cannabis, appears to provide a possible explanation for his revisionist presentation of the past, his paranoia and his imprudent personal disclosures. He has become vulnerable and is walking naked, as a royal among us, and a media and public feeding frenzy is taking place, tearing every shred of intimate knowledge from him, with no concern for the damage being done to him, his family or the Royal family.
Perhaps the Royal family, recognising this, watch in sorrow as he disgorges himself, unable to intervene, spectators to a tragedy that they have lost, for the moment, and perhaps for ever, access to their beloved, but that their love for him, as William was at pains to express, using their 'secret code', remains, as it has always been, constant.
(I should clarify that the Harassment Act originated out of a desire to protect those who were in personal danger, and for such, it is important. However, it has been ubiquitously misapplied by the police, the C.P.S., and the courts, interfering with and disrupting ordinary social and family interactions, to the detriment of society.)
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART ONE
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART TWO
I AM PROUD OF MY WRITING, FOR JESUS’S SAKE, THAT HAS HAD ME FOUND INNOCENT IN HEAVEN, BUT TWICE A CRIMINAL ON THE EARTH. THE FIRST IN 1990 WHEN I WROTE A BIBLICAL TEXT ON THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT IN PEACEFUL PROTEST ABOUT THE BOMBING OF YOUNG IRAQI RECRUITS DURING THE FIRST GULF WAR. THE SECOND, IN 2016 WHEN I WROTE ON MY BLOG, TO ALERT THE PUBLIC ABOUT A PAEDOPHILE, AND WAS SUCCESSFUL IN FORCING THE AUTHORITIES TO STOP HIM HAVING ACCESS TO CHILDREN. THERE WAS ALMOST A THIRD! IN 1997, WHEN I WAS ARRESTED FOR NAILING MY PROPOSALS FOR REFORM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ON THE DOOR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. WORDS ARE POWERFUL MESSAGES THAT CHALLENGE CORRUPTION, CONFRONT THE WICKED AND CREATE A BETTER WORLD. JESUS IS THE WORD OF GOD AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED TO COMMUNICATE HIS WORDS, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE COST.
"You brave, courageous and wonderful man. To stand up for the truth
in the face of suppression and oppression is truly an act of a pure heart."
