Sacred Bulls

So, Shambo's been taken away to be destroyed.

How proud I was to watch our Soldiers of Freedom, smartly jackbooted and high visibility vested warriors protecting our society as they manhandled dangerous Hindu monks out of the path of DEFRA officials to enable them to slaughter the sacred animal.

The monks' crime?

"Sitting quietly and peacefully with intent to protect their freedom to practise their religion"

Now, I'm not a religious person. Far from it, I'm an atheist to the core, despite my parents' and school's determination to make me sit through enough worship to turn me into a believer. They failed. I don't believe. I never will.

I do, however, believe in people's right to believe whatever they like, and if they want to worship spaceships, cows, chickens, housebricks or whatever else, then that's fine by me - but when I watch televison pictures as were broadcast yesterday - pictures showing freedom to worship, freedom to protest, and freedom to fight the courts being suppressed by burly policemen, I feel despair for the society we're becoming.

Shambo was important to those monks. Fair enough, he'd tested positive for the potential to develop Bovine TB.

He hadn't actually got anything wrong with him.

He wasn't going to become part of the food chain.

He wasn't going to mix with other herds of cattle.

He wasn't going to be sold or transported.

Quite how this translates to a dire threat to public health, I'm not sure. I'm certainly no Bovine TB expert, but I haven't yet seen any convincing evidence from DEFRA, or the Welsh Assembly, or anybody else which would suggest that allowing Shambo to live out his existence presented any significant risk to anyone's health.

I've been pondering whether the authorities would have taken the same action had this been an Islamic community.

I don't know whether there are any sacred animals to Muslims, but imagine for one second that a mosque was infested with rats, and the leaders of that Mosque refused to let Environmental Health have access to the building.

Would the police invade the Mosque and start removing worshippers? In the current political climate, I suspect it is unlikely.

I imagine also that the police would think twice before invading a school and dragging children out if they were protesting against poor school dinners, similarly I doubt a Church of England Bishop would be hauled into the street if he preached a sermon which the authorities didn't like the sound of.

All of this, however, depends on the climate of the society in which we are living - and it is frightening to watch the gradual erosion of our rights. There is an increasing tendency for example, for people to be presumed guilty until proven innocent... hardly the inclusive, generous, caring society of the image our government seem so desperate to project to the rest of the world.

Once upon a time, about seventy years ago, there was another European country, whose society started unwittingly down a dark path which ultimately led to the deaths of millions of people. I'm not saying the same thing will happen again, but we're hardly making it easy to avoid.