When driving, I have always made way for police cars rushing to emergencies. But recently police resources in my area have been diverted from tackling crime to apparently political tasks. I feel strongly about our long-held freedoms. Should I continue to give way to police cars that may be merely on their way to arrest someone trying to exercise their right to free speech?
Just imagine how different the world might be if Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King had sensed the civil disobedience potential of not pulling their cars over to the side of the road whenever they heard a police siren wailing like an angry electronic baby behind them.
Instead of that uninspiring, forgettable speech he delivered, Martin Luther King could have planted some real political fire into the bellies of millions of Americans had he said, instead: “I have a dream that, when driving in their cars, the people of this nation will not turn on their indicators and meekly pull over towards the kerb whenever they hear a siren indicating that a police car wants to overtake them, possibly en route to an emergency: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all road-users are created equal. I have a dream.”
You have every right, and good reason, to feel strongly about our long-held freedoms. But is obstructing a police car — on the high-risk hunch that the police might be going not to catch criminals but, rather, to arrest someone for chanting slogans outside 10 Downing Street — really the most effective way to voice your protest? How long would it take
for politicians to be even aware of your grievance, let alone to work out what it might be? It’s like protesting against the logging of rainforests by refusing to prune the apple tree in your back garden.
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What’s your view? And do you have a dilemma of your own?
Email: modernmorals@thetimes.co.uk
Write to Modern Morals, Times Features, 1 Pennington Street, London, E98 1TT.