Editor

Whilst Jean Miles has never felt so controlled during the pandemic, and can’t wait for Freedom Day (Views July 22), her frustration with Covid restrictions obscures the imminent loss of a far greater freedom, that of the press.

The Home Office is proposing to remove the defence of ‘public interest’ for unauthorised disclosure, or ‘leaking’.

Resentful, and revengeful, since the Prorogation of Parliament was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, Johnson is determined to clip the wings of investigative journalism, and the judiciary.

There could no better example of this threat to democracy than the release of the Pentagon Papers, as powerfully portrayed in The Post, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.

The US Supreme Court upheld the right of The Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, and the Vietnam War ended four years later, in 1975.

The most chilling revelation in the Pentagon Papers was the assessment that 70 per cent of total casualties were ascribed to avoiding the national humiliation of withdrawal, around 35,000 deaths, simply to avoid political embarrassment.

While we throw our masks in the air, the early phase of encroaching fascism creeps up behind us.

Roger Louvet Porthmadog

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