The Sandstone Blog
Naked as nature intended
It really is embarrassing, but it is also much more serious than just a high colouring around the cheekbones.
On 16th July this year Stephen Gough was once again jailed for 12 months, continuing the incarceration he had been committed to the previous December. The charge was ‘breach of the peace’ complicated by ‘contempt of court’. The actuality of this is that the peace remains unbreached by Mr Gough but very seriously breached by, first, a few Highlanders, followed by a too assiduous police force who might have applied restraint to their enthusiastic persecution, not to say wisdom. Finally, the mass and majesty of the State has brought itself to bear in the person of (most recently) Sheriff Richard MacFarlane in the City of Perth.
For those who are unaware, Stephen Gough is a former marine. That’s right, the same kind of guy the State is deploying in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Between 2003 and 2004 he walked from Land’s End to John O’ Groats wearing only boots, socks and, sometimes, a hat. Between 2005 and 2006 he repeated the feat, and it is no mean feat, with his girlfriend, Melanie Roberts. During these walks he was arrested several times but, wisely, released and allowed to get on with it. That is to say, until he reached Highland.
It was while he was walking through East Sutherland that things turned serious. I would be in no way abashed to blame our local religiously overcommitted, presently in apoplexy at the prospect of ferries disembarking passengers in Stornoway on Sundays, but it is not necessarily so. More likely it is the effect of living in too small communities, too remote from the neighbours for too long. Whoever it was who decided to wallow in the warm bath of personal offence, the Northern Constabulary took them much too seriously, as did the Scottish judicial system.
In fairness to the Sheriff, he found himself in an impossible position, pitted against a hero for our times, a champion of individual liberty, in the person of Mr Gough. The good Sherriff had ‘no choice’ but to repeat the sentence, he says, and perhaps he is correct in that. If so, he found himself in a terrible quandary and grasped at a straw, offering Stephen Gough the opportunity to walk free provided he put his clothes on and agreed to keep them on. Mr Gough, naturally and rightly, declined the opportunity. He has also taken his clothes off in a number of public places including Edinburgh Airport and the car park at Saughton Prison. It’s a face off, but you see that
I am not without sympathy for Sheriff MacFarlane, who must have known he was whistling against the wind but, now, it is time for some higher authority to intervene because this has gone altogether too far. Mr Gough sees himself as a civil rights campaigner, as indeed he is. On his web site he identifies himself as Stephen Gough, Human Rights Political Prisoner No: 81590, Segregation Unit, HMP Perth, and invites correspondence. Feel free.
Nowhere in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which can be read in the SHADOW BEHIND THE SUN Hinterland on the Sandstone Press web site) is nudity mentioned. Article 29 (2) has this to say:-
‘In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.’
So, whose morality? Stephen Gough has harmed no one but has, himself, been severely harmed having spent most of the past three years in prison. He has a principle which is that ‘the freedom to go naked in public is a basic human right’.
The idea of ‘rights’ has always been a puzzling one to me, although I have sought guidance from time to time. Are we born with them, but the State has the right to take some or all away as it sees fit? Or are we born with no rights but allowed them, again as the State sees fit? Do they originate with God, nature, or the People? To whose province do they belong, Caesar’s, God’s or mammon’s? Would they be taught by physicists (that is to ask if they are of the real world) or mathematicians (is there some balancing element) or linguists, or are they simply about lawyers splitting hairs?
Beyond these things called ‘rights’ we have to get on together. No one was ever harmed by the sight of a naked body. No one should be ashamed of their body, whatever its appearance. When it comes to shame though, I personally blush that it came to a head here in Highland among people I recognise as ‘my own’, just as I recognise the bigots (both camps) of old Glasgow town as ‘my own’. Stephen Gough was only passing through. It would have been much better for us all, I mean here in Highland, if he had simply been allowed to do so. Better still if he had been offered a helping hand on his way, as so many others have been.
Former Marine Stephen Gough should not only be set free but also compensated for his lost years. If these events were happening in a truly totalitarian state we would call them show trials and give him his proper due as a hero. Instead we do what we do in the name of decency and, worse, the Law which, incidentally, we are right to hold in contempt when it is used as an instrument of persecution. I suspect Sheriff MacFarlane was aware of this when he made his hopeless offer.
This blog has books at its heart, usually but not always Sandstone Press books. Since (despite what I wrote earlier) I have a wee suspicion that one particular book has played a part in Stephen Gough’s plight, let me quote from it. ‘. . . they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed’ and later, ‘’Who told thee thou wast naked?’ You can look it up for yourself.