Hiding the truth

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Britain’s retreat from India.

However, the British Government’s comprehensive burning of all records of colonial rule is something we hear less about, and is an example of how ‘civilised’ societies can succeed in oppressing the less powerful without backlash. The method is simple and incredibly powerful: just make sure that most people don’t see what is actually happening.

This explains why the slave trade kept British soil slave-free (the injustice was kept out of sight and out of mind), used fine-sounding euphemisms (‘Africa Trade’) and reacted so violently when abolitionists started circulating pictures of what was being done to our African brothers and sisters.

All of this was done to keep the public’s conscience from being inconveniently awakened. Is there a comparable social evil in our nation today? And are there lessons from the past that we can apply in tackling it? The answer to both of these questions is yes.

The horror of abortion

On 15 August, Gregg Cunningham, who directs the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform in the US, gave a presentation to a dozen or so pro-lifers gathered at the home of Dave and Anandi Brennan (who write this article) in London, to explain a strategy for tackling abortion that makes a difference.

The strategy is simple: show the public what abortion actually is, and abortion protests itself.

This is why Gregg and his colleagues are adamant about showing abortion victim images, so that people can see what the ‘procedure’ actually does to living human beings. They have seen countless minds changed by these images, and the abortion industry clearly feels threatened by them, hence the demand for ‘buffer zones’ around clinics, so that posters can’t show potential clients what is about to happen to their babies.

Understandable nervousness

Churches and even pro-life groups are understandably nervous about such controversial and painful imagery, but we need to understand that, until we combat the great cover-up with a great uncovering, we can expect to see the number of UK babies violently killed in the womb silently increase from the 200,000 a year at which it currently stands.