Britain must ban the balaclava, according to a Daily Express Comment Editor who says he fears daily for the future of England. Sebastian Murphy argues that face coverings, from the burka to the balaclava, have become a "creeping aesthetic" that he associates with Northern Irish paramilitaries during the Troubles.
Murphy writes that he now holds the belief that one woman being forced to cover her face is an unacceptable restriction on freedom and cannot be justified by other, willing participants who "run cover for such misogyny."
A history of hating face coverings
Murphy confesses a history of hating face coverings. As an aspiring journalist, he joined what he imagined in youthful ignorance to be an antifascist protest in Brighton to oppose the March for England of 2014. He saw right-wingers on the other side of the protest covering their faces and thought them cowards, while on his side were "insufferable black-clad Antifa activists, faces covered."
Resident in London for 12 years, Murphy says he regularly sees women wearing the niqab or burka and finds the sight unsettling, wondering whether men have forced them to wear the garment or if this is voluntary piety and self-denial.
Lockdown masks and civil disobedience
Murphy describes how lockdown forced him into a facemask, which he hated so much that during one of the half-openings of society he boarded the Tube without a mask and was challenged by a police officer at Tottenham Court Road station. He lied, faked anxiety, and was permitted to pass unmasked.
He now sees people with whom he shares common worries about migration and the small boats masking up as they unleash civil disobedience on institutions that "have at best failed us and at worst colluded with human traffickers."
Ban face coverings to liberate women
Murphy argues that the establishment parties legitimised face coverings during the lockdowns in response to coronavirus. He says the primary reason for banning face coverings is the liberation of women in 21st century Britain, but the bonus will be that ordinary citizens don't have to suffer sights he'd rather be confined to a past: the "bloody, sectarian division of Northern Ireland."
