Opinions on the lèse majesté law (Article 112 of the Criminal Code) are split 3 ways,rather than 2.

 

There are the retentionists, who, at least publicly, think things are fine and dandy.  Dr Tul Sittimsomwong, for example, believes that criminal punishment works like a drug.  If the world-record-breaking penalties for lèse majesté in Thailand cannotprevent an epidemic of anti-monarchical sentiment, then the answer is to up the dosage and threaten even more time in jail.

 

I am not convinced that this is even good medicine, let alone a sensible attitude todeterrence.  If I were a doctor and found that pumping more and more of a drug intothe patient made the symptoms worse, I would start to question the original diagnosis.

 

The second group are reformists, such as the Nitirat group, who propose amending the law with respect to level of punishment, method of enforcement, legal exemptions and the like.

 

And the third group are the abolitionists who argue that the only correct course is toget rid of the law entirely.

 

This third group seems to spend almost as much time berating the reformists as theretentionists.  They have even turned on fellow abolitionists who fall under suspicionof betraying the One Truth Faith because, for example, they work in the sameinstitution as known reformists (following the theory that ‘co-worker’ equals ‘co-conspirator’)..

 

It may be instructive to look at the historical example of another group of abolitionists, who were ultimately successful by going down a reformist route.

 

Attempts in the UK to abolish slavery in the 18th century were going nowhere.  The vested interests in slavery were far too powerful and well-connected.  Even the Church of England owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean that were worked by slaves. These could hardly maintain the same profitability if they had to pay forlabour rather than lives.

 

So the abolitionists hit on the idea of setting aside, for the moment, their ultimate goal of the abolition of slavery in favour of a campaign against the slave trade.

 

This would mean that the plantations could continue to use slaves, but replenishmentfrom the seemingly inexhaustible supply from West Africa would be cut off.  One immediate effect was to make it less likely that slave-owners would work their slaves to death.  If they had to stick with what they had, it was now in their own interests toobserve a minimal standard of treatment, at least good enough to ensure that future slaves would be born if they couldn’t be bought.

 

The campaign was now switched from the nigh-impossible task of persuading your average British yahoo, whether MP, bishop or ordinary citizen, that non-British, non-white, non-Christian nig-nogs were actually people with rights and souls.  It could now focus on a far easier target — the horrors of the slave trade.

 

Campaigners (and note that slaves had precious few chances to do any campaigning themselves, so this task fell to elite liberals) (and also note that ‘elite liberal’ is, formany lèse majesté abolitionists, a term of abuse to be hurled at reformists) could now focus on the truly horrific conditions of the slave trade.  Mountains of evidence already existed at the major British ports in the offices of the shipping companies and the testimony of sailors who served on board slavers.

 

The retentionists were now in a hard place.  If they attempted to defend the amply documented brutality of the slave trade, and some did, they risked public opprobrium and in some cases consumer boycotts (often organized by women who in those days had no vote, but did have the power of the purse).  More image-conscious slave-owners, like the CoE, certainly couldn’t justify this level of inhumanity.

 

The Slave Trade Act was passed.  Like many well-meaning campaigns, it had sometragic unintended consequences. The Act stipulated a hefty fine for each slave found on board any British-registered ship, so when an illegal slaver found the Royal Navy bearing down on it, they reduced their likely fine by simply chucking the slaves overboard.

 

It took another 20-odd years for the Slavery Abolition Act to come into force, but the first Act had provided a wedge for shifting public opinion.  If the slave trade could be banned for treating people inhumanely, well, that was an admission that they were in fact people.  This was the idea behind Josiah Wedgwood’s famous pottery medallion of a black man in chains with the slogan ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ (possibly the first campaign badge in history).

 

It is difficult at the distance of a century and more to look into the hearts of the anti-slave trade campaigners and know if they were all really abolitionists biding their time.  Wedgwood’s medallion did no harm to his factory’s profits so he may have had mixed motivations.  But many definitely were abolitionists who were prepared to accept half-way measures in the hope that they would lead to ultimate success.

 

So those who want to see an end to the lèse majesté law can, in a glow of self-righteousness, continue to call for its immediate out-and-out abolition and accept nothing less.  Or they might think tactics and wonder if there might be more successful approaches than a full-frontal assault.