BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

Come rain or shine, I take a long stroll each morning before breakfast along the same network of country paths. The dogs enjoy a good wander and a swim, and I relish returning home for a well-deserved cup of tea. In the spring and summer, the walk can be spectacular as the sun rises and the Devon skies unfold their breathtaking beauty over nearby lakes. In autumn and winter, it can be more of a struggle to get out of bed, but once out and about, the hill climbs soon get the blood pumping.

‘Individuis libertas concedatur’ – Freedom be granted to individuals

One morning, as I walked, a figure emerged from the darkness, walking towards me. A man with a pointy white beard, dressed in what looked like a monk’s habit, carrying a towering carved wooden staff topped with a deer’s head. I was somewhat startled to see him, as one would be to bump into Gandalf at half past five on a Tuesday morning in November. Nonetheless, I bade him a “good morning” and carried on my way, wondering whether he was real or if I’d somehow inhaled a magic mushroom.

Since that day, I’ve seen this same fellow several times on my morning walks. He seems real enough, although I cannot be completely sure. He is an amiable sort, speaking in a peculiar Yoda-esque style:

“Good morning.”

“A good morning it is, sir.”

One morning, I was clearly still half asleep and complimented him on his “lovely rod.” His gentlemanly reply, “a lovely carved rod it is too, sir, that it is,” politely reduced my comment to the banality it merited (and, by its naïve innocence, originally intended).

Mea culpa – loose lips sink ships – the story soon went around my household that I had complimented a stranger – “a gay wizard” no less – on his “lovely rod” deep in the woods early one morning. And so it became that my morning walks were “not for the dogs but dogging”. My son even gave the wizard a name, ‘Edwin’, and the family joke persists.

So why mention Wizard Edwin here?

For my taunting son, I used the idea of Edwin (I still have no idea who the polite eccentric with the carved rod is – he could be the local druid, an apparition, or an escapee called Barry from the local Loonie bin for all I know) as an illustration of an individual’s right to freedom.

I tried in vain to explain how the individual, like a solitary bloom pushing through the cracks of the earth, possesses an inherent right to freedom, to be eccentric, normal, weird or rude. How this freedom is not a mere abstract notion but a vital force that nourishes the very essence of humanity. How it is the space within which we grow, learn, and express ourselves, unbound by the constraints of external forces.

I tried to explain how each individual’s liberty forms the lifeblood of a free society – a society that many Great Britons, like my grandfathers, fought to preserve. How miraculous it is, through this portfolio of inherited individual liberties – the right to think, speak, and act according to one’s conscience – that societies find a way to evolve, progress, and flourish. How to deny the likes of ‘Edwin’ his freedoms and eccentricities is the thin end of the wedge – to silence the chorus of individual voices, to dim the often-ugly brilliance of difference, and to stifle the very spirit of human endeavour.

My son doesn’t care much to listen. Fair enough, he’s only just a teenager, currently more interested in one-upmanship, rugby and tits.

Maybe someone would be so kind as to get the Labour ‘government’ – our supposed public ‘servants’ – to listen?

While we strive for a society where kindness and compassion prevail, we should be honest enough to admit the Truth of human nature, encompassing both the saint and the sinner. As law-keeper and now lawmaker, our current Prime Minister, above all, should appreciate the delicate balance of liberty and order; that we Brits create space for the cuck and the misogynist, the anti-fascist and the racist, the Islamist and the counter-Islamist, the free-thinker and the bigot. A society truly embracing freedom allows for the expression of a wide range of opinions and eccentricities, while simultaneously safeguarding its citizens from harm. The law should serve as a shield, protecting the vulnerable while allowing for the expression of even the most disagreeable views. British common sense always wins through, as oppression never suited us, just as the straitjackets of forced utopian / religious ‘communities’ have always repulsed us to the point of us distancing ourselves from them with sufficient froideur.

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Let the Edwins of this world be free to roam.

Let the land which oddballs, incels, bigots, and fruitcakes have roamed for years not permit, for the first time in half a millennium, any thought police to oppress us.

Should I meet a violent end on a morning walk, perhaps with a telltale deer imprint on my battered bonce, let the above remain unaltered, and on my gravestone the inscription ‘Individuis libertas concedatur’, so sound and true, echo through future generations of Britons, forever and a day.

Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine and the author of Dear Townies and Arcadia among other books.