Foreign? Then shut your face.

I listened with utter horror to Radio 4 this morning as government minister Phil Woolas announced that freedom of speech would soon apply only to citizens of this country. Anybody hoping to gain citizenship would have to give up any ideas of legally exercising freedom of speech.

This is insane. Firstly - the UK has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that being human and alive automatically garners certain rights. Amongst them is the right to free expression.

Secondly, and on a very practical basis: will a letter to a newspaper objecting to this or that policy be checked by the immigration service in case the author is foreign? Will people on a legal demonstration have to bring their ID cards? Then the police can take the names of anyone foreign for punishment (demerits on their citizenship points) while allowing everybody else to carry on?

It will, of course, apply only to the poor, black and Muslims. If an EU citizen (I'm on an Irish passport) protested perfectly legally and then was refused UK citizenship, what difference would it make? EU citizens have the right to work, live and vote anywhere in the EU, whereas someone from outside the EU would remain stateless, poor and vulnerable for making exactly the same protest. Mmmm, natural justice.

One of the things the UK prides itself on (falsely, to some extent: remember one side of the Northern Irish struggle being silenced on TV?) is its tolerance of dissent. That's why Marx ended up in London, writing the Manifesto, boffing the maid and knocking policemen's helmets off after a good Saturday night. Extending citizenship only to those willing to repress any independent thought is horrifying.

Can you imagine the consequences of this in recent memory? Jean-Charles de Menezes's family and friends could have been silenced. Peter Hain (South African) and other anti-apartheid campaigners would have been silenced because the Tories were firm friends of the South African regime etc. etc. etc.

Finally, this sinister suggestion conflates the state or nation and the government. Governments are partisan and temporary, and silencing dissent against a policy that could be reversed in a few months' time is astonishingly unjust. It's perfectly acceptable to deny citizenship to individuals who might damage the stability of the nation or the state - but governments are neither.