RESCUE Censors Members' Words

Interesting, RESCUE has just censored its Facebook page, removing dozens of contributions made by its 3120 members  from under a series of an unknown number of recent posts - some of which are linked to in texts on this blog. That is rather an interesting comment on the discussion of how Britain goes about debating the preserving its historical heritage. It is also a comment on the value of people spending their time giving an issue raised on their pages some thought and attempting to discuss them like adults. Could it be that in fact the main reason these pages have disappeared from the public domain is that the recent bullying behaviour of some group members towards those raising conservation concerns such as Heritage Action and myself does not reflect particularly well on the membership of the organisation?

By removing these threads of members' comments wholesale, RESCUE is acting in exactly the same manner as the façadists  of metal detecting forums that that will not allow members to speak for themselves but remove posts that do not fit the preferred public image of the hobby. But then, what is the point of spending time contributing in any substantive manner to a public discussion if others are going to decide for you what you are allowed to say and how? That, surely, is the essence of totalitarianism and is the path to dumbdown.

I think this also raises an important question about whether RESCUE exists today for its members, or whether the members are there merely to endorse (and finance) RESCUE and the range of views they represent don't count.