Crash Bang Wallace

I am uncomfortable about the burqa.

I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a twinge of unease about someone excluding themselves almost totally from social interaction. I’m not going to peddle the obvious untruth that every woman who veils herself from head to toe does so out of personal choice. Nor can I turn a blind eye to the fact that one rarely sees the husbands of burqa-clad women wearing restrictive, uncomfortable and old-fashioned clothes themselves.

In truth, it is a totally inappropriate institution – a form of clothing totally out of place for our society and our enlightened times that establishes a barrier between different individuals and groups. But I will not be supporting Philip Hollobone’s proposed ban.

Yesterday, I was at a picnic in Hyde Park. Ten of us, friends from university, lounged in the sun, grazing on an increasingly warm selection of the kind of food you only ever seem to eat at picnics.

About thirty yards down the hill, another group did the same. The only incongruity was that, despite adopting the same sunbathing poses, they all did so in burqas.

And so did hundreds of other women. I hadn’t realised, but it seems that Sundays in Hyde Park are a real society event when it comes to displaying quite how much of yourself you can bear to keep covered up in black cloth in blazing sunshine.

And not only that – it seems that accessorising one’s burqa is de rigueur. I have never seen so many Gucci handbags and Dior sunglasses in one place in all my life.

It was a pretty odd scene, seeing woman who have obviously gone to great trouble to hide themselves then going to almost as much trouble to draw attention to themselves with a massive pair of leopard-print-and-gold shades.

Fairly obviously, it was quite an alien scene, too. The burqa is utterly divorced from the history and tradition that created Hyde Park, just as its wearers are divorced from the wider society in which the rest of us live today. It is often said that it is simply an un-British thing to do, to totally veil oneself – and that argument has some merit.

But, lazing in the sun and testing my own gut reactions to the burqa, it struck me that the banning of it would be even more un-British than the wearing of it.

Do we really want a Britain where the police turn up at Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to pursue and arrest all those who have turned up in a particular type of clothing?

Would it ever be a source of pride that Britain was the kind of place where officials can drag you before a court because you failed to display enough of your body?

By all means we should be free to argue against a religion that encourages a woman to feel she must hide herself away. The forces of law and order should do their best to ensure that no-one is forced to wear a burqa or pursue any other practice that they do not want.

But if you find it is un-British to see someone in a burqa lounging in the park, consider for a moment quite how un-British it would be to see that person cuffed, and bundled into a police van – just for attending a picnic.