Charlie Amos – defending freedom
Friday, January 19, 2024 at 12:00 
You may not have heard of Charlie Amos and nor, to be fair, had I until a few months ago.
Then, two days after Rishi Sunak announced a generational tobacco sales ban, Charlie sent me an article he had written opposing the ban and asked if we would publish it on the Forest website.
I replied that we don’t publish articles on the site, but I suggested he try the online magazine Spiked, or CapX.
I heard nothing more but it was subsequently published on the 1868 website (The Terrible Reasoning Behind Sunak’s Smoking Ban).
A second article (Against the Tobacco Ban) also appeared on Charlie's blog, The Musing Individualist.
On January 4 he followed it with a third article (The Battle against the Tobacco Ban), an amusing piece in which he described a day spent gathering signatures for a petition against the tobacco sales ban.
The responses he received from members of the public rang true, and I was impressed.
Last week Charlie contacted me again and asked if we would support an action day in Parliament Square, collecting signatures and handing out leaflets.
I wished him well but declined for several reasons that I won’t go into here, although it was partly to do with the fact that we have our own event taking place in the House of Commons next month and all our efforts are focused on that.
Also, I had one or two reservations about his messaging. For example, his leaflets and banner argue that the generational ban would ‘put thousands of people in the tobacco industry out of work’, which I’m not sure is a vote winner unless you extend the definition of tobacco industry to retailers.
I also discovered that Charlie has a mildly chequered political past. A few years ago he was ousted as president of King’s College London Conservative Association only weeks after he was elected. Then again, that’s student politics for you, so I would be a fool to hold that against him.
Check out his videos on YouTube (notably this one, although there are several more) and you’ll discover a rather eccentric figure, to the point where I began to wonder whether 'Charles Amos' was actually a rather clever spoof.
But no, Charlie Amos is real, and has a genuine sense of humour. Better still, he's not afraid to laugh at himself, which is refreshing in politics.
It’s not, perhaps, the type of humour that translates to a Forest campaign (although I am reminded of a video we shot for the Hands Off Our Packs campaign in 2013), but I nevertheless admire anyone who takes the time and trouble to stand up and be counted, even at risk of public humiliation.
It takes courage, and if I had one I’d take my hat off to him.
As it happens, the only negative comment I’ve seen so far was the suggestion that he ‘looks likes a 1970s accountant’, which I’m sure the winner of the IEA Intern of The Year Award in 2019 will take with a large pinch of salt.
Reader Comments (2)
Good for him. We should all get behind protests against government criminalisation of lifestyles and prohibition of legal activity.
Our voice is always silenced, our representatives are slandered as crackpots or bad guys with industry and profit making vested interests, so the more ordinary people who take to the streets to protest this outrage the better.
We have been hidden from view and silenced for far too long. This government and the next must see us and hear us and if law tries to take our voice, we must take to the streets.
Where do we email to stop this assault on freedom?