Swift unpacks the risks of the growing calls for restrictions on free speech following the riots
You know that conversation. The one where your interlocutor says “I believe in freedom of speech, but…”, followed by an apparently reasonable explanation of why - just in this particular case - freedom of speech has to be disregarded.
The recent riots have spawned plenty of this kind of rhetorical legerdemain. It need to be called out, because it is more dangerous than anything Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate or indeed Elon Musk can ever say.
We’ve had the Mayor of London calling for the recent online Safety Act to be tightened, specifically to force social media platforms to take down ‘harmful’ content. Not illegal, just harmful.
We have had a Conservative peer (James Bethell, a former minister, no less) demanding a government ban on advertising on X - ironically in a series of posts on X.
There have been at least three quite lengthy sentences handed out to idiots who have not actually done any stone-throwing but have encouraged others to do so. Incidentally, how swift the wheels of justice moves when the criminals are the dregs of the white working class, yet how slowly they revolve otherwise!
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has dumped the Bill protecting freedom of speech at universities, on the completely spurious pretence that it might put Jewish students at risk; but really because university managements don’t want the hassle of protecting the great unwoke on campus, and would much prefer that they stayed away.
Swift believes that principles matter here. Phillipson’s move is entirely symptomatic of the left position on freedom of speech: if it offends anyone (with the exception of Conservatives, Zionists - and Jews more generally, anti-abortion campaigners, and gender-critical feminists, who don’t count and can be shouted down with impunity) it must be curtailed.
This is the slipperiest slope of them all. It reminds Swift of the famous lament by Pastor Niemoller about the Third Reich:
‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Then the came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.’
We are not living under the Nazis and Keir Starmer is not about to announce the abolition of dissent. That is not the threat. The threat is the creeping erosion of the right of British citizens to speak their minds on issues which matter to them: including - indeed particularly - when other people get upset about what they say.
Freedom of speech has never been absolute in the UK, let’s be clear. There’s a big difference between saying ‘I hate Muslims’ or ‘I hate Muslims and think they should be deported’ (unpleasant but permissible); and ‘I hate Muslims and think they should all be killed’.
The last distinction was obviously lost on the Labour councillor who suggested that anti-immigrant demonstrators should have their throats cut. Absolute charmer on the doorstep, apparently.
English law has never looked with favour on those who incite specific acts of violence. Nor have we had a long story of complete freedom of speech, as those who have studied the long history of seditious libel will know.
Yet while England slept, the presumption that a man was free to speak his mind without having his collar felt by Plod has been substantially eroded. People who have expressed the simple truth that sex is immutable have been visited and warned.
Remarkably, the police classify something as a hate incident if the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. Intent matters not. From there it is a short step to a prosecution for a hate crime.
The calls for online speech to be more aggressively restricted are not only impractical, but should be rejected on their lack of merit. So what if Sadiq Khan doesn’t like it? If he, and people like him, run the show then we are in the territory of state censorship.
Swift has always believed that the US has got this right. The First Amendment has proven to be one of the best aspects of American democracy:
‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble’. This is not absolute: incitement to imminent crime is not protected, and there is a handful of other exceptions. But it is pretty broad.
Rightly so. It is far better to allow people to say stupid or racist things and be ridiculed for them, than to put them in prison and make martyrs of them. The recent riots do not change this principle. We need more freedom of speech, not less.