When it comes to the question of free speech, the Greeks said it best. “Parrhesia” or “uninhibited speech” means to speak freely or frankly. Euripides the dramatist, below, depicts Athens as a place where free males can speak freely on public affairs. In his play The Phoenician Women he says: “This is slavery: not to speak one’s thought.”
This is the most fundamental aspect of the question of free speech: it is freedom of thought. And that entails the freedom literally to speak our mind.
In the ancient world of Athens and later, republican Rome, there were certainly curbs on some aspects of speech — slander, for instance — but for free citizens, the freedom to take part in public debate was a crucial aspect of liberty. Conversely, to be denied that right was, as Euripides put it, slavery.
For much of British history, there have been restrictions on the free expression of opinion, chiefly in respect of religion. Henry VIII imposed restrictions on printing in 1538, whereby books had to be approved in advance of publication by the Privy Council to suppress dissent against his own ideological project, the English Reformation.
John Milton’s Areopagitica, published in 1644, argued against that control and some of his arguments haven’t been improved on since. He opposed the 1643 Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing, whereby Parliament required authors to have a licence for their work to be published.
Milton, obviously, was not a libertarian; he was not in favour of publishing libellous or blasphemous books. But his defence of authors should give us pause: “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”
It may be that in defending free speech we may have to defend bad books, but no one who remembers the murderous Islamist campaign against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses can seriously doubt that Milton’s argument is still valid. That book was effectively killed, and so, almost, was its author. As Milton put it, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Milton’s argument won … eventually. Censorship and licensing of the press ended in 1695. Freedom of expression in Parliament was guaranteed by the 1689 Bill of Rights. But freedom of the press was only established gradually. Britain has never had the equivalent of the The First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights which guaranteed freedom of speech and the press.
It’s hard to think of anyone who put the case for free speech better than John Stuart Mill in his work, On Liberty (1859): “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind…. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” In other words, Mill makes the case especially for the protection of opinions that may be wrong, and at odds with the opinion of the majority.
From censorship to suppression
These battles seemed to have been won when the Human Rights Act of 1998 incorporated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, guaranteeing freedom of expression.
But this Article has not in fact been as useful as we thought. During times of war, governments naturally censor the press and the press meets it halfway. But during the Covid pandemic, which had the aspect of a war, the government of the day went out of its way to suppress dissident views on ways of dealing with it. In 2020, the digital secretary Oliver Dowden and health secretary Matt Hancock agreed with social media platforms on new measures to limit the spread of vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Facebook, Twitter and Google committed to respond to flagged content more swiftly, and to work with authorities to promote scientifically accurate messages. In other words, the social media companies went along with censoring criticism of the vaccines.
Obviously, the Government was right to promote Covid vaccines but the effect of the censorship was to chill even informed and scientific examination of possible risks. It now seems that some of the concerns were justified. Last year, AstraZeneca admitted for the first time in court documents that its Covid vaccine can cause a rare side effect and may have done so in dozens of cases.
To say as much is not to argue against vaccines; merely to restate the point that freedom of expression of opinion is better than its suppression because some opinions governments seek to suppress may be at least partly true. And open debate is a better means of arriving at truth.
There is, in fact, one area where free speech is very much not allowable, and that is on abortion and within 150 metres of an abortion clinic. There are punitive legal restrictions on anyone even standing silently within this area. Recently one woman was arrested and fined £20,000 for holding a placard saying, “Here to talk if you want” near a clinic. How is this intimidatory or threatening? And if it is simply a silent protest, why should it be banned at all?
Britain’s blasphemy laws were finally abolished with an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, though it should be said that the last successful prosecution was in 1977 and the law was effectively a dead letter by then. Most of us would feel that religion should be treated with respect, but without the sanction of the law. Yet we’re witnessing what looks like the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through the concept of “Islamophobia”.
Indeed this is already having a chilling effect on free speech. Labour’s approach is set out in its official online advice for local parties, as “Labour’s Islamophobia Policy”.
Banning free debate is to give up on politics. Is this what Labour is about?
Critics of the policy say it is effectively closing down free debate on the most important issues of the day. What else do you call banning the expression of popular concern about migration and its effects? It is certainly to abandon any attempt to deal with the underlying religious and cultural aspects of gang rapes and Islamist terrorism. It is, in fact, to give up on politics by banning free debate. If this is really what Labour is about, it’s a danger to our freedoms.
Things will get worse if a new definition of Islamophobia is adopted. In February, the Government established an independent working group, chaired by the admirable Dominic Grieve KC, to advise on a definition of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia. The Free Speech Union is among those who are concerned that it will entail setting “appropriate limits to free speech” when talking about Muslims.
The problem with hate speech
Earlier this year we found that the police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other forums — which are, in effect, the modern equivalent of a pub discussion. We’re not, it seems, talking about outright incitements to violence or threats to individuals; but hate speech. We owe that loaded term to the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 which created an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion. Before that, the Public Order Act 1986, and subsequent amendments, criminalised the use of threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour intended to stir up hatred based on race, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics.
That’s more problematic than it sounds because the offence is defined by the alleged victim. The Crown Prosecution Service identifies hate crime as “Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.” In short, our freedom of expression depends on the sensitivity of anyone who comes across it who might consider what we say offensive. This is not a firm basis on which to ground our freedom of speech. And this was the basis on which police accused The Daily Telegraph columnist, Allison Pearson of “a non-crime hate incident”, a term introduced by the UK’s College of Policing, for a single tweet.
In the face of all this, you know what we need? A return to the enlightened and liberal values of the fifth century before Christ. Bring back the Athenian concept of parrhesia or “uninhibited speech”. Right now, we are running away from it.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for The London Standard
