Andrew Doyle - Free Speech And Why It Matters

Published by Constable

ISBN: 978-0-34913-539-7

Copyright Andrew Doyle, 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Constable

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For Jacques Berthoud

19352011

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton, Areopagitica

I ts

Over the past decade, many people have detected a pattern of minor changes in our culture, a kind of piecemeal were recorded by police forces in England and Wales. This sort of development has left a substantial number of us feeling as though we are no longer on secure ground; the tremors are too persistent. The culture wars, although often dismissed by commentators as a manufactured phenomenon, are closely tied to this gnawing sense that something is amiss. Millers experience is one of many stories in which the principle of free speech has been casually disregarded for the sake of what is perceived to be a higher social priority.

Much of this can be explained by a sea change in the publics attitude to free expression and its key function in a liberal society. A new identity-based conceptualisation of social justice has brought with it a mistrust of unfettered speech and appeals for greater intervention from the state. We are left facing that confusing and rare phenomenon: the well-intentioned authoritarian. When those who long for a fairer society are also calling for censorship, we find ourselves stranded on unfamiliar terrain. How are we meant to respond when the people who wish to deprive us of our rights sincerely believe that they are doing so for our own good?

Defenders of free speech are often confronted with the accusation that we are indulging in the slippery slope fallacy. The occasional instance of state overreach, we are told, is hardly cause for alarm. Yet the idea that citizens of the United Kingdom might be investigated for non-crime would have seemed unimaginable twenty years ago. One need only have a cursory familiarity with the history of authoritarianism to know that such regimes do not emerge overnight. I am by no means suggesting that we are freewheeling towards a future of gulags and show trials, but there appears to be a general degree of apathy that bodes ill for the preservation of our fundamental liberties.

Inevitably, the phrase Orwellian has become something of a clich and subject to derision by free speech sceptics, but it is predictable only because it is so pertinent. When Christopher Hitchens visited Prague in 1988 to report on the Communist regime, he was determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of

Similarly, clich or no, the spectre of George Orwell looms large in current debates about freedom of expression. He joins a long line of thinkers who have explored what John Stuart Mill described in 1859 as the . Opposition to free speech never goes away, which is why it must be defended anew in each successive generation. It is a privilege that has been denied to the overwhelming majority of societies in human history. Our civilisation is abnormal, almost miraculous, in its dedication to this most estimable of principles. Free speech dies when the populace grows complacent and takes its liberties for granted.

In 1644, the poet John Milton penned an elegant apologia for freedom of speech called Areopagitica, a counterblast to the otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. The evidence of his studies had persuaded him of the validity of the Copernican theory of the earths motion around the sun. Tellingly, Milton does not defend Galileos views at this time the Ptolemaic model of the universe was accepted by most educated people but he clearly feels aggrieved at those authorities who would see the free-thinkers of the world punished and shamed.

History does not look fondly on the hubris of those who, like Galileos inquisitors, appoint themselves as arbiters of permissible speech and thought. Their authority is only ever contingent on the wisdom of their time. Todays free speech sceptics are characterised by a similar tendency to mistake self-satisfaction for infallibility. If nothing else, the story of Galileo is a potent reminder of the importance of freedom of speech, and how none of us can ever be sure which heresies of today will become the certainties of tomorrow.

I start from the proposition that free speech is nothing less than the keystone of our civilisation. You may have reservations about this view. You may believe that unlimited speech enables the worst elements among us to commit harm. There is much to be said in favour of this perspective, although I hope to show you that a society that abandons freedom of expression risks exacerbating the very problems about which you are rightly concerned.

W e have much in common. We would rather live in a world in which love and compassion triumph over hatred and bigotry. We believe that we have a responsibility not only for the wellbeing of ourselves but for those around us. We are troubled when people are mistreated, particularly for immutable characteristics over which they have no control. We feel that individuals should think before they speak and consider carefully the impact of their words.

All of which amounts to a substantial bedrock of shared values upon which we can build. Some are persuaded that these values are threatened by absolute freedom of speech. In this little book, I will try to show that the reverse is true, and that preventing individuals from expressing themselves as they see fit represents a far greater menace to social cohesion. If we agree on nothing else, we can at least accept that our goals are similar even if our views on how best to achieve them are not.

By acknowledging that our intentions are good, we are in a position to move forward and consider our differences and how to spread hatred. In my view, free speech is a principle that transcends notions of left and right because all forms of political discourse depend upon its existence. Yes, unpleasant people are bound to use their speech to advance reactionary ideas, but the human right that enables them to do so is precisely the same right that allows us to counter them.

Moreover, if we permit the worst people in society to take ownership of our most fundamental values, we are gifting them a degree of power they do not deserve. Simply because hate-fuelled demagogues might disingenuously proclaim their fealty to free speech, this does not mean that the principle itself is tainted by association. Good people should not abandon their beliefs when bad people claim them for their own. If they do, such beliefs can only ever be said to have been tenuously held.

Free speech is the marrow of democracy. Without it, no other liberties exist. It is detested by tyrants because it empowers their captive subjects. It is mistrusted by puritans because it is the wellspring of subversion. Unless we are able to speak our minds, we cannot innovate, or even begin to make sense of the world. As Thomas Hobbes noted, the Greeks had but one word,