Columns of journalistic space in recent months have been dedicated to the risks posed to vital freedoms, especially freedom of speech, and so too opinion, by a creeping intolerance of “giving offence”. The Economist talked in May of Europe’s free speech problem, “The continent that gave the world the Enlightenment has forgotten how to nurture free expression”. A separate article in May describes “Britain’s muddled laws are restricting online speech”,exemplifying the extreme case of 6 police officers arresting Maxie Allen and his partner at their house, having searched it, and then detaining them at the Police Station for 8 hours. Their crime was disparaging emails and WhatsApp messages about their daughter’s primary school.
THE UK MUDDLE
In the UK today, there are about 30 arrests per day for online posts being regarded as offensive. This is roughly the same as the arrest rate for burglary. Unlike certain other crimes, the police are required to investigate every online post reported to them. Recent decades have seen an obsession with what are known as hate crimes, and the nastiness of people offending others with words. But the laws in the UK are often vague and open to wide interpretation. Hate crimes are based on offence around Race, Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation and Transgender identity. It is also a crime since 2003 to be “grossly offensive” on a public electronic communications network, e.g. the internet.
Then in the UK there are non-crime hate incidents, where if someone feels offended by another person, they can report them, and the police record the case and sometimes investigate the alleged offender. The case of the police pursuit of the journalist Alison Pearson for a tweet acquired notoriety for its ludicrousness but also the unnecessary suffering it caused. In 2024 police recorded some 13,200 such cases. What a waste of time where there is no crime, and the procedure, whereby the accused may not even be told the identity of the offended party, defies all ideas of normal justice, a disgraceful almost Putinesque world. Angry outbursts, even extremely unpleasant ones, are part of normal life’s ups and downs to be coped with.
And recently the mess is up in lights with the case of the incarceration of Lucy Connolly, who in anger tweeted a very offensive and foolish message of hatred against asylum seekers and immigrants following the Southport child murders. She was incited by lying misinformation spread by extremists that the murderer was an asylum seeking Muslim when he was in fact a British born teenager, the son of Rwandan Christian parents. Lucy Connolly retracted the tweet quickly and showed remorse: how many people will have been outraged and felt no doubt a hatred for the murderer but kept silent. She is a mother of perfectly reasonable character and history it seems, but the judge and the Appeal court deemed a 31 month prison sentence appropriate. They would not reduce the sentence even as the Home Secretary contemplates the early release of hardened dangerous criminals to relieve pressure on overcrowded prisons. The justice system looks mad but reflects the distorted obsessions of today. The real culprits were the lying promulgators of misinformation who go unpunished.
The Voltaire related quote “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” not surprisingly, keeps appearing in articles bewailing the curtailment of free speech.
RESILIENCE UNDERMINED BY UNWORLDY MOLLYCODDLING
It is surely time to understand that the law is a bad instrument to improve general standards of behaviour. The law sets a minimum at best, and any law concerning every day behaviour must be readily interpretable and easily capable of application by citizens day to day. Some Covid restrictions were unreal and subjective, and so unfair. Subjective anti-hate laws and the non-crime hate incident which are based on the sensitivity of the person who hears the offence are perhaps not just useless but immoral. They totally undermine freedom to speak one’s mind and to express controversial opinions. And the average police officer, like the average person, is ill-equipped to distinguish premeditated hate messages designed to incite violence from simply angry or argumentative or insulting exchanges.
Some schools have “resilience” among their values. Is it not the duty of parents and schools to prepare the young for all the world can throw at them? The last resort when a person is offended or dislikes the way the world is going is that they run off to complain to a third party and seek them to sort out their problem. Will not everybody in life get abused verbally, often very offensively? Bullies at work, big mouths in the street or who hate your driving? Will not people see images, films, literature which may offend their sensibilities (this is not about hard-core porn or violence) ? Arguments in the bar or at college where people are poles apart but need to civilly express themselves but may lapse into abuse? On the football terrace the other side’s supporters will taunt and aggravate, as in many other situations? We will all be called losers at some point, even with very violent language. Anger is a normal emotion which needs to be controlled to prevent unintended damage but is also an essential valve and valid expression: recipients of abuse may have to endure.
Society seems to have appreciated how wrong it has been at Universities and other institutions to cancel speaker s and people who may have controversial views. But the practice of trigger warnings for students is rife, lest say Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales may shock them. People need to be capable of being shocked and bounce back, keeping words and opinions in perspective. The ability and necessity to bounce back is being eroded.
Now we even have the Ministry for Education talking of courses in schools on teaching “grit”. Will there be a separate grit Department soon as if that would solve the problem? Promoting freedom of expression and creating a culture of tolerance of stupid offensive language is perhaps a responsibility of all sensible adults, not requiring new rules.
A lot of resilience got lost in the pandemic as people depended on the State to protect them from all ill. That needs reversal.
FREEDOMS ARE SACROSANCT
The erosion of freedoms is today acquiring momentum, and even acceptance, and needs to be resisted. But the likes of Trump do not help: his and his vice president’s passion for free speech is admirable, if it were not tainted with the hypocrisy of their intolerance for anybody who disagrees with or defies them.
Americans have the First Amendment which embeds the rights of freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and petitioning Government. It would be good to see the same promulgated widely in the UK even if not codified in law. These freedoms are being taken away in States like Hungary and Turkey, and are of course already gone in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to name a few, and are severely restricted in countless countries. They are also being nibbled away at an alarming rate in established democratic countries like the UK, a bastion of freedom. Europe and the UK need to stand up and be counted, reversing dilution especially of free speech. While for example incitement to violence say towards a minority group or abuse of children must be contained and the balance of order versus anarchy maintained, surely laws which penalise controversial views, offensive language or even words of hatred need to be binned. It is surely time for people to toughen up, learn to be insulted and learn to deal rationally with the offence. Usually, extreme insults say more about the abuser than the abused.
See also: –
Policing Free Speech – Curtailing Freedoms, Hate Crime and Learning not to Take Offence – Wokeness, Liberals and Protecting Freedom of Speech – Eton Mess- Freedom of Thought, Speech and Debate – Free Speech, Sport, Homophobia, Banter and Harassment – Free Speech, Debating not Deleting
