It’s abundantly clear that Britain has a free speech crisis. Britons are increasingly feeling that they cannot speak on topics that might be deemed ‘controversial’ and this has been somewhat confirmed by a recent survey done by the civil liberties group Liberty.
GB News said:
“The majority of Britons believe their confidence in the Government's ability to protect free speech has deteriorated under Labour, a new poll has found.
Some 51 per cent said their confidence in the Government to protect their right to express views, even when those views disagree with the Government, had worsened over the past two years, according to polling commissioned for civil rights organisation Liberty.
Just 10 per cent of Britons believed their free speech rights had improved, the polling carried out by Deltapoll for Liberty revealed.
Liberty laid blame on the Home Office, citing travel bans for activists hoping to speak in the UK, the mass arrests of Palestine Action protesters and tougher approaches to protest laws.”
These figures do not surprise me. Britain is now notorious as a nation that that has abandoned the concept of freedom of speech. As regards the complaints that the ‘Pally-wankers’ have been silenced, I despise their cause but they should have the same right as any other Briton to peacefully espouse their cause.
GB News added:
“Akiko Hart, Liberty’s director, said Sir Keir Starmer had failed to show "leadership and consistency" on free speech, which has led to claims of "two-tier" policing.
She told The Telegraph: "The new Prime Minister [Andy Burnham] must see these findings as a warning sign.
"Free speech is a fundamental right that benefits us all, and a healthy democracy depends on people feeling confident that they can express themselves freely and disagree with each other.” “
Ms Hart is indeed correct, free speech is a fundamental right or should be for Britons, The problem is that this right has been successively taken away piecemeal by one government after another.
Free speech is essential as it is only by speaking ideas and debating them that good ideas can be separated from bad ones. As the American political commentator has been very fond of saying ‘the best cure for hateful speech is more speech’. We do not as a society make those who make hateful statements go away by silencing their views in public, but by empowering everyone with the freedom to counter those whose views might be said to be wrong.
Labour has clearly not been good for freedom of speech and it is a situation that is liable to worsen as time goes on. We can only hope that a future government will understand that destroying freedom of speech has had terrible consequences and will reverse the many ‘speech offences’ that Britons are subject to.
Link
GB News item on how Britons freedom of speech is suffering
https://www.gbnews.com/news/free-speech-worsened-under-labour-liberty-polling
