Immoral Censorship Laws Only Lead to Hardship

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Immoral Censorship Laws Only Lead to Hardship

Adam Garrie • 26 October 2020

Laws which give judges the ability to punish individuals for exercising the ancient right to speak freely are laws that should be done away with entirely.

The war against free speech in Britain has been waged by officialdom for decades. Like most attempts to exorcise freedom in democratic countries, the passage of laws including the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act and 2010 Equality Act, was conducted with little fanfare and even less meaningful scrutiny. When it comes to the enforcement of such illiberal laws, one can also observe a pattern designed to promote a complacent attitude among the public. First of all, such laws are barely used and as a result, few people are conscious as to their existence. Later, these laws are invoked to censor individuals and groups that are either incredibly obscure or incredibly distasteful. But given enough time and such laws will be used against people who are widely regarded as decent and even mainstream.

Such is the case in respect of a law from 1986 – a law as flawed and illiberal as the aforementioned pieces of New Labour legislation. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 allows for the criminal prosecution of those whose erstwhile free speech is deemed to be “threatening” or “abusive”. Not only is this law a blatantly illiberal attempt to legislate morality, but over the decades, judges have applied a wide variety of tests when interpreting this vague piece of legislation.

This demonstrates the dangerous of vague and overly encompassing legislation, whilst it also confirms the dangers of attempting to legislate in the name of decency, rather than in the name of objective pragmatism. Although some judges have to their credit, taken a classical liberal view of this legislation, other jurists have not.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer recently made it explicitly clear that he believes in a highly authoritarian interpretation of this legislation when commenting on the ongoing police investigation into journalist Darren Grimes.

The Grimes matter has been something of a watershed moment for many. Unlike obscure bloggers or religious fanatics, Grimes is a mainstream commentator whose potential “crime” involves interviewing an historian (Professor David Starkey) who for decades was a fixture on the BBC, in spite of his well known appetite for courting controversy.

But whilst many are rightly pointing out the absurdity of a police investigation into a journalist who conducted an interview of a public figure, these same people have failed to understand that the fault lies not in the specific application of the law, but in the law itself.

Laws which give judges (whether well meaning or otherwise) the ability to punish individuals for exercising the ancient right to speak freely, are laws that should be done away with entirely. It is of equal importance that the supposedly moral arguments in favour of these laws are as flawed as the laws themselves.

The rationale behind these laws is to protect minority groups from experiencing harm. This is not only a non-empirical argument but it is ahistorical.

Throughout history, whenever there have been violent racial or religious tensions, ethnic cleansing or genocide, these ghastly events have followed previous years of censorship, economic disability and social disability. There has never been a single genocide, ethnic cleansing or issue of racial tension that has been caused by “too much free speech”, “too much economic liberty” or “too much social freedom”. On the contrary, dictatorships that seek to marginalise minority groups begin by taking away their right to speak and publish freely. Then their right to assemble is revoked. Finally, their right to operate a business or hold normal employment is taken away. Once all of this has been done, the seeds of future killing fields have been sown.

It is governments and regimes that are responsible for the sliding scale of horrors outlined above. By taking away the freedom of speech for minority groups and by taking away the right of the majority to use their free speech to defend the rights of minorities, one is in fact preparing the ground for events that have been mercifully unknown in Britain.

Rather than growing exhausted with the intricacies of manifestly immoral laws, one would be better advised to spend one’s time campaigning against the laws themselves. Until such repeals are enacted by Parliament, censorship will continue unabated and the Darren Grimes issue will become one of many travesties of injustice.

Free speech itself is harmless but censorship is automatically harmful. Historically, the results of censorship have never led to harmony and fellowship but instead have led to the worst crimes against humanity that the world has known.

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

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