"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." (Voltaire)
If you asked people in western liberal democracies what they valued most, I'm guessing that freedom of speech would be pretty high up the list. So why do we treat this cherished right with so little respect? When I say "we", I'm talking about the UK. In some places, like the US, they have this enshrined in their constitution. Maybe we should do the same. In fact the whole issue as to whether we need a written constitution has become a much hotter topic in recent years and will be the subject of future blogging. But in the meantime, let's just think about why even humble bloggers like yours truly have to be careful what we say.
Of course the attacks on freedom of speech are nothing new, as can be demonstrated by number 2 in my series of undergraduate reminiscences. One of the first things that struck me as a wide-eyed 18 year-old was how politicised the students union seemed to be. Politics came well down my list of priorities after girls, beer, rock music, etc. (and I speak as someone who'd studied politics at A level and was just about to study a fair bit more of the stuff) and ditto for all my friends, so why were the walls covered in posters advertising political societies? Get out more, for God's sake!
Needless to say, these "socs" were invariably of the left-wing variety: CP, IMG, SWP and other acronyms too boring to recall (never mind to spell out - look them up if you don't know.) One of the most popular subjects for debate was "no platform for fascists". I use the word "debate" here very loosely. The obvious hypocrisy of this slogan was breathtaking. Surely one of the key characteristics of fascism is its totalitarian nature and its rejection of pluralism, implying a refusal to allow freedom of speech. So refusing to allow fascists to speak, is itself an act of fascism. Yes?! My young head was spinning: it was time to check out the bar/female talent/record shops.
If you put this accusation of hypocrisy to a member of one of these acronym-clad societies, the response ranges from "yeah, but fascists are bastards so..." (student from one of those universities that used to be a catering college) to a full-on exposition of Marxist historical inevitability (Russel Group student, probably ex public school). The whole thing was brilliantly parodied by Malcolm Bradbury in "the History Man" (check it out...plus the BBC dramatisation which was superb...a young Sir Anthony Sher in the lead role). But what it boils down to is the cunning use by some people of trendy (or these days, politically correct) ideas to impose their views and stifle the alternatives.
More recently, this kind of oppression has surfaced in other forms. Almost exactly a year ago, BP was in Big Poo following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. There was some tragic loss of life but this was soon forgotten when apparently a couple of pelicans got a bit grubby and the local prawns tasted a bit off for a while. Tony Hayward, BP's head man at the time, tried to do the right thing of damping down the knee-jerk panic by saying that it was not that big a deal. Outrage! How dare he say that! What about the pelicans?! For this, he lost his job. If O'bama had had his way, he would have lost a lot more. But guess what? Hayward was right. But it seems that speaking the truth is not OK any more.
Here's another one. In November last year, a government adviser, "enterprise tsar" Lord Young, said that for many people the recession would be not be so bad and in fact for some it would be great news, as the reduction in interest rates meant they were saving a fortune on their mortgage repayments. Quite obviously, and much more so than Tony Hayward's statements, this is true. But it wasn't the sort of truth that the prevailing PC climate recognised, so he too lost his job. Similar fates have befallen drugs advisers Dr Hans-Christian Raabe and David Nutt who both dared to say things which while true or at least arguably true, the government didn't like.
Then there's Andy Gray and the other bloke on Sky who made a few sardonic remarks about female football officials. Never mind that these remarks were made in private, they had to go. Next up after defenestration for public comments and private comments, hard labour because of unacceptable thoughts: I'm sure the technology is not far away. The Brain Police are coming.
You can probably think up many more of these sorts of "just because it's true doesn't make it right" examples. The ones I've quoted may not seem so earth-shattering, especially in isolation but there's another much more worrying strain of oppression out there. There's a chap called Ben Goldacre who wrote a book called Bad Science (it's a must-read, believe me). In it, there's a chapter excluded from early editions as he was under attack from lawyers armed with obscure Latin phrases and powered by outrageous hourly charge-out rates, funded by someone called Matthias Rath. All Goldacre did was to state the facts about what Rath (a "nutritionist") had been up to, notably in South Africa where AIDS is a national disaster but one that Rath said could be alleviated, not by the accepted medical means but by vitamin pills. His vitamin pills. The fact that Rath and his lawyers could suppress Goldacre's writing is also a national disaster. Why can't we do something about it? Check out Goldacre's web-site or his book for fuller details. It will make you weep/squirm/write to your MP/furious.
I've not even mentioned super-injunctions. You may think that some footballer trying to prevent us knowing that he's been playing away while playing away is no big deal. But then there was the case of a company called Trafigura who tried and for a time, succeeded, in stopping us knowing about the effects of its toxic waste-dumping in Africa. It's hard to know what other truths we are prevented from knowing by super-injunctions as, by definition, we're not allowed to know what the super-injunction is all about.
It's all gone much too far. "No platform for fascists" has become no platform for anyone to write or speak the truth if someone with enough money or power doesn't like the truth in question. Whether it's by changing the libel laws or by engraving important values like freedom of speech in tablets of stone, something needs to be done.
Marshside blog says: "Any platform for anyone!" Or as the Manic Street Preachers once put it, "this is my truth, show me yours."
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