Having Your Say : Threats to Free Speech in the 21st Century

Today should be a Golden Age for free speech – with technology providing more ways of communicating ideas and opinions than ever before. Yet we’re actually witnessing a growing wave of restrictions on freedom of thought and expression. In Having Your Say a variety of authors – academics, philosophers, comedians and more – stress the fundamental importance of free speech, one of the cornerstones of classical liberalism. And they provide informed and incisive insights on this worrying trend, which threatens to usher in a new, intolerant and censorious era. 1 Introduction New types of speech restrictions 2 This book 10 2 A history of laws on hate and abuse 18 Suppression of abolitionist writings in the US 21 British colonialism 24 Apartheid South Africa 27 The United Nations, human rights and hate speech 30 The continuing importance of free speech in protecting minorities 36 3 Tolerating extreme speech 39 Classical liberal free speech doctrine 40 Is extremism exceptional? 43 Everyday extremism 46 A taste for violence 50 Alternatives to restrictions on speech content 52 Conclusion 55 4 Legislation on online harms will damage free speech 56 Legal but harmful 58 Disinformation and fake news 66 Rowing back from safe harbours 69 Free speech needs free enterprise 72 A fool’s errand? 74 5 Liberty: beyond left or right? 77 Free speech and the Covid-19 crisis 78 The racism crisis and the threats to free thought and expression 88 Beyond left and right: a new movement? 100 6 Having a laugh? Free speech in comedy 102 A brief history of censorship in comedy 102 Modern censorship 104 My own experience 119 In defence of censors 125 The impact of censorship 126 7 Why free speech in advertising matters 129 ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ advertising? 130 Advertising regulation in the UK 136 Advertising and the curtailment of free speech 141 Conclusions 155 8 Attacks on freedom to speak and to pray 157 Introduction 157 Restrictions on freedom of speech, conscience, prayer and thought 160 We know where you live: free speech and police visits 169 A close-run thing: Lee v. McArthur and Ashers 172 Free speech and institutional culture 174 Conclusion 178 9 The threat to freedom of speech in universities is a symptom of a wider problem 180 Freedom of thought 181 Limitations on speech 183 The historical basis of university freedoms 184 Challenges to free speech in universities 188 This is part of a wider problem 192 10 Free speech: the freedom that trade unions forgot 200 Disorganised unions 201 The therapeutic turn 202 Trading off free speech for safety 204 Free speech and the Prevent duty 205 Speak up only to whistleblow 207 The suppression of speech 208 UCU in the therapeutic university 212 Forward with the Free Speech Union? 221 Postscript: #Je ne suis pas Samuel 223 11 Offence, hypocrisy, and the function of democracy 225 Introduction 225 Offence, insult, and harm: conceptual considerations 227 Waldron on ‘hate speech’ 231 The deliberation argument for free speech in a pluralist democracy 236 Freedom of speech as prior to freedom from offence 238 Conclusion 242 References 245 About the IEA 262