After Charlie Hebdo: defending free speech. Or are we?

A million people are marching Paris, including 40 world leaders, to demonstrate their solidarity against terrorism and in favour of free speech.

Well, up to a point anyway.

Marching against terrorism. But not perhaps for freedom of speech

They don’t like terrorism, which is rather like saying one doesn’t like the plague: a worthy sentiment with which most of us probably agree, but hardly strikingly original or insightful.

They do like free speech. Now there’s a much more interesting notion. And a much more questionable one.

Ever since the attack on Charlie Hebdo, voices have been raised across the political spectrum in favour of an unfettered right to free speech, as though this were somehow the touchstone of democracy. The reality is rather more complex. For instance, to give the old counter-example, no one feels there should be an absolute right to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre that isn’t, as it happens, on fire. Most of us would regard that as an abuse of free speech and feel it ought to be proscribed.

Which means that we favour limiting free speech.

But then we don’t much like libel or slander either. Incitement. Conspiracy. The freedom to use speech in these ways is limited in all democratic societies, and it’s legitimate to do so. Or at least it’s legitimate to do so up to a certain point. London, for instance, is regarded as the libel capital of the world. Some wealthy man who wants to sue a publication that has offended him will look for evidence of its having been distributed in England, so that he can sue there: the burden of proof is so slanted to the defendant that it makes it far easier to win his case.

If we were that keen on freedom of speech, we’d see English libel laws made far less draconian. Sadly, however, even though both the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, will be marching for free speech in Paris, I don’t expect either to come up with any proposals for reform any time soon.

The danger of the abuse of free speech is nowhere more blatantly demonstrated than in the United States. The first amendment right is constantly invoked to justify massively expensive TV advertising for political campaigns, or indeed huge contributions to those campaigns. What on the face of it sounds like a defence of democratic values is in reality a distortion of them: the effect is to subordinate politicians to donors and therefore lobbyists. Only those with the deepest pockets can make their voices heard in Washington.

To understand just how grave, even life-threatening, that can be, we need only consider that the events that have shocked France and the world cost 17 lives. In December 2012, 26 lives were taken in the shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Twenty were children. The National Rifle Association with its bottomless campaign chest was easily able to outmanoeuvre the bereaved parents and their supporters, and make sure that precisely nothing was done to prevent such an event happening again.

Finally, there’s an even greater difficulty with campaigning for this particular right. It’s easy to demand it for people with whom one agrees, or whose position one is reasonably close to: some of us may feel that Charlie Hebdo didn’t need to be quite as offensive as it often was, even though we defend its right to be as offensive as it chooses. But if we truly believe in freedom of speech, we believe in it for everyone.

Now I believe that Al Qaida and ISIS are vile organisations and the sooner they vanish into the sewer of history, the better. However, if I want to be seen as a real champion of freedom of speech, I have an obligation to defend the right of individuals to speak up in their support.

As long as they’re not slandering anyone, inciting anyone to break the law or conspiring with anyone to commit a crime, if I truly believe in free speech, I have to back ISIS and Al Qaida supporters’ right to speak in favour of their cause.

Lots of people keep quoting the fine old principle that, while I may not agree with your view, I will defend to the death your right to express it.

Will they defend to the death the right to speak up for the jihadists’ aims? Will the million marching in Paris? Will the political leaders who have joined them?

Ah, freedom of speech. A trickier subject than some imagine.

The Interview, Spycatcher and freedom of speech

Sony has decided to release its reportedly rather tedious film, The Interview. 

An excellent move, a great victory for principle against threat. The attempt by, allegedly, North Korea to blackmail the company into not showing the film has been resisted. It’s a triumph for freedom of speech over one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. A salutary and uplifting restatement of some of the most important principles on which we base our lives in the West.

Kim Jong Un: satirised in the film he tried to block

Of course, it has to be said that the controversy hasn’t done the film much harm. An apparently inferior film, which perhaps deserved no better than limited exposure before fading into untroubled obscurity, has now been given the kind of publicity no money could buy. Why, you could almost feel it a democratic duty to watch the dreary thing.

It reminds me of the fuss that was made over Peter Wright’s book, Spycatcher. Wright claimed that he’d been given the task of unmasking a mole inside MI5, and found that it was the Director General, Roger Hollis.

Maggie Thatcher, then Prime Minister, displayed all the keen judgement and commitment to democratic values for which she’s famed, by deciding that no one should read this book. She banned it in the UK. Well, not actually in the UK. Since the ban was decreed under English and Welsh law, it didn’t apply in Scotland, where the book was available.

It was published in Australia in 1987. This meant that Thatcher’s ban, based on the need to protect national security, prevented only readers in England and Wales from reading the book. It’s possible, I suppose, that no one in the Russian security apparatus – famed for its commitment to high standards of ethics and honour, epitomised by men like Vladimir Putin, a KGB apparatchik – ever read it, on the basis that it would be unfair to gain an unfair advantage that Thatcher wanted to deny them. Frankly, I’m inclined to doubt it.

So we were in the fabulous position of being protected by a government that could find no better way to assure our safety than to prevent our finding out information that was already in the possession of any enemy that might use it against us.

I was so irritated by this high-handed behaviour by the sainted Margaret that I contacted a friend in the US and asked him to get a copy for me and send it over. Which he did.

Having had that assistance, I felt duty bound to reach the book. And I did. With enormous difficulty. Over a very long time. It was one of the most turgid, uninspiring books I’d ever come across. If anything could persuade me of the innocence of Hollis, it was having to read such dismal material arguing the opposite. I’d cite examples of it, but quarter of a century on, all I can remember about it was the relief at finishing it and having no more to read.

That, frankly, makes me feel that I’ve done my bit in the way of consuming dullness in the name of protecting freedom of speech. It may indeed be my duty to watch The Interview, but I feel I’ve already given. Still, I’m glad to know that I have the choice.

That’s at least one oppressive act that neither Maggie Thatcher nor Kim Jong Un got away with.