Here’s your starter for ten as we continue our new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
All liberals will happily sign up to the concept of free speech. But the practise of it often makes us uneasy. JS Mill summed up the dilemma by asserting that while all opinions should be aired, one can’t “shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”. In other words, freedom of speech must be tempered by individual responsibility. The inevitable question then arises: who should exercise that responsibility: the individual, or should it be regulated by the state in some way?
One of the less contentious areas of legislation restricting freedom of speech – one which Lib Dems seem generally to favour – is incitement to hatred. Thus it is a criminal offence to provoke others to commit violent acts on the basis of people’s race, ethnicity or religion. We can all agree that such hate-speech is wrong: but should it also be against the law? After all, surely it still remains the responsibility of the individual who actually commits acts of violence?
Children are taught from a young age that they must be responsible for their own actions; that it is no good blaming someone else who ‘told them’ to do something that was wrong. And yet the moment children reach maturity the law reverses this principle: suddenly it is acceptable for the state to say that violence can be incited, that individuals are not necessarily wholly responsible for their own actions. Surely in a truly liberal society freedom of speech would be absolute, with no restrictions at all imposed by the state?
Discuss …
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20 Comments
Another liberty that we would all sign up to is freedom from fear. It is unacceptable that people should live in fear of violence due to their race, sex or sexuality. Incitment to violence has an impact upon the intended victim even if the violent act doesn’t occur.
If you hear on the morning radio that someone says that you should be attacked because of race, how do you feel about going out that day? You liberty is constrained just by the incitment.
I am inclined to support the idea that if you instruct or encourage somebody who then breaks the law, and that it was your intention for this to happen, then you can be held partially responsible for what they do even though you did not directly act in it.
However, this is a firmly established principle of law; it’s called “conspiracy”, and has a large volume of legal precedent and practical experience behind it. I do not see any reason why we need special extra laws to cover “hate speech”, nor do I think it is a particularly worse crime than (for example) conspiracy to commit major financial fraud.
I don’t think we want laws which say “even if nobody otherwise broke any laws, no hatred or fear of violence occurred, and you had no intention of making those things occur, then it is still an offence if your actions were likely to stir up hatred”. We do have one of those, although I don’t think there has ever been a successful prosecution under it. We would probably be better off without it.
Oh golly – a really good liberal touchstone issue for the Saturday debate during which I shall be sat on a motorway heading for Cheshire…:)
So if I don’t reply to responses to this in a timely fashion, I will try and get back on later once my mother has stopped fussing.
I have become an absolutist in this. Free speech means free speech. The fear of violence is something different altogether – it is a loss of or lack of trust and confidence that the systems of justice we have will work to protect you from such violence.
I wrote a few weeks ago about how you get around not having a legal restriction on the “fire shouter”. I have consistently said that I do not personally want special protection from anti-gay bigots – I do not wish to be forced to give people my money in commerce or my labour in employment who wish me to burn in hellfire for ever just because I am no longer allowed to hear their opinions by law.
The genuinely free market brooks no such intolerance, for it is not in the “butcher’s self interest” to wait for his preferred type of customer to come in and risk in the meanwhile his meat going rotten and being unsaleable, or proving himself so unpopular with a certain segment of his potential custom that they go and set up a more tolerant establishment and take his other custom too.
The idea of “incitement” suggests that some people are incapable of free will in choosing their actions – it is akin to the claim that poverty creates criminals. It is demeaning. The people who follow up on what is termed “incitement” should indeed be dealt with as fully responsible for their actions and punished accordingly. To be able to claim that someone else’s opinion made me do it is to obfuscate the issue and allow them to pass the blame onto someone else.
But ultimately it goes back to the anarchist’s response to the “fire shouter” – if everywhere we come in contact with one another were owned by a party who has to weigh up the benefits of allowing free speech in all its flavours or risk losing custom for himself or his other clients, they can make the rules on their own property, and people who choose not to obey those rules will face civil sanction for upsetting other patrons and harming the income of the owner. And if we knew that here was a street in which the owner thought they could make a little USP for his property by deciding to let bigots have free rein then sensible, or sensitive, people would find another place to do their business.
Interesting stuff, the free speech debate really does go to the heart of why people consider themselves liberal (small l…).
Personally I’m somewhere close to where Richard Church is on this issue. A society that permits expression of any nature risks crushing the freedom of those on the receiving end of so-called ‘hate-speech.’ So in order to preserve the freedom of expression for some, we take away other people’s freedom to leave truly fulfilling lives. I’m sure most people reading this are familiar with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr’s famous quote that The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins, and for me no truer word has been spoken regarding free expression.
I do feel though that Andrew Suffieild may well be correct in calling for existing law to be used to enforce the limits on free speech – that conspiracy laws may be enough to preserve freedom of speech whilst protecting the right of all people to live free from hurt and pain.
How does a society decide what constitutes hateful speech, speech that is beyond the boundaries of free expression? Organically and democratically – the former through social norms that change with time (what was acceptable fifty years ago is frowned upon now wrt race, sexuality and so on) and democratically through legislation. Libertarians may well feel that freedom of expression is absolute, most of us would suggest however that, particularly where a causal link can be found between incitement and a criminal at, society is better off curbing the speech rather than living with the consequences.
Doubt there’s a ‘right answer’ to this tho…!
Precious little free speech on this blog though, isn’t that right Stephen? Just what is it about protecting the sensibilities of imaginary friend believers that overrides freedom of speech anyway?
Some of the libertarians on this thread use the sort of absolutist argument found in extremist politics of all sorts, no systems of law enforcement could concievably protect everyone against attack & in fact the main use of such systems is symbolic. The laws against hate-speech are just another way we impose our collective will on the bigots & the agressive. Changing laws is mostly important for the way it changes habits, fashion, the general mood of a society.
I think we should all have the right to question beliefs, religions and cultures. I don’t mind a religious person telling me I’m going to hell. I can deal with that. What I don’t think is right is for the religious person to tell his friends to come and kill me or harrass me in some way just because I have different beliefs to them.
That’s when freedom of speech starts to cause harm and that’s where the line should be drawn but only there.
However, I think that it’s very dangerous to stop robust discussion of, for example, the BNP. By not allowing them to be subjected to strong analysis – and to be honest, it doesn’t take much unpicking to show that they are talking rubbish. I instinctively don’t like the no platform idea they’ve hidden behind for so long – maybe if they’d been openly debated, they wouldn’t have become so strong in certain communities.
There are two issues here which we would do well to separate. There is speech whereby (say) members of Al Qaeda plot to blow something up (i.e. conspiracy, as pointed out above), and then there is speech whereby (say) members of Al Qaeda advocate terrorism in a general sense (i.e. grotesque political speech, but political speech nonetheless). In my book, a liberal society is one that bans the former but not the latter.
On the specific issue of hate speech, even if you are ok with laws similar to that, there is no particular reason why inciting hatred based on race (or whatever) should be seen as something to restrict but not on more individualistic characteristics (i.e. hate speech laws seem to be about protecting people on their general characteristic, like race or gender, and not on their individual characteristics, which would make more sense from a liberal perspective). Hate is hate whatever qualities it is aimed at.
But anyway, I don’t agree with the current hate speech laws. I think the standard they use in the US is what we should advocate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
I liked David Mitchell’s column on free speech a month or so ago in The Guardian. Free speech means that we have to listen to other people’s opinions, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t find them ridiculous or tell them to f**k off, as he put it. I appreciate people’s want for hate-speech to be banned, but am uncomfortable with the idea – free speech is free speech, when all is said and done, and every constraint upon it should be strongly resisted. You’ll never be able to ban bigotry – acts fuelled by bigotry, sure, and it’s those that should be legislated upon. If the inciter does receive punishment under the law, it should not be harsher than that of the person who actually commits the crime as a result.
What is freedom if it is not the freedom to be wrong in somebody else’s eyes?
But isn’t it our duty to challenge error wherever it arises and in turn have our own errors pointed out? This means that all ideas should be out in the open, free to be discussed and debated, without interference from the law.
Repressive laws bury debate and drives hate underground. I subscribe to the old view that light is the best disinfectant.
I think there’s a more modern example of the ‘fire in a crowded theatre’ which is much more appropriate for this issue, and that’s the coverage by the Daily Mail (and much of the rest of the media) of the MMR issue. This was a case of incompetent healthcare coverage which directly led to a higher incidence of measles across an entire generation of children. And yet, no-one will be held accountable for it.
This is a much more complex issue for free speech than a simple shout of ‘fire’, as it feeds into problems around access to information which present interesting issues for the functioning of markets and citizens as moral agents within info-rich states. The problems with the original Wakefield experiment (including ethical issues around test subjects, lack of a proper control group and a small number of samples) were not reflected in its coverage, leading to harm to the children of parents who took the DM’s coverage at face value. However, for the parents to have truly been held responsible, they’d have had to (a) had access to the original paper (b) been in possession of the appropriate criteria for judging its merits, and (c) known where to find the aforementioned information in the first place .
Since the Daily Mail did not indicate in any way that its coverage of healthcare issues may not be entirely scientifically accurate, it can be rightly said to have misled its readership and caused harm, for which it should be held accountable.
Scientific facts are not ‘matters of opinion’, and therefore their misreporting and distortion by the press should not be something that is covered under free speech.
Yes, I have just read Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’, before you ask.
Hmm – this seems to be another case where looking at the web site does not correspond with the emailed messaged I’ve received – there seem to be comments missing.
Someone said that my idea that we could defend people against the violence they may fear rather than preventing inciteful speech was impossible because we don’t have the resources, or something to that effect…
I just don’t believe that. If our police were dedicated toward “serve and protect” rather than implementing the many thousands of bits of useless criminal legislation all government over theyears have inflicted upon us there would be plenty of resource. Besides, what does it tell us about our system if those who are paid to protect us cannot.
At least in a private law system if the firm who was paid to protect you failed you’d have recourse in your contract.
But also, our so called “justice” system is not geared up to delivering justice. If it were the deterrance to crime would be so much the greater. Not wishing to demean the experience of prison in any way, a few years, paid for by your victim and their family amongst others, of three square meals “inside” is, by the time people get to that level of criminality, hardly a deterrant. A private law society would be simultaneously harsher and less brutal – it is likely that people would be paying restitution far longer than they do time now.
All that this debate seems to have proven is that there is very little agreement on where, if anywhere, people “draw the line”. Given that uncertainty, we should not be abridging free speech at all, and should find other ways of dealing with any consequences.
Adam – could not the readership be held responsible for themselves. To have based a decision that was being held up as of vital importance to their children on the opinions of one particular news source or another seems grossly irresponsible.
The fact is there was no shortage of debate. Wakefield et al put one side and got coverage, others put the other side and got coverage. Mill also says that one of the purposes of allowing untrammelled free speech is that it sharpens up ones “correct” response to “error”.
I see nothing in the MMR case that would lead me to conclude that any sort of abridgement of free speech ought to be necessary.
Prateek:
Trouble with that is define criminal please.
Let’s say there’s a causal link between me yelling at you to “put your put down” and you exceeding the speed limit. A crime is commited. Should that freedom of speech be abridged for it being “incitement”.
What of all the other 4,000 new criminal acts this government has introduced, about most of which most of us probably know nothing?
The problem is that with law being determined so *subjectively* it then fails to deliver justice. If my defense to “put your foot down” was that it was your free choice not to do so and that therefore I should not be charged with “conspiracy to speed” why can not the same defense apply in racial hate speech and similar?
That is why I find there is no consistent position other than absolutism. Anything else will create more injustices than it solves. Plus, if we got rid of all these silly crimes, and especially the thought crime legislation, perhaps our police would have a better chance of doing what Mr Peel set them up to do, instead of what bureaucrats now want them to do.
I was about to post something similar to Jock, there. Surely everyone knows that the DM is infamous for its health scares and random ‘dynamite can cure cancer!’ headlines? So really, it is down to the reader to not automatically trust what they are told. People do tend to believe scares, and err on the side of caution, however, and no doubt the DM would argue that it is highlighting dangers which the medical establishment may find embarrassing and which MIGHT, just MIGHT have serious consequences for your child. But agreed with Jock, you can’t restrict free speech because people are too happy to believe that their health may be in danger, but there are ethical questions about printing that sort of thing as fact without a disclaimer.
Jock, I believe I dealt with that response in my original comment. To what extent can you be held liable for a decision made in the absence of any contrary information? To what extent can you be held liable for that decision when you do not have the information to tell you where to access contrary information?
The coverage of the scandal was not presented in a format that allowed the individual to adjudicate which approach was correct beyond to which position-holder one attributed the most authority. Rather, it was presented – as most coverage of scientific issues is presented in the media – in the form of a yah-boo debate; presenting differing views of scientific facts as though they were sides in a political debate. It did not present sufficient information with which to make an informed decision, but this did not prevent the newspaper taking an editorial stance on the issue – a stance in which the newspaper claimed authority itself.
This was done in the sure and certain knowledge that a significant portion of its readership would not have access to the sort of information needed to adjudicate between the positions at hand, and moreover did not possess the information required to know where and how to access that information. Understanding scientific papers is difficult enough for scientists – are you suggesting that parents should be held liable for their decisions because they were unable to access full scientific & medical training?
Mill placed a strong emphasis on education, and in many cases, especially in technical areas of knowledge, debate is futile without access to that education. In Mill’s time, science was still just about accessible to any layman. This is no longer the case.
Could we have free speech in LibDem run Stockport please?
An interesting point using the MMR case is the matter of herd immunity. Where does the fault lie if Parent A believes the false reporting in the Daily Hate, and does not vaccinate Child A, who then becomes a carrier for a disease which infects and kills Child B who had been vaccinated (since vaccines aren’t perfect), then who’s at fault? Parent B did the right thing in not falling for the Daily Hate’s misinformation and having their child vaccinated.
I believe that in our heart of hearts we all know that certain lines should not be crossed. As an example, I once found some extremely disturbing posts by an adult male pervert about a small girl. I reported them to the police.
That must show that I don’t think speech should be entirely free. I don’t believe that would be liberal.
Can I let my gran have the last word?
All speech is free, but none is empty.
It’s value is it’s measure, which doth not accumlate in volume.
After it was first used against me I remember taking a deep breathe and having second thoughts about what I wanted to say next.