Writing for The Critic, Fred de Fossard argues that “street violence is being met with restrictions on online speech by a Labour government desperate to clamp down on opinion.”
de Fossard continues:“We are six weeks into the Labour government, and instead of enjoying the afterglow of a landslide election victory, the Prime Minister is busy waging war against public disorder, rioting, and free speech.
“The new government’s honeymoon has ended with global attention focused on the state race-relations, policing, and freedom of expression in Britain. Some countries have advised against travelling to the UK, and the richest man in the world has repeatedly mocked the Prime Minister and the British police for how they responded to the riots.
“The response deserves attention. Idle scrollers of TikTok will see that the British Government is bombarding social media with videos of people involved in this month’s riots being arrested, meanwhile newspapers are filling up with reports of children as young as 12 being jailed for taking part in violent disorder, and many others arrested, not for violent acts, but for posting false information or jokes about them online. One man was jailed simply for posting offensive anti-immigration memes.
“The Prime Minister has taken a personal role in directing the police response – as if he were still a public prosecutor – and his government is now going to attempt to strengthen the regulations of online speech by using powers in the Online Safety Act. Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, is in the Government’s firing line. It has been blamed for spreading so-called misinformation about the riots – and previously the Southport murders – and inciting violence. This week, the European Union chimed in, with a fresh threat of censorship to X. European Commissioner Thierry Breton even suggested that livestreamed footage of riots might even violate the EU’s Digital Services Act. Elon Musk has, so far, responded with bullish irreverence, almost daring the British Government and the EU to go to war with him over free speech.”
Given the restrictions on free speech in the UK, de Fossard discusses the utility of implementing legal protections for this vital civil liberty.
“Unsurprisingly, there are many calls for a First Amendment to protect freedom of speech in Britain. This is understandable, but codification of rights does not necessarily solve the issue. After all, the Human Rights Act of 1998 states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
“While this sounds nice, it doesn’t seem to have protected the countless people from prosecution and imprisonment for matters of speech since 1998. Indeed, when the then Labour government passed the Communications Act into law, it signed a statement that some of its provisions were not compatible with the Human Rights Act. Instead, British free speech advocates would be better focusing their efforts on campaigning to repeal the laws which are restricting speech. No Parliament can bind its successor, after all.
de Fossard concludes: “In the meantime, the Government is going to make hay and headlines for a few more weeks jailing people following the riots. Its exercise in information control seems doomed, however. Already the European Union is backtracking on its threats to Elon Musk, and the state is quite simply incapable of controlling the flow of information like it used to. Opinion polls have shown the government’s approval ratings fall in the last fortnight – even despite widespread disapproval of the riots – and the public will note that the Government is releasing violent criminals to free up prison space for those convicted of spreading “misinformation” about the riots online.
“To restrict speech in the interests of multiculturalism will end in disaster. Free expression is the lifeblood of democracy. This autumn marks 380 years since John Milton published Areopagitica, his defence of unlicensed pamphleteering, which led to the end of restrictions on political printing. It is one of the bedrocks of modern free expression. Its memory should be honoured with a new movement to protect and defend free expression in Britain, and to remove the laws which have so restricted it in this country in recent years.”
Worth reading in full.
It’s now abundantly clear that following recent public disorder an anti-free speech ratchet effect is being set in motion.
The crackdown, when it comes, won’t just target those directly participating in or inciting violence.
What will happen, just as it always happens, is that new or newly strengthened laws will be wielded against those who dissent from ‘progressive’ orthodoxy.
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