The Prime Minister’s recent clamp down on free speech is deeply worrying. Since the beginning of August, we’ve witnessed the greatest assault on free speech in this country since Oliver Cromwell passed a law banning all theatrical performances in 1642.
In the wake of the civil unrest that spread across the UK following the murder of three children in Southport, Sir Keir Starmer has blamed ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ on social media for whipping up violence and urged the authorities to prosecute people for saying supposedly inflammatory things online.
As a result, a man who has been sent to jail for 18 months for sharing something “offensive” that someone else said on Facebook, another man was sent down for three years for posting “anti-Establishment rhetoric” and a third man was jailed for 18 months for chanting “Who the f*** is Allah?”.
Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has even warned that people sharing footage of the riots online may be prosecuted. “People might think they’re not doing anything harmful, they are, and the consequences will be visited upon them,” he said.
This threatening language is more reminiscent of a tin-pot dictatorship than the birthplace of parliamentary democracy and it has unleashed a wave of terror across the country, with hundreds of thousands of people now worried that they may be sent to prison for posting something un-PC online.
This has to stop.
We need to remind the Prime Minister, a former human rights lawyer, that free speech is the most important human right of all because without it we wouldn’t be able to defend any of the others.
If you’re concerned about the Prime Minister’s assault on free speech, please use our campaigning tool (here) to write to your local MP, using our template letter.
Completing the form is a simple, fast process that can have a significant impact. We’ve even provided a template to help, but feel free to personalise it – and make sure you write in your name, address and email address at the foot of the letter (in addition to filling out the boxes requesting the same).
Your voice matters and it’s vital that you make it heard.
