This month’s PiPs addressed Freedom of Speech and was hosted with Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF), featuring an introduction and Q&A with Professor Dennis Hayes of AFAF splendidly chaired by Dr Kyri Kotsoglou, a lawyer and Associate Professor at Northumbria University, expert in Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs).

Dennis began by saying free speech must be both speech and free.  People always put limitation on speech – making it unfree. The commonest limitation is that free speech must always be within the law but why should the law – i.e. the state – tell us what we can say?

Attempts to suppress freedom of speech were commonly justified within the rhetoric of controlling “the mob” or “those people”, whose speech they feared. This was a tactic inevitably employed by those in power, which implicitly diminished our humanity.

Without free speech it is impossible to know what people really think or to have an open exchange of ideas. Even though free speech permits statements that may be perceived as malicious, without such freedom it would not be possible to subject these statements or any other claims to unrestricted scrutiny.

To restrict speech to slavish parroting would lead to restriction of thought and a further denial of humanity, and to fear ever giving offence would amount to an internalized “fatwa” illustrated, for example, by a contemporary fear to say that biological sex is real—a fear which even seems to permeate academia. Furthermore, open discussion offers a route to resolving conflict, without which violent disagreement may be more likely to result and the remedy for verbal disagreement is more speech!

Dennis illustrated the extreme way in which current media discourse was constrained by comparing the notoriety of the death of George Floyd with that of the somewhat forgotten case of Samuel Paty, who was murdered following a false accusation by a French schoolgirl.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjdmjxvvvvo

While it is striking and worrying to observe how Samuel Paty has been almost forgotten in the mainstream media, the case does raise a further free speech-related problem, namely the extent to which one person’s speech makes them responsible for the actions of others. Dennis argued one should not conflate speech and actions, which should always be considered separately. If one allows one’s self to be guided or goaded into committing a wrongful act, is that not simply one’s own fault? As a questioner remarked “would you jump off a cliff if someone else told you to?”.

Dennis raised the question of, if there was to be restricted speech, who would do the barring, and again pointed out this was the province of the powerful. He remarked on how, in changing times, the political left had become most censorious. Use of regulation had grown and could be used to control anybody. Even “be kind” meant “be controlled”.

Returning to the issue of biological sex, a question was raised about a possible lack of equivalence of voice of those women who wished to argue in favour of the innateness biological sex with male activists who opposed the view, and who had as a consequence been uniquely subject to violent threats from such men against themselves and their children. In response, one participant vehemently claimed these were examples of “basic old-fashioned misogyny”. Dennis responded with the view that it was the ideas that counted not the sex of the speaker. Women cannot expect that men should defend them, and the antidote was to speak up more and challenge bad ideas rather than to make rules about who should speak or speak first.

There was some discussion of NCHIs and their persistent use, despite Court of Appeal rulings in the Harry Miller case. The issue of libel arose, as did the influence of ChatGPT. Dennis responded that, from his experience as an academic, while these tools led to easily identifiable “boring rubbish” essays, it was not a free speech issue, although it would be the state that would control the chatbots. He consistently emphasized free speech was about speech, just that.

As this was Politics in Pubs, the observation was made that, historically, pubs and taverns had been seen as sources of free speech resented by those in authority. There was a comment that, in Ireland, a colloquial saying went “let’s go to the pub and talk treason!”. Dennis pointed out that Politics in Pubs, like book clubs are now important to regain spontaneity in discussion that has been lost. He was concerned about proposed speech rules that could make banter in pubs illegal are indicators of a drift towards an authoritarian society. He concluded the only solution was to “keep speaking out and don’t stop doing it!”.

People with connections to academia are invited to sign up with AFAF:

https://www.afaf.org.uk/afaf-statement/

Follow our participants on X:

@AFAF_freespeech

@ProfDHayes

@Kyriakos_Law