It might be the land of John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, but Britain has a growing free speech problem.
Chilled by the ever-present threat of lawsuits, the media too often avoid reporting on matters of immense consequence. Too often, the most powerful in society use their wealth and position to deter reporting on their activities. And too often, individuals are restricted from expressing their most closely held opinions. This anti-free speech reality finds favor in Parliament, which recently saw an effort to ban private Facebook groups.
Certain celebrities are also on board.
Elton John, for example, loves whining about the media reporting on the royal family and adopts the rallying cry, “Sod your free speech!”
Sadly, between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21, British free speech suffered three new blows.
The first was the case of Harry Miller. Miller had taken Humberside Police to London’s high court after they had visited his workplace to question him in relation to tweets he had made on transgender issues. Miller’s tweets included one saying, “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.”
Fortunately, the judge agreed that the police interview at Miller’s office was unacceptable. “In this country, we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo, or a Stasi,” Miller said. He continued, “We have never lived in an Orwellian society.” However, unfortunately, the judge also reaffirmed that police are permitted to record such noncriminal examples of hate speech. That is concerning.
The next blow came that same day when Katie Scottow was convicted of criminal misuse of social media. Scottow’s “victim” explained her suffering: “When I observed the tweets that the defendant was referring to me in, the defendant was referring to me with male pronouns, he/him.”
Yes, you read that right. Someone was convicted as a criminal for misgendering someone else on Twitter.
As if these two cases weren’t bad enough, the final blow came with the Friday leveling of criminal charges against Paul Golding. Returning from a trip to Russia, the leader of the far-right Britain First political party apparently refused to provide police officers with access codes to his electronic devices. Golding was not charged in relation to any other criminal activity or in relation to any criminal content found on any of his devices — simply for his refusal to give up his passwords.
Golding is an idiot, but his treatment here exemplifies a political harassment of the kind which China would be proud.
Taken individually, these cases would be cause for raised eyebrows. But taken together in the short time period they occurred, they testify to a more sinister truth: Freedom of speech in Britain is an increasingly rare commodity. What they really need is a First Amendment like ours.
