OPINIONS

Letter: What is Free Speech?

3 March, 2020
UNN Opinions
Letter received from Catherine Blaiklock which was originally submitted to The Telegraph but not published there.
Dear Sir,
What is free speech?  In Britain, unlike America, we do not seem quite sure because we do not have a Bill of Rights.

Zoe Strimple, writing in this paper yesterday, said ‘The cause of free speech, newly prominent, now offers an easy way for thugs to try to get away with it.’

I think this approach to free speech is utterly wrong and misguided.  Who defines what is thuggish or who is a thug? A thug cannot just be a working-class person with a Yorkshire accent or a middle-class person saying things that you disagree with? A non-violent ‘thug’ should have the same free speech rights as someone deemed by the establishment to be ‘respectable.’  Free speech cannot be defined by class; middle-class dinner party types being acceptable whilst everyone else is a ‘gammon’, or some equally derogatory word. This is what happened during Brexit.

Ms. Strimple singles out Carl Benjamin, who also known as Sargon of Akkad, became famous for saying ‘I would not even rape Jess Philips.’

Compare this with the comedienne Jo Brand who said of Nigel Farage: “Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?” This joke was in extraordinarily bad taste but would have fallen into the category of protected speech in the US who, lucky for them and the future of their society, have the First Amendment to protect them.

Both ‘jokes’ name an individual on the opposite side of the political spectrum but because Jo Brand is from the feminist left and Carl Benjamin is from the libertarian right (not the ‘far-right’ as Ms. Strimple suggests), Jo Brand isn’t a thug but Carl Benjamin is.

Free speech is not a matter of class, it is for all.  You cannot pick and choose because in your opinion one is ‘nice’ and middle class and the other is not. Modern Britain is still ‘us’ and ‘them’

Yours sincerely
Catherine Blaiklock

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