In Defence of Free Speech.

 

Roy Chubby Brown

One of the things that I find so sad about these days, is that children aren't really allowed to play out.

 When I was a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, if you weren't at school, you got up in a morning and went out for the rest of the day. There were no mobile phones, computer games, or computers. You had to make your own fun and you had to make friends with the lads in your area.

 The only time that I was grounded, was when kids were disappearing across Greater Manchester. It became known as the 'Moors Murders', and Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who carried out the child murders, became infamous. They got life imprisonment because they'd just stopped hanging. At the time, a crime like this in England, was almost unheard of.

 Many kids didn't have much but they didn't suffer from obesity, neurosis, or have a drug problem, or allergies. At weekends, there was the children's Saturday morning matinee at the cinema.

 For a person of my generation who has always enjoyed a great deal of individual freedom and liberty, the idea of trigger warnings, cancel culture, no platforming, censorship, and decolonizing literature, are all completely anathema. They say variety is the spice of life and its difference, that makes life interesting. If you disagree with someone's point of view or opinions, then the way to deal with that, is to challenge it and to tackle it head on.

 Not very long ago, I left a comment on Facebook about George Bernard Shaw. A young girl responded to this post and asked me why G.B. Shaw had not been "cancelled." I had to tell her that though there was "censorship", and some of his plays were banned, there was no such thing as "cancel culture'. That idea would really have been unthinkable to people brought up in Liberal England.

 When the authorities fined the music hall comic, Max Miller, for obscenity, it used to increase his takings at the box office. If you think the northern comic, Roy Chubby Brown, is beyond the pale, and many do, then don't pay to see him. There's no doubt that Chubby appeals to people’s base instincts, but sometimes, I think that in the interest of free speech, we have to raise our standard so other people can lower theirs.