Policing free speech in the UK and the U.S.

 

Rupert Bear

British social attitudes were very different in the 1960s and early 1970s, because the feminist movement was just taking off. Nobody really used the term sexist, or racist, nor was there a 'cancel culture'. Rupert Bear used to go to "Coon Island" and children still had golliwogs.

I remember the northern working men's clubs where there was always a comic on the bill. The comics weren't quite as filthy as Roy Chubby Brown, but they were quite risqué. They said that when Max Miller and Frank Randall were prosecuted for obscenity, their ticket sales increased at the music halls. Like the comedian Frankie Howard, Max Miller relied on the double entendre.

 On the Busses" was working-class comedy, a kind of shop floor type of humour or banter. It's in the tradition of the saucy seaside post card. I don't think you can really have politically correct comedy. What passes for comedy in the UK today, is rather pathetic. I thought the League of Gentlemen comedy series was an exception but it's an acquired taste.

Back in those days, it would have been unthinkable that people could be arrested by the police for expressing public opinions. There was really no such thing as 'hate speech" or "malicious communications". There were libel laws and laws regarding obscenity and blasphemy. But prosecutions for blasphemy or obscenity were very rare.

Boris Johnson, the former Conservative Prime Minister, said recently that the police were making over 10,000 arrest every year for comments made by people on social media. Nick Clegg, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that 30 people a day in the UK, are being arrested by the police for comments made on social media outlets like X and Facebook.

Under Starmer's Labour government, Britain is beginning to resemble a police state. Although the Trump administration have expressed concerns about restrictions on free speech in the UK, people who apply for U S. visas, now have their social media sites searched for "indications of hostility" towards the citizens, culture or the founding principles of the United States. Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used for the last five years.