We don't have an absolute right to freedom of
speech in Britain and never have done.
The case of Dr Rehiana Ali illustrates this. Having worked as a consultant neurologist in the NHS for twenty years, she got suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC), for 18-months because she condemned on X, formerly Twitter, the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Her suspension arose after a complaint was made by the pro-Israeli body called UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).
There are UK laws that seek to restrict or constrain what we say. People in Britain have been jailed and arrested for expressing opinions on social media. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights which protects freedom of expression, is not an absolute right, but a qualified right, that can be restricted under certain conditions.
What I find particularly worrying, is the trend among some self-righteous lefty woke types, to want to silence debate or prevent people from expressing an alternative point of view or by cancelling and no platforming them or expecting them to self-censor. We saw this in the case of the philosopher, Professor Kathleen Stock, who was hounded out of her job at the University of Sussex, for her views on gender. The university have just been fined £585,000 by the Regulator OfS, for failing to uphold free speech and academic freedom.
This type of censorship is a kind of creeping totalitarianism. Britain's obsession with banning things is also very worrying. We really are a nation of people who are under the thumb of authority. George Orwell famously said that "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they don't want to hear."
We understand that Dr Rehiana Ali asked the Free Speech Union to support her, but she says that her appeals were ignored. If Toby Young, a supporter of Israel, can't accept Orwell’s dictum, then he shouldn't be leading the free speech union.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment