14 May 2021 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116759″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]As a political obsessive, I love the Queen’s Speech in the British Parliament. It marks the beginning of the new parliamentary session. It is uniquely British with all the expected pomp and ceremony and a significant amount of pageantry. But most importantly it is a restatement of our democratic values and processes. It also sets the agenda for the year ahead and makes clear what the Government is prioritising. And unfortunately, this year there were significant concerns for those of us who care about free speech.
The Queen outlined the government’s agenda and on the face of it who could object to an Online Safety Bill or a Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill or even a Counter State Threats Bill. But, as ever, the devil is in the detail and the detail for too many of the British government’s proposals seems to have many, what I can only hope are unintended, consequences.
The draft Online Safety Bill proposes not only the establishment of a new category of unlawful speech in the UK – legal but harmful – but it also proposes outsourcing the regulation of free speech in the UK to Silicon Valley. Most concerningly there is no provision outlined which will let us know how much content has been removed – or even what has been removed. On the face of it, that might not seem that important but how would a victim know if they were vulnerable? How will police prosecute hate crime? And how we will be able to analyse how much of a threat to free speech this bill has become, if we have no idea of how much is deleted. The Government has suggested that they will fine companies for deleting too much content but there is no provision outlined which would allow them to assess the scale.
The Academic Freedom Bill will establish a ‘free speech champion’ to ensure that free speech protections are enacted on campus, but this week the Government couldn’t answer whether this would empower Holocaust deniers to speak on campus – or stop them. What’s likely to happen instead is that academic institutions will be so concerned about the fear of a fine or bad publicity that they will stop speakers attending campus full stop – the ultimate chilling effect.
These are just two examples of why Index has such significant concerns of the direction that government is taking on free speech.
To be clear, Index supports any and all efforts to protect our collective right to free speech across the globe and we expect the British government to take a global leadership role in defending Article 19. But what we’ve seen in this year’s Queen’s Speech does not give us hope – rather it seems to be a systematic assault on free expression by the British government, under the auspices of protecting free speech.
I am a former legislator; I know that you cannot, and you should not try to legislate culture or language – it will have the opposite effect. People won’t want to engage and our public spaces will become free of debate and challenge. We deserve so much better. Going forward we will seek to work with the British government to introduce additional protections for free speech, we must use our voice to protect yours.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
26 Feb 2021 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116315″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Legal but harmful speech – what does it even mean and why is every government body so insistent that the best way to deal with hate is to legislate against it?
So, you may guess from my tone that I am getting a little irked. There seems to be a pattern emerging in the UK, that rather than genuinely tackling some of the thornier issues–we’re seeing calls for more laws and regulations as the quick fix. Seemingly so people can say they are doing something, anything, rather than tackle the root causes of the problems at hand.
This week was a case in point. Building on the Government’s plans to create a new designation of unacceptable language for our online conversations in the Online Safety Bill – legal but harmful – we saw yet more headlines outlining the latest initiative from a well-intentioned quasi-government body seeking legislation to regulate speech in order to protect us from extremists.
The Centre for Countering Extremism published a paper calling for a new legal framework to tackle extremism – or rather extremist language which is creating an environment conducive to building new extremist groups. In principle, this is something that is difficult to knock and I have huge admiration for many of the people involved, but this is a slippery slope.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting (nor would I ever) that all is well in our online world. It isn’t – there are too many examples of toxic abuse. Political and ideological extremism seems to be on the march; bullying, trolling, hate speech and threats are becoming far too normalised online. I should know, after all I still seem to attract a little too much of it…
But the question is can you or even should you regulate speech. Would that even work? Is regulation going to make people be nicer to each other online – or is there something more sinister at play that we need to focus our efforts on. As Taylor Swift said “haters gonna hate”.
So surely the real challenge here is how we balance dealing with the minority who choose to incite hatred and create a toxic environment which is attacking our very value system without undermining one of our basic fundamental rights – free speech.
Reaching for the statute book as a legislator is the easy option – politicians can say they have done something – even if that something hasn’t fixed the problem. They can point at a law and say job done. But let’s be honest, you can’t legislate culture and you can’t regulate language and nor should we be trying to.
People aren’t stupid, extremists aren’t stupid, recruiters to terror groups aren’t stupid – they are abhorrent, evil and wrong – and while some may not be that bright, the most effective tend not to be stupid.
If you change the law to restrict what they can and can’t say – all they will do is moderate their language, introduce coded phrases and push extremism into spaces that can’t be monitored. Suppression of language simply will not defeat the dangerous ideology at play. But what you will have done is create an environment where certain communities feel that they can’t speak at all – a chilling effect which will both create martyrs and undermine community cohesion.
Moving the line of legality will simply result in extremists developing a new vocabulary to achieve the same outcomes as they did before. And then we enter a dangerous period of cat and mouse where restrictions become even tighter, ensnaring legitimate debate and discussion in order to catch those purveyors of hate.
Someone famous once said, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and that mantra should be the starting point for any government on this issue. I have always said that speech should be free but not free of consequences.
The penalty for incitement should be severe – severe enough to be a deterrent but, and it’s a big but, the same level of resource, if not more, should be used to meet the continually emerging challenges of political extremism through education, engagement and community investment.
Empowering people to challenge hate speech and building a society where debate is celebrated but extremism is rightly ostracized. I know that for many that may be a naïve aspiration – but the alternative is a world where silence becomes the norm – because speech is too difficult.
Postscript. Just a note to thank Hannah who, in between doing her schoolwork yesterday, helped type my blog this week.
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25 Jan 2021 | Index in the Press
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship CEO Ruth Smeeth added her thoughts to proposed legislation to protect free speech in UK universities.
The legislation known as the Freedom of Speech (Universities) Bill 2019-21, proposed by former Brexit secretary David Davis, had its first reading on 19 January.
According to the UK Parliament website, the bill will “place a duty on universities to promote freedom of speech; to make provision for fining universities that do not comply with that duty; and for connected purposes”.
In the Daily Express, Smeeth said: “Universities are the home of debate and investigation in society and should always be a home for exploring new and controversial ideas. We must ensure free speech exists on campus.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
7 Jul 2020 | Index in the Press
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Newly appointed CEO of Index on Censorship Ruth Smeeth writes in The Times about the origins of Index on Censorship, and the ongoing work of defending freedom of expression.
“Forty-nine years ago a call to action was made in the pages of The Times. The great and the good of our literary world were horrified at reports about what was happening to their colleagues behind the Iron Curtain and they wanted to help.”
Read the full article here[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
