22 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
This article was first published by the Independent
Free speech is a grisly vocation. A number of my assumptions about British society have been tested to the full since I became an advocate for this rarefied freedom nearly three years ago. An early lesson was that one should not confuse liberalism with open-mindedness. Another is that we’re happy to listen to anyone, as long as they don’t upset us.
The manufactured brouhaha over David Starkey’s comments last week follows a well-trodden and wearisome path. Curmudgeonly man (or woman) says something crass. Remember Jan Moir? I’ll come back to her later. Somebody gets cross. They reach for their computers and go on to Twitter. Within minutes others follow suit, expressing their fury and “solidarity”, often without bothering to find out what the
Starkey’s “the whites have turned black” ranting was not out of character. The man has form. I remember, a few years ago, him looking askance at me when I expressed delight at the Olympics coming to the EastEnd of London. His (approximate) reply – but why would anyone want to go to places such as those?
The BBC loves contrarians. They have a category of their own in the contacts books of producers of discussion programmes, possibly entitled “a bit of right-wing rough”. Yet the corporation is scared rigid of the public reaction. It employs an army of bureaucrats whose job it is to worry about viewers and listeners getting upset. I’m sure this department has doubled in number since the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross imbroglio.
And once these officials get involved with a “complaint”, boy do they get involved. They began to wonder out loud: should Newsnight have invited such a dangerous man into the studio; should Emily Maitlis have pounced on him? I would not be surprised if editors did not receive in coming weeks a set of edicts on how to respond to emergencies such as this. Option one: take the programme off air. Option two: ensure that programmes have a few seconds delay so that controversialists can be silenced out, à la Gerry Adams in the 1980s. Option three: apologise immediately to viewers for any offence caused. I only half jest.
The BBC is merely following a national trend. Many public bodies make sure they never say anything controversial. I remember chairing a discussion for the Arts Council on self-censorship. One manager of a theatre in the Midlands said that before his staff confirm their next run, they convene a meeting of local “stakeholders” to check whether anything planned might remotely cause offence. I was astonished, but several others round the table suggested this was quite normal.
During the last general election campaign, Index on Censorship held a hustings debate on the record of the three main parties in supporting freedom of expression. The then Justice minister, Michael Wills, praised the Labour government’s role in extending legislation that protected citizens’ sensibilities, particularly of ethnic minorities. One commentator in the audience, a Sikh, told the well-meaning minister that he and everyone he knew didn’t want or need his warm paternalistic embrace, thank you very much.
Legislation there already is aplenty. Not only does the UK have some of the most punitive libel laws in the Western world, but we have ample religious and racial hatred laws. The only absolute in this area is incitement to violence. Beyond that, the issue of offence and free speech is as much a judgement as a rule. It is, I admit, harder to upset a middle-aged, middle-class white man than it is a section of society that feels itself particularly vulnerable. But most of the time these judgement calls are being made by white middle-class liberals with an extenuated sense of guilt.
Just over a year ago, I was asked to give the keynote speech at Amnesty’s UK annual general meeting. I challenged those assembled to agree that free speech was as important a right as any of the others they were fighting for. I am not sure I convinced them. Many people, particularly on the left, find it hard to disentangle a liberal society from an open society.
For sure, I would prefer a world in which spiteful or glib comments were not made about other races or religions. I would rather that committed Christians did not denounce homosexuality as a sin. I would prefer it if Moir had not suggested that Stephen Gately’s death was connected with a “deviant” gay lifestyle. She was perfectly within her rights, however, to say what she said. And those who read her piece were perfectly within their rights to disagree with her.
One can cite many such examples of bloggers, authors, film-makers, artists or tweeters saying or doing something that upsets. It would be hard to imagine any work of any merit that doesn’t upset someone. The European Convention codifies our rights. It is by no means perfect, but the best we have on offer. Sometimes these rights stumble against each other, such as the competing right to privacy and the right to free speech. One right is not enshrined, but is now, wrongly, assumed to be sacrosanct: the right to take offence. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I suggest we dust off a phrase that probably hasn’t seen the light of day since the 1950s. “I beg to differ.” That should suffice the next time someone sees Starkey talk about blacks on TV or reads Moir on gays in the Mail.
John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship and author of “Freedom For Sale”
19 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
Plenty are worried by the inconsistent sentences across England being handed down by a justice system tasked to crack down on participants in last week’s mass riots — years in jail for some, community service orders for others.
It raises fundamental questions about the independence of the judicary and its response to crimes one judge called “completely outside the usual context of criminality”. For most of the English court system, that seems particularly true of Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry “thought crimes”.
Thousands of connected citizens poured views, fears and news into social media during the night of August 9. A few exploited it to instigate — organise is barely the word — fast moving raiding parties to loot whole neighbourhoods amidst self-replicating chaos.
They wrongfooted a police force geared to manage public disorder usually scheduled around fixed objects — football games, nightclubs, the Houses of Parliament. The yobs moved faster on bikes than officers in body armour. Social media and encrypted messages by Blackberry greased their criminal intent.
Then came the reckoning. Not Robespierre, but English magistrates and judges. Among the punished, Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, jailed for four years for using Facebook to fuel riots in Cheshire that never actually happened. In contrast, a 17-year-old who posted a Facebook message saying “come on rioters” was banned from social networking sites for 12 months and given a 120 hour community service order.
The disparity is attributed to the justice system running around sending, chasing and acting on false messages itself: “There has been a strong kneejerk reaction and lots of misinformation, including apparent orders, which turned out not to be true, that all parties should be given custodial sentences,” noted one defence lawyer.
This is the now notorious “directive” that sought to overturn sentencing guidelines that are standard in cases of major public disorder. Set after the 2001 Bradford riots by England’s Sentencing Council of experts and the Lord Chief Justice, it sets binding guidelines that allow judges to measure prospective punishment against actual harm done, culpability, remorse and early guilty pleas.
As the former Solicitor General for England and Wales Vera Baird writes, when the community is rightly angry it is the court’s duty to punish more severely, but it must still distinguish “the professional criminal from the easily led and every shade of culpability in between — and make the punishment fit the criminal”.
This is the nuance demanded by the sentencing guidelines. A similar nuance is required in applying principles of free expression, not an absolute human right, but one qualified by “certain restrictions provided by law“, including the protection of public order.
There is a straightforward difference between words and deeds. Measures in law that distinguish between expressions of hate and the incitement of an actual act of violence, that are provable in court and appropriately punishable.
But this week’s riot sentences come at the end of a decade of equal inconsistency in punishment of thought crimes — where no windows or bones are broken or property damaged, but public sensibilities have been battered.
Most of these cases are post-9/11, such as the jailing of six British demonstrators against the Danish Mohammed cartoons — for making an impractical threat to “Bomb Denmark” and “Kill British Soldiers in Iraq” — under England’s 1861 Offences against the Person Act. Or former airport worker and self-styled “lyrical terrorist” poet Samina Malik, convicted on terrorism charges later quashed on appeal.
Writing about Malik’s case, Index trustee Matthew Parris discussed her thought crime:
It’s all about that dividing line, so fragile and disputable yet so precious to those who believe in liberty, between what we may say, write or think, and what may be so directly linked to action as to deserve the name of action. One is the proper preserve of the individual; the other the rightful business of the police. Where we draw that line is critical and can only be a matter of opinion.
Sentencing is a matter of judicial opinion. Sentencing guidelines are there to guide it, says Baird, carefully guided analysis that produces sentences “compatible with legislation and appropriate to the five purposes of sentencing: punishment, protection of the public, deterrence, reform and rehabilitation and reparation to the public”.
Britain needs sentencing guidelines on punishments for these kinds of offences. The judge making the judgment in the case of Samina Malik, subsequently overturned on appeal, admitted that she was an “enigma” to him. How many judges would admit the same view of the world of social media communications?
Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor at Index on Censorship
19 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
Plenty are worried by the inconsistent sentences across England being handed down by a justice system tasked to crack down on participants in last week’s mass riots — years in jail for some, community service orders for others.
It raises fundamental questions about the independence of the judicary and its response to crimes one judge called “completely outside the usual context of criminality”. For most of the English court system, that seems particularly true of Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry “thought crimes”.
Thousands of connected citizens poured views, fears and news into social media during the night of August 9. A few exploited it to instigate — organise is barely the word — fast moving raiding parties to loot whole neighbourhoods amidst self-replicating chaos.
They wrongfooted a police force geared to manage public disorder usually scheduled around fixed objects — football games, nightclubs, the Houses of Parliament. The yobs moved faster on bikes than officers in body armour. Social media and encrypted messages by Blackberry greased their criminal intent.
Then came the reckoning. Not Robespierre, but English magistrates and judges. Among the punished, Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, jailed for four years for using Facebook to fuel riots in Cheshire that never actually happened. In contrast, a 17-year-old who posted a Facebook message saying “come on rioters” was banned from social networking sites for 12 months and given a 120 hour community service order.
The disparity is attributed to the justice system running around sending, chasing and acting on false messages itself: “There has been a strong kneejerk reaction and lots of misinformation, including apparent orders, which turned out not to be true, that all parties should be given custodial sentences,” noted one defence lawyer.
This is the now notorious “directive” that sought to overturn sentencing guidelines that are standard in cases of major public disorder. Set after the 2001 Bradford riots by England’s Sentencing Council of experts and the Lord Chief Justice, it sets binding guidelines that allow judges to measure prospective punishment against actual harm done, culpability, remorse and early guilty pleas.
As the former Solicitor General for England and Wales Vera Baird writes, when the community is rightly angry it is the court’s duty to punish more severely, but it must still distinguish “the professional criminal from the easily led and every shade of culpability in between — and make the punishment fit the criminal”.
This is the nuance demanded by the sentencing guidelines. A similar nuance is required in applying principles of free expression, not an absolute human right, but one qualified by “certain restrictions provided by law“, including the protection of public order.
There is a straightforward difference between words and deeds. Measures in law that distinguish between expressions of hate and the incitement of an actual act of violence, that are provable in court and appropriately punishable.
But this week’s riot sentences come at the end of a decade of equal inconsistency in punishment of thought crimes — where no windows or bones are broken or property damaged, but public sensibilities have been battered.
Most of these cases are post-9/11, such as the jailing of six British demonstrators against the Danish Mohammed cartoons — for making an impractical threat to “Bomb Denmark” and “Kill British Soldiers in Iraq” — under England’s 1861 Offences against the Person Act. Or former airport worker and self-styled “lyrical terrorist” poet Samina Malik, convicted on terrorism charges later quashed on appeal.
Writing about Malik’s case, Index trustee Matthew Parris discussed her thought crime:
It’s all about that dividing line, so fragile and disputable yet so precious to those who believe in liberty, between what we may say, write or think, and what may be so directly linked to action as to deserve the name of action. One is the proper preserve of the individual; the other the rightful business of the police. Where we draw that line is critical and can only be a matter of opinion.
Sentencing is a matter of judicial opinion. Sentencing guidelines are there to guide it, says Baird, carefully guided analysis that produces sentences “compatible with legislation and appropriate to the five purposes of sentencing: punishment, protection of the public, deterrence, reform and rehabilitation and reparation to the public”.
Britain needs sentencing guidelines on punishments for these kinds of offences. The judge making the judgment in the case of Samina Malik, subsequently overturned on appeal, admitted that she was an “enigma” to him. How many judges would admit the same view of the world of social media communications?
Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor at Index on Censorship
14 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
Many of the modern issues that Index on Censorship tackles are what I call the shades of grey. From Wikileaks to privacy to hate speech and phone hacking, free expression comes hurtling against other rights or perceived rights. Rarely do absolutes prevail in this more complex and technological world.
It was therefore salutary for me to be reminded of the black and white which still confronts us: journalists and activists murdered, imprisoned or threatened for trying to hold the powerful to account and expose wrongdoing.
The British theatre group IceandFire transport audiences into the worlds of five crusading reporters and photo-journalists as they risk their lives for the sake of their stories. Several of these real-life cases have been followed and documented by Index. One of them, Lal Wickrematunge, Editor of the Sri Lankan newspaper Sunday Leader was reportedly threatened by his country’s president by telephone only a week ago. His brother, Lasantha, was murdered by the authorities in 2009.
The travails of Lydia Cacho, one of the world’s most fearless journalists, were movingly portrayed. Only six weeks ago Cacho says she received anonymous death threats for her continued campaign to expose corruption and criminality, particularly the role of senior politicians in sex offences and trafficking. From the work of a brave Israeli journalist working inside the West Bank, to an American defying the US military’s largely successful attempts to sanitise the Iraq war, the play brings home not just the bravery, but also the doubts and dilemmas faced by a small but determined group of reporters. The episode most familiar to me personally was the newsroom at Novaya Gazeta, for long a beacon of fearless journalism in a Russia where the attacks on free speech have remained constant over the past 20 years, long after the collapse of Communism.
Within 20 metres of leaving the theatre, in Hackney in east London, I came across three riot police vans. It was, at first glance, a shock. The officers were lounging around, eating Macdonalds. The city was still reeling from riots and looting. Yet amid all the gloom and self-doubt that has beset Britons, and only a month after the height of the phone-hacking scandal, it was worth remembering that, there are still many countries grappling with troubles on an altogether different scale.
John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship
