There are two questions I want to address here. In a plural society should
it be incumbent on people to refrain from giving offence to other groups and
cultures? And should it be incumbent on governments to legislate to ensure
that free speech is used responsibly?
The underlying, often unstated, assumption in much of the debate on hate speech,
free speech and responsibility is that expression must inevitably be less
free in plural societies. We live in societies, so the argument runs, that
are more diverse than ever before. For such societies to function and to be
fair, we need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints.
And we can only do so by being intolerant of people whose views give offence
or who transgress firmly entrenched moral boundaries.
'If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict', the sociologist
Tariq Modood points out, 'they mutually have to limit the extent to which
they subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism.' One of the ironies
of living in a more inclusive, more diverse society appears to be that the
preservation of diversity requires us to leave increasingly to leave less
room for a diversity of views.
So, it is becoming increasingly common these days for liberals to proclaim
that free speech is necessary in principle – but also to argue that
in practice we should give up that right. Many of you will know about the
Behzti affair in which a play about Sikhs, written by a Sikh playwright, was
closed down last year after violent protests by the Sikh community in Birmingham.
Shortly afterwards Ian Jack, editor of Granta magazine, wrote an
essay in which he suggested that whatever liberals believe in principle, in
practice we need to appease religious sensibilities because they are so deeply
felt. Talking about Islam, Jack pointed out that
The state has no law forbidding a pictorial representation of the Prophet. But I never expect to see such a picture. On the one hand, there is the individual's right to exhibit or publish one; on the other hand, the immeasurable insult... that the exercise of such a right would cause.
In other words because we live in a plural society, so there should be self-imposed
limits on what we say or do. Or, as Umberto Eco once put it, 'To be tolerant,
one must first set the boundaries of the intolerant'.
I disagree. In fact, I say the very opposite. It is precisely because we do
live in a plural society that there should be no such limits. In a truly homogenous
society, where everybody thinks in exactly the same way then giving offence
could be nothing more than gratuitous. But in the real world where societies
are plural, then it is both inevitable and important that people offend the
sensibilities of others.
Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable.
And we should deal with those clashes rather than suppress them. Important
because any kind of social change or social progress means offending some
deeply held sensibilities. 'If liberty means anything', George Orwell once
wrote, 'it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear'.
Not to give offence would mean not to pursue change. Imagine what Galileo,
Voltaire, Paine or Mill would have made of Ian Jack's argument that one should
not depict things that may cause offence. Imagine that he had lived 400 years
ago and had said, 'In principle it's right to depict the earth orbiting the
sun, but imagine the immeasurable insult that the exercise of such a right
would cause...'
Part of the problem in this debate is that there is a continuous blurring
of the distinctions between giving offence, fomenting hatred and inciting
violence. In the debate about The Satanic Voices, many suggested that Salman
Rushdie was fomenting hatred by using abusive words about Islam. The giving
of offence, in other wards, is seen as creating hatred. At the same time may
believe that fomenting hatred is tantamount to inciting violence. We can see
this in the debates about the role of the broadcast media in the mass killings
in Rwanda.
These distinctions between giving offence, fomenting hatred and incitingf
violence are critically important. I want to suggest that the giving of offence
is not only acceptable, but necessary in a healthy democratic society. The
fomenting of hatred may well create political and social problems; but these
are not problems that can be solved by legislation to restrict free speech.
The incitement to violence should be an offence, but only if incitement is
tightly defined, much more so than it is at present.
Let us look more closely at these three issues. Why should the giving of offence
not only be acceptable but be necessary? Because it is the freedom to blaspheme,
to transgress, to move beyond the pale that is at heart of all intellectual,
artistic and political endeavour.
Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should
encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogenous there
are bound to be clashes of viewpoints. Inevitably some people will find certain
ideas objectionable. This is all for the good. For it is the heretics who
take society forward. From Galileo's vision of the universe to Darwin's theory
of evolution, from the drive towards secularism to the struggle for equal
rights, every scientific or social advance worth having began by outraging
the conventions of its time. Without such heresies and transgressions, society
may be more ordered, and more polite, but it will also be less progressive
and less alive.
Societies have always been plural in the sense that they have always embodied
many conflicting views. What is different today is firstly that such differences
are increasingly viewed in cultural terms and secondly that cultures have
come to occupy an almost sacred role in society. The plural view is that society
is composed of a number of distinct cultures, each distinct from the other
and each homogenous in its beliefs, and that it is important for all individuals
to have their particular cultures and values respected.
An individual's cultural background, the arguments runs, frames their identity
and helps define who they are. If we want to treat individuals with dignity
and respect we must also treat with dignity and respect the groups that furnish
them with their sense of personal being. 'The liberal is in theory committed
to equal respect for persons', the political philosopher Bhikhu Parekh argues.
'Since human beings are culturally embedded, respect for them entails respect
for their cultures and ways of life.'
I don't want to get into a debate about culture and identity, but I do want
to suggest that this is not just an implausible view of culture but a regressive
one. Anthropologists long ago gave up on the idea of cultures as fixed, bounded
entities because this is not how real societies work. When I was growing in
the 1980s, for instance, there existed a strong secular movement within British
Muslim communities which challenged both racism and traditional Muslim values.
It helped establish an alternative leadership that confronted traditionalists
on issues such as the role of women and the dominance of the mosque. But this
tradition became expunged in the late eighties and early nineties. Why? Partly
because policy makers and government institutions decided to create links
with mosques and mosque leaders, to afford them greater political leverage
and in the process establish their views, and only their views, as 'authentically'
Muslim.
Cultures are not homogenous. But if we treat them as homogenous we may make
them in reality less diverse than they really are. Certain ideas are offensive
to devout Muslims. Certain Islamic ideas are offensive to secularists. That's
the nature of society. But what we've come to do, and not just with Muslim
communities, is to define cultures by their more conservative elements, and
to allow those elements to determine what their cultures supposedly stand
for and what is acceptable in terms of free expression. The consequence has
been that the demand for the 'responsible' use of free speech has in many
cases been used to undermine progressive movements for change and to silence
critics of tradition. I know because I, like many others, have been dismissed
as Islamaphobes for our criticisms of Islam.
.
It is true that many who today cause offence, such as racists or homophobes,
are not progressive at all, but objectionable creatures with odious ideas,
heretics who wish to drag society back to the dark ages rather than take it
forward. But the right to transgress against liberal orthodoxy is as important
as the right to blaspheme against religious dogma or the right to challenge
reactionary traditions.
'We believe in free speech', Greville Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational
Trust has said. 'But there's a limit, and arousing racial hatred is beyond
the limit.' Free speech for everyone except anti-Semites and racist demagogues
is, however, no free speech at all. It is meaningless to defend the right
of free expression for people with whose views we agree. The right to free
speech only has political bite when we are forced to defend the rights of
people with whose views we profoundly disagree.
But what about the incitement to hatred? It is one thing to offend sensibilities,
quite another to foment hatred of certain groups. Should not such hatred be
banned?
First we need to be careful of the blurring of the distinction between giving
offence and fomenting hatred. Opposition to hatred is often wielded, as I
have suggested, to outlaw the giving of offence.
But clearly there are cases in which some speech, some article crosses the
boundary between offence and hatred. Should such speech be banned? No it should
not. And I say that both as a matter of principle and with a mind to its practical
impact. I oppose such laws in principle because, as I have already said, free
speech is meaningless if those whom you despise, including racists, do not
have free speech. And in practice you cannot challenge racism by banning it.
You simply let the sentiments fester underground. As Milton once memorably
put it, 'To keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that
gallant man who sought to keep out crows by shutting his park gate.'
Censoring ugly ideas will not make them go away. It is simply a means of abrogating
our responsibility for dealing with them. It is only through freedom of expression
that we can articulate our disagreements with such people and challenge their
ideas.
I agree with Richard Sambrook that free speech should not be ‘free and
easy’. But banning hate speech is actually to take the easy way out.
Putting on the censor's hat suggests a striking lack of confidence in one's
ability to persuade an audience of an alternative viewpoint, not to mention
a certain contempt for people's capacity to consider the evidence rationally.
Free speech does not mean accepting all views. It means having all views in
the open so we can challenge the ones we find unconscionable. Today, though,
we do the exact opposite today: there are certain views we ban because they
are deemed so unpalatable. But there are other views we are also frightened
of challenging because we don't want to give offence to diverse cultures.
The very fact that we talk of ideas as 'offensive' is indicative of the problem.
There are many ways of disagreeing with someone's views - we may see them
as irrational, reactionary, or just plain wrong. But to deem an idea 'offensive'
is to put it beyond the bounds of rational debate. Offensiveness is an affront
to an entrenched tradition, a religious precept or one's emotional sensibilities
that cannot be erased by reasoned argument. It is a notion that sits well
with the moralising, emoting, often irrational approach to politics that we
all too often see today.
But hatred, of course, exists not just in speech. Hatred also has physical
consequences. Racism can lead to racist attacks, homophobia to anti-gay violence.
Just last week two men were sentenced to life for murdering black teenager
Anthony Walker with an axe simply because of his skin colour. Is it not important,
then, to limit the fomenting of hatred to protect the lives of those who may
be attacked?
By asking this very question, we are revealing the distinction between speech
and action. Saying something is not the same as doing it. But, in these post-ideological,
postmodern times, it has become very unfashionable to insist on such a distinction.
In blurring the distinction between speech and action, what is really being
blurred is the idea of human agency and of moral responsibility. Because lurking
underneath the argument is the idea that people respond like automata to words
or images. But people are not like robots. They think and reason and act upon
their thoughts and reasoning. Words certainly have an impact on the real world,
but that impact is mediated through human agency.
Racists are, of course, influenced by racist talk. But it is they who bear
responsibility for translating racist talk into racist action. Ironically,
for all the talk of using free speech responsibility, the real consequence
of the demand for censorship is to moderate the responsibility of individuals
for their actual actions.
Having said that, there are of course circumstances where there is a direct
connection between speech and action, where someone’s words have directly
led to someone else taking action. Such incitement should be illegal, but
it has to be very tightly defined. Incitement is, rightly, very difficult
legally to show and to prove. We should not lower the burden of proof just
because hate speech may be involved. Incitement to violence in the context
of hate speech should be as tightly defined as in ordinary criminal cases.
The argument that one can only have free speech if people use speech responsibly
is in fact to deny free speech. After all who is to decide when free speech
is being used irresponsibly? The government. The authorities. Those with the
power to censor and the necessity to do so. The regimes in Iran, North Korea,
China all accept that free speech must be used responsibly. That is why they
close down irresponsible newspapers, ban irresponsible demonstrations, restrict
irresponsible access to the Internet. 'Responsibility', as the writer Phillip
Henscher has put it, 'is in the eye of the Government, the Church, the Roi
Soleil, the Spanish Inquisition and, no doubt, Ivan the Terrible.'
Edmund Burke once complained that Thomas Paine sought to 'destroy in six or
seven days' that which 'all the boasted wisdom of our ancestors has laboured
to perfection for six or seven centuries'. To which Paine replied: 'I am contending
for the rights of the living and against their being willed away, and controlled,
and contracted for, by the manuscript-assumed authority of the dead'. Paine
had no time for custom, no reverence for the past, no notion of deference
to authority. We could do today with a few less Edmund Burkes and a few more
Tom Paines.