Freedom from Consequence

A mixed group from across the political spectrum have launched a campaign seeking the reform of Section 5 of the Public Order Act, on the basis that it restricts free speech (Dunt, 2012). Promotion of the campaign has thus far centred on - what appears to be - legalising insults.

Particular concern has been raised around a number of cases that have made their way into the courts in recent years (BBC, 2012). The group Reform Section 5 point to extensive and fairly ambiguous powers handed to the police to decide what is or isn't insulting.

Much has already been said about the need to improve our legal approach to freedom of speech; the Libel Reform Campaign seeks to protect citizens and science from the current libel process - for instance the costs of the legal process that can way matters in the favour of the wealthy.

But as we engage with reform we need to be wary lest the position of truth be threatened.

This makes the focus upon insults particularly worrying - could it simply generate greater allowance for selfishness and lack of consideration for others in our thoughts and actions?

"nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power... by speaking and writing truth."
                     -Andrew Hamilton; Zenger Trial, New York Colony, 1735.

Andrew Hamilton's point (as it was portrayed with loving surrealism on Cracked.com) was that amongst the functions of such laws is offering protection against the use of power to suppress truth. And this means an opposition to all kinds of power - both immense and petty - with truth for truth.

Insults are not concerned with truth. Nor should they be a substitute for adequate critique. A person may very well be fat. But using the word fat towards someone is charged with intention.  And used to provoke, put down, humiliate, demean, degrade or defile -  these are precisely the kinds of abuses reforms of libel law aught to consider.

We must also be wary lest conjecture, speculation, rumour and subjectivity are allowed to dress themselves up as fact and in doing so threaten truth from the opposite side of the law.

As Andrew Hamilton put it:

"It is natural, it is a privilege, I will go further, it is a right, which all free men claim, that they are entitled to complain when they are hurt. They have a right publicly to remonstrate against the abuses of power in the strongest terms"

There are most certainly arguments for reform of the UK's laws around freedom of speech. Greater specificity and clearer distinctions of truth - and clearer limits to remove the arbitrary authorities that are able to determine what is or isn't a crime. And there is a need to fix imbalances in access to legal protection, between those with wealth and those without.

As we do, we must be careful to reform and not to entirely dismantle legal structures around the arbitration of these personal disputes. Both the right to seek redress for grievances and the scope to speak freely are important - and without these abilities freedom of speech would quickly suffer all the petty tyrannies of the vociferous and the loud over the reserved and the quiet.

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References:
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+ Ian Dunt's 'Free speech campaigners: 'Feel free to insult us'; on Politics.co.uk; 16 May 2012.


+ BBC's 'Free speech campaign on Public Order Act and insults'; 17 May 2012.