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.

Controversy Reigns

After all the worries about the cost of events during the cuts and fears of republican protests, the Jubilee events went off (pretty much) without a hitch... Oh no, hang on. There was this:

'A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.'           -Shiv Malik, 4 June 2012.

Apologies have been made. And while it's all well and good for Close Protection UK to suggest that they were 'not in the business of exploiting free labour' - and that it was all a simple matter of errors made - reports suggest that exploitation of free labour was exactly what happened.

So calls for serious inquiries are entirely justified (Malik & Mulholland, 2012). Former Deputy PM Mr John Prescott is whirling up a storm - and so he should - because we need to how a democracy just allowed a huge festival celebrating the 60 year reign of a monarch to be staffed by indentured labourers.

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References:
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+ Shiv Malik 'Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant'; in The Guardian; 4 June 2012.

+ Shiv Malik & Helene Mulholland's 'Unpaid jubilee stewards: Prescott accuses government of exploitation'; in The Guardian; 6 June 2012.

Love Conquers

Compassion serves as an important part of many narratives. In Star Wars love, passion and compassion became central issues as the franchise expanded across various mediums, particularly the prequel films. Its Jedi heroes went from wise old knights retired as hermits into monk-like warrior-priests - who refrain from love for fear of the potential corruption.

The most significant portrayal of someone falling foul of this is Anakin Skywalker. In the prequels we are presented with the idea that Anakin falls to the dark side when his love for his wife is exploited against him - Palpatine using jealousy, anger and hate to twist Skywalker into Darth Vader.

But this wasn't the message in the original trilogy. In Return of the Jedi it was Luke's compassion and Vader's love for his son that helped them defeat the Emperor. That sentiment was reaffirmed in the wonderfully written game Knights of the Old Republic, through the venerable old mouthpiece Jolee Bindo:

"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you."

And compassion is capable of driving more than selfless devotion. Richard Dawkins discussed the role that altruistic behaviours play in the evolution of creatures:

 "Reciprocal altruism - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. When animals live in groups where they encounter each other frequently, genes for returning favours can survive. Individuals sacrifice themselves for each other, they give food to each other - to close kin and other individuals who might be in a position to pay back favours on another occasion. Selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals."

This suggests that your own potential is best served, not by absolute selfless devotion  nor selfish introspection, but rather through the self-centred notion that you help yourself best by caring about the well-being of others.

As it was put in a report compiled in the 1920s to find an answer for Britain's struggling economic situation, the liberal Yellow Book (1928):

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'

Compassion serves as a huge advantage to the evolution of an individual. But it is also central to the liberal ideology, where a society takes an interest in the fulfilment of the potential of its individual members - acknowledging that your liberty as an individual is best defended by defending the liberty of others.

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References:
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+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928.