Freedom of speech

Yorkshire village bans Nazis. Why didn’t Neville Chamberlain think of that?

D-Day would have been effected with far less trouble if, at the time, we had insisted on the same rules that pertain in Haworth’s annual commemoration of the event. The Yorkshire village holds what is now called a “1940s Weekend” – don’t mention the war – and people who wear Nazi uniforms, or the SS insignia, have been told that they are not welcome. This is because the uniforms “give offence”. Previously, people turned up dressed as Nazi soldiers and others as allied soldiers – much as actually happened the first time the event was staged, on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. But some people complained about the uniforms

America’s Left is just as ‘eccentric’ as its Right

Rory Sutherland writes in this week’s magazine that the Mozilla/Brendan Eich affair has finally put him off his dream of moving to the United States, quoting Andrew Sullivan that ‘The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society.’ The issue of gay marriage has changed politics in the English-speaking world in a way that perhaps people didn’t expect – breaking the liberal-Left’s final link with the ideal of John Locke that permitting something did not mean approving of it. This notion has been coming under pressure for some years, especially with discrimination laws, but SSM has snapped it. (Brendan O’Neill has

Hurrah! A setback for the enemies of free speech

This has been a bad month for those who want to shut down free speech in Britain. First there was the wholesale failure of Fiyaz Mughal (whose ‘work’ I have written about before). Readers will recall that Mr Mughal – whose website, Tell Mama, claims to record and counter ‘Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred’ – used the immediate aftermath of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby to claim hysterically that, ‘The scale of the backlash is astounding… there has been a massive spike in anti-Muslim prejudice’. He also used the opportunity to attack the UK government’s counter-terrorism policy. All this before Drummer Rigby – who some people may remember was killed

Nick Cohen

How to be a traitor

No one is as hated as deeply as the apostate. Ordinary opponents are nothing in comparison. They are unbelievers, who know no better. It is not their fault if the light has not fallen on them. The apostate, by contrast, has known the truth and rejected it. There can be no excuses for his treachery, no defence of ignorance the law. The Devil must have seduced him, or to translate old superstitions into language of a secular age, he must have “sold out”. For all the apparent differences between left and right, they share a complacent assumption that only corruption can explain why a believer could reject them, when they

Are you fit to be a Liberal Democrat? (A response to Nick Cohen)

My colleague Nick Cohen has a piece asking ‘Are you fit to be British? Take the UKIP test.’ In it he cites a number of horrible and silly and things said by people in UKIP before he himself descends into rudeness.  Stuart Wheeler is apparently a ‘cadaverous gambling tycoon’. ‘Cadaverous’? As in old? I suppose it must come to us all. But it is Nick’s conclusion that spurs me to respond. He finishes, ‘The scandals are so frequent you have to conclude that it is not the odd rotten apples that needs throwing out but the whole stinking barrel.’ Nick is not the only journalist to take this view. The British

You sexist/racist/liberal/elitist bastard! How dare you?

While he was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, Tony Judt found the breath to educate those who believe they could ameliorate pain with soft words and bans on ‘inappropriate’ language. “You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality deep inequality is allowed to happen much more easily.” Worry about whether you, or more pertinently anyone you wish to boss about, should say ‘person with special needs’ instead of ‘disabled’ or ‘challenged’ instead of ‘mentally handicapped’ and you will enjoy a righteous glow. You will not do anything, however, to provide health care and support

The Mozilla controversy suggests that the sexual revolution is getting ugly

If you’re reading this on Firefox, you can rest assured that your custom is not going towards any hateful, disgusting, evil people who might disagree with you on something. Not now that Mozilla boss Brendan Eich has been forced to quit for supporting Proposition 8, the Californian bill opposing gay marriage. According to the BBC: ‘Mozilla’s executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker announced the decision in a blog post. “Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it,” she wrote. “We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves. “We

We get the message: smoking is bad for you. Now leave fag packets alone

What form do you reckon the government’s consultation on cigarette packaging is going to take? Given that health minister Jane Ellison has said that the government’s intention is clear and the consultation short, I rather think it’s going to be like the gay marriage consultation – which ignored half a million objections to the thing in principle, and just focused on asking how to implement a decision already made. So this business of seeking out the views of ‘stakeholders’ is, I rather think, entirely cosmetic. I don’t know whether you could call me a stakeholder because I’m not exactly a smoker – I’ve never got the hang of inhaling –

Index on Censorship is thriving and defending free speech around the world

Index on Censorship defends free speech and debate for all – so we defend Nick Cohen’s right to write a blog highly critical of Index. The problem is, however, that what he wrote was wrong, both in broad outline and finer detail. As a consequence Nick threatens to undermine the very cause that he claims to hold most dear. Index is not ‘falling apart’ nor is it even ‘in crisis’. In common with many other organisations in the charity sector it found itself, last year, facing a shortfall in funding. There are complex reasons for this but one of them, ironically, may be due to the very opposite problem to

The Crisis at Index on Censorship

Index on Censorship, once home to the most important defenders of free speech in Britain, is falling apart. Seventeen full-time staff members in place when Kirsty Hughes, a former European Commission bureaucrat, took over as chief executive in 2012 have been fired or resigned. Among the recipients of redundancy notices are Padraig Reidy who was Index’s public face and its most thoughtful writer, and Michael Harris, who organised the lobbying to reform England’s repressive libel laws, the most successful free speech campaign since the fight to overturn the ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the 1960s.  The board, headed by David Aaronovitch of the Times and filled with Matthew Parris

Hampstead and Kilburn – it would be a disgrace if the Lib Dems don’t back Maajid Nawaz to the hilt

In the past 30 years British English has received a number of loan words from Arabic, words which would have meant very little to our young grandparents but are now familiar enough to be used metaphorically: jihad, fatwa, taliban, dhimmi. Almost all refer to religion and religious conflict, and have a slightly unwelcome ear to most people. (It wasn’t always like this, of course; Arabic has in the past given us a number of terms, from zero to orange to racket and nadir, not to mention countless scientific phrases). One word I would like to see imported, however, is asabiyyah, a term which is best translated as ‘cohesion’, but more

FGM is a shaming indictment of multiculturalism and mass-immigration

A number of interesting things have happened recently: The Law Society has provided legal guidance to ensure that Muslims in Britain can have their wills judged according to Sharia. BBC Newsnight hosted an in-studio row between three Muslims over whether one Muslim should be allowed to say or do anything that is deemed religiously insensitive by any other Muslim. Majority opinion seemed to be ‘no’. Then there has been huge excitement that, after decades during which tens of thousands of girls in Britain were genitally mutilated, charges have for the first time been brought against some suspected perpetrators of this horrific crime. Just in case anyone is lost in all this

The BBC is more scared of offending Muslims than gay people

Just to ring the changes, I’ve written about the BBC and political correctness for the mag this week. Yeah, yeah, I know – you haven’t heard enough about that subject. But one of the writers of the 1970s situation comedy It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum has complained that aunty isn’t showing the series any more as a consequence of political correctness. My suspicion is that it isn’t being reshown because it was humourless unmitigated crap, but there we are. The bigger issue, though, is the one raised by the excellent (for a Blairite) Dan Hodges. As it happens, I was invited onto this show and now wish I had accepted.

Rod Liddle

So now we know – the BBC is more scared of offending Muslims than gay people

Are there enough black and minority ethnic people on our television screens? The comedian Lenny Henry thinks not and has proposed targets to ensure better representation. Lenny means stuff like Midsomer Murders, I think, which famously avoided using people of colour for a very long time in its absurd but strangely comforting dramas. I think this was to cater for people like me who enjoy watching affluent white people bludgeon each other with candlesticks in the library. In fairness, even Midsomer Murders once had some gypsies play a pivotal role in one episode — they lived in a gaily painted horse-drawn caravan, and were scrupulously tidy and probably filed their

Who judges the judges?

I like Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times. I will not pretend they are anything like close friends or family. I doubt if I see them more than once a year. But before you read any further you should know about our acquaintance. It is important for journalists to declare their interests. Readers must be free to make up their own minds, even if I believe – especially if I believe – that a friendship or family bond could never influence my writing. In a few days, the Sunday Times will apply for the right to appeal against a decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat from July last

When Free Speech isn’t free

BBC3’s Free Speech programme is a good example of why the channel deserves to be shut down. Aimed at giving a voice to young people it is endlessly dumbing-down, seeks validity through instant Twitter reactions and all in all is a very degrading programme to appear on. I know because a couple of years ago I was on the first series and spent an evening at an ice rink in Doncaster debating the key issues of the day with a ‘Page 3 model’ and Owen Jones. Even now it makes me shiver. Anyhow – last night the show came from outside the Birmingham Central mosque. The panel included Mehdi Hasan and Julie

Why the police silenced one of the best officers in Britain

West Midlands Police’s announcement that it had ordered the closure of the blog and Twitter account of Inspector Michael Brown – ‘the mental health cop’ – has caused astonishment and anger in equal measure. Thousands of grateful patients, police officers and doctors have followed Brown online ever since he realised that he had had only two hours of mental health training. He decided to remedy his ignorance in 2011. He went about finding ways to cut deaths in custody by ‘providing officers with information about how to handle mental health calls and to manage clinical risks’. Numerous prizes, including the Mind Digital Media award, followed. Everyone loved him apart from the

The martyrdom of Mark Steyn

When I first read, many months ago, that the notorious US climate scientist Michael Mann was suing the notorious right-wing bastard Mark Steyn for defamation, I admit that I felt a little piqued. Obviously a libel trial is not something any sane person would wish to court; and naturally I’m a massive fan of Steyn’s. Nevertheless, after all the work I’ve dedicated over the years to goading Mann, I found it a bit bloody annoying that Steyn — a relative latecomer to the climate change debate — should have been the one who ended up stealing all my courtroom glory. What made me doubly jealous was that this was a

Taking offence and freedom of speech

The row about Lib Dem candidate Maajid Nawaz continues, with some confusion over whether or not one of his critics has a meeting with the party leadership to discuss the matter. While that unravels a little more, it’s worth thinking very briefly about the implications of this row. The protagonists want Nawaz removed as a candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn because he has done something that offends other members of his religion. In doing so, they are arguing that freedom of speech comes with responsibility. Yet oddly, those who make these arguments for curbs on freedom of speech so that no-one gets upset never do so when it comes to

Liberals must rally round Maajid Nawaz

Interesting, isn’t it, this rather worrying statement from the Muslim body, MQI UK on the Mohammed cartoon affair. That, you recall, began when a member of a BBC TV audience showed  a cartoon image from a series called Jesus and Mo on his T-shirt depicting, er, Mohammed and Jesus. Nothing remotely offensive but a full-face depiction of Mohammed nonetheless. The image was duly tweeted by a participant on the programme,  Maajid Nawaz, former Islamist, one of the founders of the Quilliam Foundation and now a LibDem candidate for Kilburn, just to show why it was he wasn’t offended by it and to stimulate debate about what is and isn’t acceptable to