A Labour Government source has dismissed the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act as a “hate speech charter”. Free speech in Britain has rarely been in more peril, says Professor David Abulafia in the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.
In an extraordinary outburst, a Government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a “hate-speech charter”. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long as we retain free speech, people are free to describe it that way. But doing so raises worrying doubts about what the new Government thinks free speech means. …
Th[e] steep decline in the ability of universities to act as places of open debate, apolitical in character, where people do feel happy to say out loud that they supported Brexit or that they sympathise with Israel, has made ever more urgent the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, signed into law last year by King Charles. In a manoeuvre that has astonished the more than 500 academics who signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, the Government has “paused” its implementation a matter of days before its provisions were to click into place. Unlike the letters about Gaza or just stopping oil, the signatories are real academics, many of them very senior, not post-docs and graduate students with little real clout. …
Now the DfE has, in a move of dubious legitimacy, decided not to put the act into effect. Bizarrely, the DfE is supported by the Union of Jewish Students and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It is asserted that the Act would somehow unleash a torrent of antisemitic abuse, even Holocaust denial, on campus. This is a total misunderstanding of what is permissible. Under the Equality Act of 2010 and other legislation speech conducive to hatred and violence is unlawful. Expressing support for Hamas is unlawful. The expression of Neo-Nazi views is unlawful. And the torrent has already been unleashed in demonstrations that have included calls for the extirpation of the State of Israel. The Act would not and should not prevent people from arguing publicly in support of the Palestinians, for instance condemning the Jewish settlers on the West Bank in strong terms. But it would also ensure that events supportive of Israel and the trauma it suffered last October can go ahead with security paid for by the relevant university. It provides mechanisms by which no-cost complaints can be made if these conditions are not fulfilled, and enables sanctions to be imposed on universities or student unions that have failed to comply with the act. In short, the Act would greatly improve a situation for Jewish students which has turned from difficult to atrocious since October 7th.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union is bringing a legal challenge against Bridget Phillipson, whom it believes acted unlawfully when she ‘paused’ the Act. You can help pay the FSU’s legal costs by donating to this CrowdJustice fundraiser here.
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It’s a shame almost nobody believes in freedom of speech, including the person who wrote the Spectator article
How depressing
For a free society. free speech is a paradigm!
https://thenewconservative.co.uk/the-notting-hill-stabfest/
Frank Haviland giving some free speech over the ‘Notting Hill
Festival/ crime spree complete with some disturbing videos.“So by all means move the carnival to Hyde Park, but instigate a few changes: board the park up, rather than residences; replace the police with zombie knife retailers, blow the whistle, and let them get stuck into each other for three days. Not only would the taxpayer save a fortune on policing and future benefits payments, but perhaps we could televise the vibrant diversity and market it as a new sport in which London would almost certainly reign supreme.”
I’m not an absolutist but we either have free speech or we don’t. Nobody should be exempt from criticism or scrutiny, but this is evidently not the case in Clown World. On the contrary, there are now more and more things we aren’t allowed to say, either in person or online, and it stinks.
Time for more Gad Saad wisdom;
”In a free society, not a single belief, opinion, ideology, religion, or attitude is above scrutiny. Your beliefs do not get a pass from the judgment of others because they are cloaked in the magical robe of religion. The West is under the suicidal presumption that there is ONE religion that can never be criticized, judged, mocked, and scrutinized. The quicker that this reflex is lost the safer your children and grandchildren will be. Do not pray at the altar of Suicidal Empathy. Freedom of speech is a deontological principle. Wake up.”
https://x.com/GadSaad/status/1827915540779634721
When Charles I dissolved Parliament and ended any criticism of the monarchy, a revolution ensued.
Today, governments can end your freedom and most sheeple will bray for home imprisonment and drugs, invoking the religion of ‘science’ or ‘consensus’ as a rationale. Charles was early by 4 centuries. A forward thinker I would say.
I don’t understand how this Act of Parliament, which was signed into law last year by King Charles at the request of Parliament, can be suddenly thrown out by Parliament without permission from the King.
“ the Act would somehow unleash a torrent of antisemitic abuse, even Holocaust denial, on campus”…..Then invite the debate and respect free speech!
This article says “ Bizarrely, the DfE is supported by the Union of Jewish Students and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.”
The reason it seems bizarre is that few people know where the whole idea of “Hate Speech” originated:
“Hate speech” does not exist in a democracy. It is an entirely alien concept called “Lashon Hara”, being forced upon the West by a certain desert tribe, who originally used it to silence the parents of children abused by the “clergy”. It is similar to the codes of silence imposed by foreign criminal gangs upon their members, as well as within certain itinerant communities traditionally hostile to the sedentary inhabitants. We must reject the entire idea of “hate speech” and “hate crime” as an alien concept, and remove all references to it from our laws. We do not consent to it being forced upon our democratic societies.
And who is this “certain desert tribe”? Not Muslims.
“Hate Speech” comes from Judaism, and, like the ritual mutilation of baby boys, has been forced upon the Christian West.
Time to say, “No. We do not consent.”
Free Speech is always dangerous to the totalitarian. People may say “What are you talking about, we don’t have that kind of government here, that only happens in places like North Korea”
—But these were the words, not of some Dictator in a far-off place, but the words of a Police Officer in 2019 in the UK —“We need to check your thinking”