Britain’s public square, whether that be its physical, digital or broadcast one, suffers from a surfeit of ‘wokeness’ and a severe lack of freedom of speech. I think that many people would agree with me on this and the number of people arrested or prosecuted for dubious ‘hate speech’ offences along with the rise of cancel culture, provides ample evidence that Britons don’t have enough free speech and free speech protections.

The question for me and many others is, what to do about this situation? Some of us have taken to using online facilities that expressly support freedom of speech such as Gab and Parler in order to get away from the censors of lamestream legacy social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But this doesn’t help the majority of people who either do not wish to engage with social media and just want to stand up and voice their point of view, even if that point of view is considered offensive to some. The reality is that everything is offensive to someone which is why ‘hate speech’ laws are grossly intrusive, capricious and dictatorial and why freedom of speech in the UK needs to be both enhanced and protected.

Well, the Adam Smith Institute appears to have come up with a partial solution to Britain’s problem with a lack of freedom of speech. They have proposed certain legislative changes that would remove from several existing pieces of legislation those sections that have created speech crimes. This would, in my view, go a long way to both restoring and enhancing freedom of speech in the UK.

Guido Fawkes is reporting this story and it is one that needs to be shared widely and in my view these are proposals that I could quite easily get behind and I believe others should too.

Guido said that the Adam Smith Institute wants to:

Remove all references to “abusive” or “insulting” words and behaviour from Parts I and III of the Public Order Act 1986;

• Replace Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 with
  • (a) a provision that limits the scope of the existing rule to “threatening” only and
  • (b) a new rule that addresses meaningful stalking and cyberstalking threats 2 which cause or intend to cause substantial emotional distress, modelled after 18 U.S. Code § 2261A;
• Repeal the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and replace it with the aforementioned stalking statute;
• Introduce a United Kingdom Free Speech Act.

Apart from a few caveats in this proposal where there are things about on which I will disagree, which I will go into detail about shortly, these are good proposals. The removal of the ‘abusive’ and ‘insulting’ references in the 1986 Public Order Act is something that should have been done years ago as what individuals consider to be ‘abusive’ and ‘insulting’ is something that varies from person to person. The changes to Section 127 which relate to ‘threatening’ should be welcomed but only if they relate to clear, immediate and credible threats as per US judgements regarding their First Amendment to the Constitution. Some people find bagels or doughnuts ‘threatening’ but we should not criminalise pictures of these items, something that could happen if there was not a proper definition of what is ‘threatening’.

I most certainly and wholeheartedly agree with the idea of bringing in a UK Free Speech Act. It’s about time that the right of Britons to speak freely was enshrined in law, even if what they say is considered by some to be ‘offensive’ and I support that right even for those with whom I vehemently disagree.

I’m somewhat in favour of the creation of a new anti stalking act but it must be only for stalking and not phrased in such a way as to be abused by those who merely don’t like their political or religious positions being criticised. We’ve seen countless times how various ‘hate speech’ laws have been used to target critics of individuals and of ideologies and I fear that unless strictly confined to domestic stalking issues an anti stalking act could also be abused.

My main criticism of the headline proposals are those with regards to the reform of Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act. If it strictly copies 18 U.S. Code § 2261A and only outlaws stalking with intent to kill, harm or harass and behaviour that places the victim in fear of genuine and credible harm, then many of my worries about this proposed reform would be calmed. But I do worry about how ‘threatening’ would be defined. If the bar was set at credible threat of harm then that is a significant hurdle for accusers to have to reach and something that would deter vexatious complainants. But if the bar is set much lower than credible threat of harm, then we could end up with similar problems as we have now where people can be prosecuted because someone’s feelings were hurt over an expressed opinion. A bar that is too low could allow various political and religious grievance mongers to silence criticism of them and their organisations by allowing them to claim spuriously that they were ‘threatened’ by mockery or an alternative opinion of them. To allow this low level of ‘threat’ would leave us with similar legal problems with regard freedom of speech as we have now.

On the whole this is a damned good set of proposals apart from those aspects of them that cause me concern. These are proposals that should be backed by the public and are the sort of proposals that any Conservative politician should get behind, that is of course if we still had any genuine conservative minded politicians left in the House of Commons. They are certainly proposals that I’d like to see getting some backing from the upcoming alternative parties like Heritage, Reform and Reclaim. This is because all these parties are concerned in some way and to a greater or lesser degree depending on the party, with Britain’s current problems of freedom of speech or rather our lack of freedom of speech. I would certainly support any reasonable political party that promised faithfully to implement some form of the Adam Smith Institute’s proposals to give Britons back the freedom of speech that various legislative vehicles have stolen from us.