Cllr Simon Fawthrop is the Chairman of the Executive, Resources and Contracts Committee on Bromley Council. Dr Bryn Harris is Chief Legal Counsel to the Free Speech Union.
Bromley Council has passed a landmark policy to enshrine free speech in its policies, procedures, code of conduct and constitution. This decision didn’t come about by accident. Many months of work alongside the Free Speech Union have gone into getting this policy right, and this is only the beginning – the many years of local authorities getting free speech wrong need to be put right.
The case files of the Free Speech Union (or FSU) groan with examples of short-sighted intolerance and outright legal error. Blue comedian Roy Chubby Brown isn’t to everyone’s tastes, for instance, but did the residents of Lancaster really need their council to save them from smutty humour by cancelling his show?
What of Basingstoke and Deane, which investigated an elected councillor under its code of conduct for use of the term ‘year zero’? (It’s allegedly offensive to the victims of Pol Pot, in case you were wondering.)
Was it really wise of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council to support its employee’s injunction against citizen journalist, Julian Saunders, only for a High Court judge to throw the case out with a reminder that, in this part of the world, journalists are free to speak and write?
And think again about visiting the Yorkshire town of Calderdale if you’re a broad reader – its library squirreled away books by gender-critical authors in a bid to suppress the fashionable heresy that men are men, and women are women.
Many other cases have been highlighted through the excellent reporting in the Telegraph.
Councillors at Bromley decided to take a different path: too often anti-free speech activism trumps common sense and liberal tolerance. Working with the FSU, we are determined to lead by example and restore the balance by emphasising the importance of free speech.
In Conservative-run Bromley Council, the FSU was pushing at an open door. So work began on protecting and enhancing employees’ and Councillors’ rights, particularly where competing rights were identified. The aim was to create a policy that was meaningful and enforceable, which wouldn’t just offer up warm words and platitudes.
Here’s what we have done. Bromley Council must now review its policies, procedures and Constitution to ensure that they reflect the fundamental importance of the right to freedom of speech and, in particular, the Council must acknowledge the narrow scope for interfering with political expression. We have re-emphasised our protection for whistle-blowers, assuring our employees that complaints about suppression of certain beliefs are likely to attract whistle-blower protections under the Employment Rights Act and the Equality Act. During the Bromley Council committee debate where the policy was agreed, the free speech arguments of enlightenment around protecting our employees’ right to challenge without repercussion, and about allowing employees the freedom to speak their minds whilst being protected from an inadvertent HR blunder, won the day. The discussions earned the support of Independent and Liberal Democrat Councillors. For some reason the Labour Party displayed their true colours and tried, without success, to vote the proposals down.
We have identified political speech as being important, Councillors are not employees and do not fall under the remit of a Human Resources style regime. Too often codes of conduct and constitutions treat politicians like employees, rather than democratically elected individuals who are duty bound to represent their residents and constituents. Often some councils allow codes of conduct to be abused by political agitators looking to score points off opponents. We will update Bromley Council’s code of conduct, and indeed its constitution, to prioritise free speech above HR-style inquisition and political snitching. It is important to remind everyone that Councillors have the right of limited privilege during some of their Council activities. Political speech will often include hyperbole to help make points during a debate. Finally, Bromley Council is now in the process of updating its constitution to reflect the importance of free speech so that Councillors are also protected for strongly held beliefs.
Freedom of speech needs to be front and centre in the minds of councillors and council employees as they go about their jobs, not just because we think free speech is important, but because free speech is integral to what councils do. Public libraries aren’t worth having unless their users have access to a free range to what has been thought and said. Maintained schools need guidance on how to raise a generation of free-thinkers, not automatic-thinkers.
Perhaps most importantly, the powers wielded by councils are a danger to our enlightened society unless free speech is at the heart of how they are wielded. Two London borough councils have imposed public spaces protection orders (PSPOs) criminalising ‘lewd’ and ‘foul’ language, in the case of Greenwich, and, in the case of Redbridge, any conduct that causes harassment, alarm or distress – regardless of intention, and regardless of whether it is reasonable to feel harassed as a result of the conduct. So if you’re chatting about your pet cat distresses me, because a cat once bit my little brother, then, so be it, you are guilty of an offence.
Absurd abuses of power such as these have no place in a free society that respects the ability to speak one’s mind. Bromley Council has made a promising start. We should be under no illusions about the work that remains to be done – and we invite anyone who cares about free speech to join us in doing it.
When we introduced the policy, it was said that we should always start from the position often attributed to Voltaire “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Being prepared to defend other’s rights forms the basis of an enlightened society that can tolerate dissent and respect, if not agree with other points of view. To promote free speech is to promote tolerance, enlightenment, education and understanding: this is why it was so important to make this policy decision.
During the discussions on the policy at Bromley Council, it was pointed out that “there is no right to not be offended, because put simply, being offended is a choice an individual makes, you can’t just be offended. Freedom of speech is not democratic; just as a totalitarian minority can’t take away freedom of expression held by a majority, nor can a majority vote to take away freedom of expression from a minority.”
We anticipate that the decision by Bromley Council, will give inspiration to many councillors and councils up and down the country that they too can have the protection of free speech and will now have the precedent with which to proceed.