Miriam Cates is the former MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.
Free speech is under threat in Keir Starmer’s Britain, or so the headlines say. The Labour government has blamed ‘online misinformation’ for stirring up recent riots and courts have cracked down harshly on those accused of using social media to stir up violence. For the political class, blaming ‘hate speech’ for widespread unrest is a useful distraction from not knowing what to do about immigration, an issue that highlights a serious failure of our democracy.
Fears that the Government will amend the Online Safety Act to limit freedoms are well founded. In opposition, Labour favoured plans to ban material that was ‘legal but harmful’, a clause that was eventually dropped by the Conservatives.
Under the ‘protection’ of Labour and big tech it is reasonable to assume that any new restrictions will lean much harder on those on the Right of the political spectrum: we only need to compare the treatment of those who recently incited violence against immigrants online with the those who incite violence against gender critical women, or Jews.
Free speech may well be under threat. But there is a tendency amongst some conservatives to equate free speech with an unregulated internet falsely and to label calls to address the negative aspects of social media as ‘censorship.’ In defending the indefensible, we are not only misunderstanding the nature of free speech but, I believe, hastening its demise.
If we want to defend free speech then we must first define it. So, what exactly is ‘free speech’? As some appear to believe, is it the anonymous right to say whatever you wish to unlimited numbers of people anywhere in the world with no legal or social repercussions? If so, it follows that we have free speech as long as those conditions exist online.
But there are serious problems with this definition. Firstly, this is not the kind of ‘free speech’ we had in pre-internet times, and free speech certainly did exist in Britain long before the invention of Twitter and Meta.
Before the internet, in free countries, people could say more or less whatever they wanted. But very few people had ‘reach’. You could stand up in your local pub and claim anything you like or write a letter to a friend but your views would not travel far. There were clear disincentives to saying something particularly stupid, offensive, or false. You may lose your social standing, face stigma, and even physical violence if you insult the wrong person.
For those few individuals who had a wider audience – politicians, preachers, and writers – greater influence brought greater responsibility. Printing falsehoods could and still can land journalists and editors in jail, and misjudging the public mood can and does lose politicians their jobs. Legislation prohibiting libel, slander, defamation, and fraud have broad support yet all of these laws could be said by absolutists to inhibit ‘free’ speech.
Before the internet, anonymous communication was seen as cowardly and underhand. ‘Poison pen’ letters, and even the famous anonymous pamphlets of the 18th century were illegal. Today, all official political communications must carry a registered ‘imprint’; this accountability is not seen as a threat to free speech but as a safeguard for democracy.
Of course, there has always been a role for journalists and courts to hide the identity of those whistleblowers whose stories must be told but who can’t be safely identified. But the absolute right to broadcast one’s views anonymously was not previously viewed as a pillar of free speech, and certainly not as a social good.
There has and always will be a social and even financial cost to challenging the prevailing worldview, but it is individual acts of bravery, not anonymity, that catalyse real change. As Jordan Peterson sets out in this compelling lecture for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, it is always best to speak the truth; but we shouldn’t fool ourselves that there won’t be a price to pay.
There has never been a time in history when free speech has been defined as the right to say anything to anyone without consequences. This vision of free speech is incompatible with functional human relationships and therefore antithetical to a safe and functional society.
Digital ‘speech’ is not inherently good or bad. Rather the problem with the internet is that we haven’t yet found a way to translate the centuries-old framework of social and legal boundaries that govern offline communication into the online world. Important social cues such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice that ensure a natural moderation of speech in real life do not exist online, where the targets of our communication are equally human but often remote and invisible.
What we observe all too often on social media is a pre-civilisational anarchic free-for-all where liars, psychopaths, and common and garden dickheads operate freely and without penalty, and where individuals do not face the normal consequences of speech that – offline at least – make it socially and financially costly to be insulting, predatory and antisocial. We are not talking about an environment that tolerates the occasional giving and taking of offence, but one that actively glorifies the gratuitous humiliation of other human beings.
The internet has many benefits. But it is also fuelling disturbing rises in violence against women and girls, anti-semitism, prejudice against Muslims, crime, terrorism, sexual exploitation, and the indoctrination of children. It is not an exaggeration to say that the poisonous and dysfunctional nature of political ‘discourse’ on social media is undermining democracy.
If we continue to defend this extreme, destructive, and divisive environment in the name of ‘free speech’, the downstream consequences of an online Wild West will become intolerable. If social media cannot be ‘civilised’, governments will take increasingly draconian action (probably with public support) in a way that inevitably favours their political interests.
If we are to defend free speech, we need a better definition. A truer and more historically accurate description of free speech is the freedom to express your beliefs about politics, philosophy, and religion without fear of legal action or physical harm. This kind of freedom is of infinite value and the best protection against evil authoritarianism, but it is not a ‘standalone’ right.
Societies, governments, and civilisations do not just decide that the right to free speech exists, like a right to free healthcare or education. Rather the existence and extent of free speech at any given time is the result of several societal preconditions, conditions that, to our great benefit, Western democracies have cultivated better than any other historical civilisation.
One of these preconditions is a state of peace. For governments, national security will always trump freedom of expression. During wartime, even good faith democracies suspend ordinary freedoms of speech and expression because the keeping of state secrets becomes an existential endeavour.
Domestic peace is also a prerequisite for free speech. In febrile situations like those seen in British cities this month, authorities cannot afford to allow words to incite physical violence, and – rightly or wrongly – they crack down.
Free speech also requires a measure of social cohesion and support for democracy. We must agree on enough – we must have a sufficiently strong shared identity, history, and common purpose – and be willing to confer legitimacy on our opponents to be able to tolerate strong differences of opinion on political matters without a descent into unrest.
It is like the difference between having an argument in a healthy marriage compared to in a dysfunctional one. If the basis of the relationship is sound, opinions can be freely aired without the threat of violence or marital breakdown. The same is true of society. It remains to be seen whether true freedom of speech can be maintained in an increasingly multicultural and polarised nation.
But perhaps the most undervalued pre-condition for freedom of speech is a culture of personal responsibility, or ‘virtue’. For freedom of speech to retain widespread support, most people must behave well most of the time. Political opponents must be treated with dignity; we should ridicule ideas but not individuals; people should exercise a degree of restraint and certainty before sharing rumours; and as individuals we should embrace a duty to wider society that asks – before tweeting – whether the motivation of a particular intervention is self-interest or a desire to further the common good.
Significantly, free speech finds the least support amongst the young, the generation that has been most badly affected by the cruel and ugly nature of many social media ‘debates’ and the now ubiquitous but devastating online public shamings that bear more than a passing resemblance to the witch trials of the Middle Ages.
Free speech is the fruit of a successful civilisation, not its foundation. The foundation of our successful and freedom-loving Western democratic tradition is the Judeo-Christian understanding of ‘imago dei’: the quite remarkable belief that every individual is made in the image of God and is therefore of infinite worth, and the instruction to treat others as you would have them treat you are the bases of the fairness, freedom, and wealth we still enjoy. Yet in their online interactions, many ‘users’ have completely abandoned these principles and the restraint and self-denial to which they call us.
If we turn our backs on one of the founding values of Western culture – the duty to be truthful and virtuous in our interactions with others – then we will sooner or later lose the benefits of this culture, including many of our freedoms. If we want to avoid censorship and authoritarianism online, we must find a way to translate into the online world the offline conventions that have so successfully fostered Western freedoms.
This means questioning the use of anonymity, recognising that the internet like any other technology must be regulated, and accepting that online crime must be treated as harshly as it is offline. Online speech can and should be free, but this freedom will only endure if individuals are fully accountable for what they say and write, just as they are in the real world.
Technology may have ‘moved on’ but the optimal conditions for human flourishing haven’t changed. The best answer to online chaos is a deeply conservative one – the rediscovery of personal responsibility. The future of online freedom of speech depends not on an absence of regulation, but on our collective willingness to embrace the traditional virtues of kindness, honesty, and self-control in our new – virtual – public sphere.