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Freedom of Speech

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving us this opportunity. I am also grateful to the Minister, because I cannot think that it was anyone else who, having listened to all the excellent arguments in this House, persuaded the Prime Minister to miss that vote the other day. In particular, I remember the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Plant of Highfield, pointing out that there was no difference between a religion and its adherents, and that if you insult a religion you hurt its adherents. That has been perfectly demonstrated by this episode of the Danish cartoons. Islam has suffered no damage at all from the publication of those cartoons; the hurt in the Muslim community has been immense. That is the nature of these things, and why we are so well rid of the Bill as it was originally drafted. We must be extremely careful to guard our freedom of speech. It is a difficult thing to do. I was immensely inspired by the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. It was well thought out, and I shall read it again because I am sure that I have not absorbed all its wisdom on first hearing. I thought that its summary was that this is the perfect place to discuss free speech, because the House of Lords gets it right; the way that we conduct ourselves is the way that everyone else should. You do come to believe that after a while here, so I shall not disagree with him on that. It went deeper, however. Before I turn to where I agree with the right reverend Prelate, I will say that two parts of our society have come out of this latest episode extremely well. The first is the Muslim community in general. The way that it has reacted to this—responsibly, as part of our British community—has given me enormous comfort after all the difficulties and tribulations we have been through over the past few years. There will always be elements who try to disrupt things, but that is not the image which sticks in my mind. The British press have also come out of this episode well. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, the cartoons are tasteless and insulting. They are of no value in themselves. To reprint them would be an act of sheer gratuitous insult. In the majority community, we have to get used to accepting insult. We do not wish to curtail people’s rights to publish cartoons about George Bush, the Prime Minister or whoever. When we are in that sort of position of power, these are ordinary parts of daily life, and so they should be. But we have to be conscious that when a community is in a minority and finds itself somewhat embattled, then to hurt them is to hurt them excessively. We have to be extremely careful and judge well when we take an action that might do that. The press have judged that extremely finely. I take great comfort from that because the press has been growing up during the past 20 years and it has gained enormous power. This is a sign that it is learning to use it responsibly. The group which has not come out well from this episode—and from many previous episodes, as noble Lords have said—is the Government. It is the Government’s responsibility to set the tone for the defence of the freedom of speech. It will not be Ministers who react in each instance. It is their servants and their acolytes who will react in the way they perceive their masters as wishing them to act. The tone that this Government have set over the years has been one of denial of freedom of speech. The police’s reaction to the demonstration outside the Danish embassy and their allowing that sort of threat to go unpunished are an enormous suppression of freedom of speech. If that sort of frightening activity was allowed to go on there, as it was allowed also in Birmingham, and if police act in that way when faced with mob violence, then those who are the likely target of that mob violence feel threatened and their free speech is suppressed. It is important that the Government enforce the boundaries. I think we can all agree, at least in their gross aspect, on what is a reasonable reaction and what is a reasonable expression of freedom speech. Carrying placards suggesting that people be murdered or indulging in violence which results in the closure of a play both clearly go over the mark, and neither was properly dealt with by the police, because they felt that there would be no support from the Government if they had taken the sort of action that they should have taken. This is a Government who, through a succession of Bills of which the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was only the most recent example, have been seen to care little for freedom of speech. Even the little examples confirm that impression, such as that of the lady who was arrested and charged for reading out the names of the dead opposite the Cenotaph. Whether the police arrest her or stand by her quietly and say, ““Right, you’ve done your bit. Go on””, is a matter on which they exercise their discretion. They exercise that discretion in the understanding of what their political masters wish them to do. The climate is set by the Government, and the Government are setting it against freedom of speech. I really hope that all this cumulative distress will result at some stage in the Government changing their attitude, or to us to changing the Government.