Free Speech and Why It Matters by Andrew Doyle review: our censorious culture is no laughing matter
Andrew Doyle is a name few people are probably familiar with. Until recently he was more well known as his alter-ego, Titania McGrath – a social justice advocate who regularly publishes a tongue in cheek satirical guide to the latest lunacy in the world of identity politics.
Doyle has alternated between the two personas for a number of years. But now, Andrew Doyle has put aside the jokes and offered up a very sensible (and needed) new book.
In Free Speech and Why it Matters, he offers a punchy and clear defence of the liberal values that appear to have somewhat lost their way.
In recent years, liberalism has been torn asunder by the sheer weight of contemporary moralistic and censorious thought-policing. The idea behind free speech is quite simple – everyone’s beliefs or opinions are of equal value. It is wrong to use the heavy-handed arm of the state to silence or punish an individual for holding the ‘wrong’ idea. Free speech is a fundamental civil liberty – it contributes to the advancement in knowledge and challenges the excessive power of the state. Therefore, as a universal human right, it must be defended and supported at all costs.
Many believe that it is just the Right that is affected by the clampdown on free expression – a claim very easy to dismiss. In January, with no prior warning and citing no reason, Facebook removed the official account belonging to the Socialist Workers Party and around 50 other left-wing activists from its platform. To say this is one-sided is false. And there has never been a moment in history when free speech has mattered so much.
Until recently one of the best books on the subjects has been Mick Hume’s Trigger Warning. Even though Hume’s book is more the length of novella (131 pages), the eight short essays offer a detailed exposition and an illuminating defence of free speech. I urge you to read it. Yet due to the clarity of Doyle’s prose, I must first suggest reading Free Speech and Why it Matters.
At roughly the same length – 98 pages – Doyle’s short book offers the reader a series of answers to common misconceptions and often confusing questions surrounding freedom of speech. He begins by shattering a commonly-held myth that there is no threat to free speech. Between 2014 and 2019 the police of England and Wales recorded 120,000 non-crime hate incidents – reports of people engaging in ‘hateful’ speech. One such case involved Harry Miller, a man who received a visit from Humberside police to tell him they wanted to “check his thinking.” The ‘crime’ he’d committed was to post a limerick online deemed ‘transphobic’. By criminalising speech, Doyle makes it clear that contemporary free speech champions already have a fight on their hands.
So it is fortunate that Doyle then turns his attention to the legal side of things with chapters on incitement and hate speech. When it comes to incitement, there are some cases that are clear. Death threats, for example, are already illegal. Where the case breaks down is the subjective nature of these two ideas, as these have been used to silence opponents. Doyle clearly states that the “potential to influence” should not be used to determine convictions.
The verb ‘to incite’ can simply mean the ability to lead someone towards a desired goal or end. As one Supreme Court judge once opined, ‘Every idea is an incitement’. No idea should be banned or criminalised. When this happens you effectively rob an individual from the ability to freely decide for themselves what they want to believe.
The issue with hate speech is equally contentious. Due to its subjective nature, it becomes impossible to define hate speech. As such, perception becomes the dominant criteria for assessment. Following the College of Policing guidelines, Doyle references the Crown Prosecution Service’s tenuous definition of a hate-incident as a one that is “perceived by the victim or anybody else” on the basis of their protected characteristics. As Doyle points out, if motivation is solely a matter of perception, any genuine criticism could be misconstrued as a hate crime. Anyone can report a hate crime and the police have no option but to record any such incident without any evidence of it having occurred. A truly staggering work of stupidity.
In recent years an increasingly hyper-connected digital world has brought with it new threats and challenges to free speech. Many of today’s problems emanate from the internet. The 2003 Communications Act has led to an average of 3,000 people arrested annually in England and Wales for posting ‘offensive’ material online – one famous example being Joseph Kelly.
One of the most pernicious myths Doyle is keen to dispel is that free speech has been weaponised by people who just wish to say prejudiced or racist things. As Doyle argues, there will always be some who use free speech to spew disgusting views. A true liberal will have no problem with this, as it brings controversial ideas out into the open; after all, sunlight is always the best disinfectant. It must be the job of any true defender of free speech to verbally challenge these bad or morally dubious ideas. As evidenced when the left-wing academic Noam Chomsky famously defended the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson.
With writers, celebrities and academics being fired or no-platformed on a regular basis, Doyle’s chapters on cancel culture and offence are especially welcome. Today’s social justice left has addressed offence with outright censorship: ban everything under the sun that offends them. In a liberal world, Doyle argues we need to separate criticism from the censorious cancellation techniques used by the illiberal far-left. Offence is a part of life. The answer is simple: don’t like it, ignore it. As Salman Rushdie once said, nobody has the right to not be offended.
The book closes with a prophetic vision of the future. The world has changed so much in the last few decades, few of us would have imagined the state would be clamping down on our most basic fundamental liberties or that people now need defending from ‘harmful’ ideas.
Where will we be in another 30 years if we don’t fight back? That we don’t know. But we must give it our all and fight back. As Doyle himself says: “Even if we fail, at least we can say we tried.”