I’ve just returned from the protest in support of freedom of expression which was held in Trafalgar Square in London today. The protest was reasonably well-attended, and attracted some notable speakers. This is a summary of my view of what happened, and why I attended.



The people there were of all stripes: Christians, Muslims and atheists, socialists and capitalists, young and old. What we all had in common was the endorsement of the following statement of principle:

The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time. The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock. We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same. We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.

I carried a placard demanding freedom for Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who has been sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.

The first speaker at the event was Maryam Namazie, of the “Worker-Communist Party of Iran”. Of course, a capitalist like myself was never likely to agree with everything she had to say, but she did give some moving stories of people who were suffering under Muslim oppression around the world (she came across as very anti-Islam). Apart from one reference to America and Israel as “terrorist states”, most of what she had to say was not too offensive: she seemed to be a genuine advocate of freedom of expression.

A colleague of hers from the Iranian communist movement brought along a poster displaying the Mohammed cartoons alongside various anti-Islamic slogans. He provided the biggest controversy of the event, because the organisers had specifically requested that no-one display the cartoons. Disturbingly, some member of the public filed a complaint against him with the police, who were very much in evidence, and he was taken aside for questioning: Namazie told the crowd that they were going to charge him. To my mind, it is quite chilling that in a supposedly free nation such as Britain, a person can be arrested because satirical messages he/she is displaying offends some passer-by.

The next speaker was Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP who led the opposition to Labour’s “religious hatred” Bill, which was eventually defeated by just one vote in the Commons. While I have deep disagreements with Mr Harris (as in fact I do with just about every speaker at the event), he made some good points. For example, he does not believe that free expression includes the right to defamation, or to threaten or harass or incite criminal activity. I agree with this, provided these offences are objectively defined and judged under law.

Next came the notorious Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, who has apparently worked with Evan Harris quite a bit. He describes himself as a “radical left-wing green”, so the prospects weren’t good for my total agreement with what he had to say. Actually, he began quite well, highlighting the recent assaults on free speech by religious groups (such as the play Bezhti, which Sikhs rioted against, Jerry Springer: The Opera, which Christians got so wound up about, and of course the recent Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed). But then he went rapidly downhill, going so far as to suggest that free speech includes the right to advise British soldiers to disobey “illegal orders” which violate “international law”. This is a debatable point at face value, I suppose, but it was his positive attitude towards such suggestions which I took exception to (I’m not a great believer in “international law”).

Tatchell’s most disturbing story, to my mind, was about how people he referred to as “Muslim community leaders” had intimidated the wife and children of a liberal imam who was due to speak at one of Tatchell’s human rights events. This was not in some Middle Eastern country either — it was in Britain. Tatchell was understandably furious, and if this story is true, the authorities in this country should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen.

Next came Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society, who made many of the same points against religious censorship that Peter Tatchell did. He also declared his opposition to Britain’s existing laws against blasphemy, which I agree are an absolute disgrace.

Given that the latest assault on free speech has come from the Muslims who reacted so violently (if belatedly) to the publication of the cartoons of Mohammed, it is understandable that many of the speakers focussed on religious censorship. Religion is a sufficiently weak force in society now, and the principle of secularism is strong enough, that the right to criticise religions is widely accepted, and so I think many would agree with these sentiments.

However, I can never help noticing how groups of people rather less politically modish than journalists or cartoonists are passed over when free speech is being discussed. What about the right of businesspeople to their freedom of expression? Where are those advocating the complete freedom of businesspeople to advertise as they please, so long as they do not do so fraudulently and they do not threaten, defame or harass (which would of course include the right to post sexually discriminatory job adverts, advertise tobacco and alcohol, etc)? Where are those advocating the right of businesspeople to ask whatever questions they like in job interviews?

Almost all the speakers were at pains to stress that one need not support all instances of freedom of expression in order to support the principle: for example, Peter Tatchell said he supported Sir Iqbal Sacranie’s right to go on radio and say that homosexuality was wrong, disgusting and diseased, even though he (Tatchell) found these sentiments highly offensive. In the same way, I believe consistency demands that we uphold the right of businesspeople to publish sexually discriminatory job adverts, even though this is clearly immoral. (Of course, those same businesspeople would have to take the full consequences of their actions, such as no decent people being willing to have anything to do with them.)

After Keith Porteous Wood had finished, came my favourite moment of the afternoon. A man from the crowd was invited to come up to speak, unplanned. He was an Iraqi who was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein, fled his native country and came to Britain. He was a practising Muslim, but I found him utterly uplifting and inspirational, because he was so imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment and of freedom. He gave a short speech about his treatment at the hands of the Hussein regime, but then he went on to express sentiments which I wish we would hear from Muslims up and down the country.

He implored Britons not to apologise for the Mohammed cartoons, stressing that we have nothing to apologise for. He announced his rejection of violence in the name of Islam, saying — and this is the part I really loved — that if Mohammed and Allah demanded violence in order to spread Islam, then he wanted nothing to do with them. (I am paraphrasing here, because regretfully I cannot remember the man’s exact words.)

This is a wonderful example of the Enlightenment attitude to religion. Note the order of precedence here: first a pro-human, pro-freedom morality, and then God and Mohammed — if they comply. I am reminded of the following quotation from Thomas Jefferson:

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Of course, the history of philosophy shows that this attitude (first reality and reason, and then God, if you can prove him) is the first step towards the death of religion. But it is the very essence of the Enlightenment and secular government, and however lonely this brave man’s voice is in the mainstream of Muslim opinion, I found it very inspiring to be reminded that there are genuine voices of reason and sanity in the Muslim community. (If anyone knows this man’s name, please post it in the comments section. Thanks.)

His point about not apologising for the Danish cartoons was an interesting one. I was rather disappointed by the decision of the organisers not to display the cartoons anywhere. What more powerful way could there be to assert your right to free expression than to put the cartoons which the enemies of that freedom have done so much to try to suppress on prominent display? The tastefulness of the cartoons or the correctness of their content are beside the point here: the point is that we have the right to display and publish this kind of material without fear of intimidation, regardless of how offensive Muslims find it.

The reason the organisers set the “no-cartoons” policy was apparently to make sure Muslims felt able to attend. They wanted to emphasise that this was a march in favour of free speech, not a march against Islam. Fair enough, I suppose, especially given the way the press crowded voraciously around the one man from the Iranian communist movement who was displaying the cartoons — not much doubt about the spin they’re going to try to put on this protest. But I can’t help feeling that any Muslim who is a true friend of freedom of expression ought to have been quite comfortable protesting alongside people displaying the cartoons, like this inspiring Iraqi would have been. After all, there were people there of all stripes, who disagreed about all sorts of things but were united in their support of freedom of expression. Some of the atheists there were sporting strongly anti-religion banners, but that didn’t seem to put off the Christian protesters. Anyway.

The next scheduled speaker was Sayyida Rend Shakir al-Hadithi, a liberal Muslim woman. I was impressed by her bravery, although not so much as her spontaneous predecessor. Her speech was mostly full of platitudes about how we need a spirit of solidarity with the Muslim world, how they’re not really our enemies, how we need to “wage peace”, etc etc. Throughout her speech, my main thought was that the only way to achieve peace when faced with a brutal enemy committed to our destruction is to retaliate against that enemy and destroy it utterly. Any Muslims who are truly our friends will support any measures we take against the states who sponsor and propagate terrorism, even if this involves invading their countries and endangering their lives, because they will recognise that we are in the right, and we therefore have the right to defend ourselves.

The next speaker was Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance, standing in for Chris Tame, who sadly died this week. Instinctively, you might think I would agree with him more than any other speaker, since he is supposed to be a right-wing defender of individual rights. But I was actually rather disappointed with his speech: it gave me a reminder of why I am not a libertarian.

Sean Gabb opened by saying that the Libertarian Alliance does not support any restriction on expression whatsoever, on the grounds that any such restriction constitutes an arbitrary suppression of ideas our rulers do not like. This is a disastrous argument: it is pure subjectivism. People disagree about ideas, the argument goes (subjectivists love stressing the fact that people disagree), so we shouldn’t restrict people’s free speech, because that involves people imposing their arbitrary views on others. This is a profoundly skeptical approach: since nobody can ever know anything, nobody can ever say someone’s ideas are wrong, so nobody should ever be able to suppress someone else’s ideas.

There is an obvious self-contradiction here which is common to all skepticism (how do you know that nobody can ever know anything? and how do you know that people shouldn’t be able to impose arbitrary ideas on each other by force?). This argument would also apply just as well to action, implying that no action should be banned by the state, because any restriction of freedom of action is an arbitrary and totalitarian restriction on behaviour which no-one can prove is wrong. This is a recipe for total anarchy. (A subjectivist can go completely the other way, arguing that you can’t prove dictatorship is immoral, and he feels that it’s right, so you should jolly well submit. Which just goes to show the kind of whim-worshipping tangles you can get into when you dispense with any objective base for your ideas.)

The Objectivist argument for free expression as I understand it is very different. Objectivism holds that objective knowledge is possible, and that one can say with certainty that certain ideas (and actions) are wrong, even evil. But it bases its view of what forms of expression (and actions) should be politically permitted not on the basis of the provable truth or falsity of the ideas being expressed (or the rightness or wrongness of the actions being committed), but on the idea of objective, inalienable individual rights.

Objectivism recognises that certain forms of expression, such as defamation or threats, are violations of rights (and can be proved objectively to be such), just as theft, rape, fraud etc are, and should therefore be forbidden by the state. However, it recognises that the expression of even viciously wrong ideas (racism, socialism, fascism etc) violates no-one’s rights, and that the state therefore may not restrict them. The same argument applies to immoral but non-rights-violating actions such as drug-taking. (In many cases, of course, the implementation of false ideas would involve the violation of rights, and so the state has a duty to act against that. But the act of spreading and advocating these ideas violates no-one’s rights.)

The Objectivist view of rights is based, at root, on the notion that every human being needs to be able to think for him- or herself, and to act on the basis of that thought, in order to survive. The state has no right to interfere with an individual’s freedom of thought, or freedom to act on his or her thought, as long as this action does not violate the objectively-determined rights of others. This necessarily implies the right to be wrong, even wickedly, evasively wrong. The benevolent universe premise implies here that such evil is necessarily self-defeating, and that good ideas will ultimately win out in the open marketplace.

The final speaker at the protest was Mark Wallace of the Freedom Association, about which I know nothing. He made some reasonable points, but kept it short, as the rain had started to come down and we all wanted to go home.

The bottom line is that I enjoyed the protest, although I found it very tiring. It is a prime example of the power of blogging, as it was organised entirely over the Internet, with very little publicity in the conventional media. I would like to comment the bloggers on some of their amusing signs: my favourite read as follows: “Carling don’t do free speech protests. But if they did…”

I’ll be interested to see how this protest is reported on and what the fallout from it will be. Long live free speech!