Like many others, I found myself frustrated over Christmas by my grandparents’ objections to conversations about ‘religion, politics, sex, or money’ – undeniably some of the most important aspects of life. Instead, personal gossip dominated the discussion. Of course, friction between generations about political values is not new: novelists have explored this dynamic since at least Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. However, my own recent experience prompted me to reflect upon the history of free speech in Britain, and its (apparent) fragility today. What once sustained the paradoxical compound of British private aversion to, and public protection of, free speech? And how sound are recent attempts to undermine it?
John Stuart Mill’s defence of free thought, speech, and association – and their proper limits – in On Liberty provides us with a useful framework to discuss such questions. It was this strain of thinking that informed Beatrice Hall’s famous 1906 dictum, often misattributed to Voltaire: ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. More importantly, Mill may yet also justify our own reaffirmation of the same sentiment in an increasingly multicultural and plural society, committed to secular politics.
British Free Speech in Historical Context
Britain historically prided itself on its defence of free thought, speech, and association. ‘Whig history’ once taught that Britain had avoided the waves of revolution – and later totalitarianism – which had beset Continental Europe from 1789 partially because we instituted a free press and toleration following the Revolution of 1688. From the Victorian era, Whig history then combined with Evangelical social values to produce a British politics that favoured ‘common sense’ over ‘ideology’, and therefore disparaged social discussions about ‘religion, politics, sex, or money’. From c.1960, however, ‘Whig history’ lost purchase – for good historical and moral reasons.
Nevertheless, historical self-understanding remained a potent ballast for British defences of free speech and association thereafter. British Marxisant historians pointed to the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Chartists as prime examples of trade unionism before Marx and Bolshevism. Meanwhile, almost all took great pride in Britain’s place as part of a liberal-democratic ‘West’ which – unlike the Communist Bloc – protected individual rights. The contemporary cultural purchase of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, especially in secondary schools, was immense. Practically every Briton whose education and political cognisance pre-date 1989 grew up in a country which viewed threats to free thought, speech, and association as inherently and particularly anti-English or anti-British.
Yet British attitudes and policies appear to be changing, and the public costs are severe. In recent years, British governments have introduced statutory restrictions upon certain forms of free speech and peaceful public protest. Indeed, only this month the High Court ruled that the government’s proscription of Palestine Action’s protests was unlawful. It is therefore undeniable that free speech and association are under threat from the British state. However, this political trend is merely symptomatic of a broader societal current affecting both private individuals and institutions. The news is littered with controversies concerning ‘deplatforming’, where some ‘progressives’ refuse the right to speak to those with whom they vehemently disagree. However, it is also suffused with coverage of the related trend for ‘anti-woke’ reactionaries to refuse to listen to any opinion expressed by those they deem ‘woke’.
Both sides would do well to remember that, in the absence of free speech and debate, all views risk collapsing into prejudice: quite literally, the exercise of judgement before considering the arguments and evidence. Such prejudice, necessarily informed by received wisdom and customs, is of little analytical use. It can occasionally justify critique and disagreement, but it cannot alone outline substantive solutions to particular problems. Meanwhile, the discourse on ‘deplatforming’ rarely addresses the concept of ‘progress’ itself – its possibility, meaning, and potential relation to free speech – and, by extension, underlying questions about which actions or ends are desirable – and practicable – and hence which should be promoted. The rhetoric has become Sophistical.
Mill’s Defence of Free Speech as A Necessary Condition of Progress
By contrast, Mill’s defence of free thought, speech, and association has thin, secular foundations, and it bottoms out in an instrumental account of their importance for intellectual and moral progress. On Liberty is hardly a little-known text, but it is crucial to see how its threads fit together: Mill first mounts an epistemic argument, he then ties it to a moral counterpart, before turning to the necessary preconditions of, and constraints upon, effective free speech.
It is healthy, Mill argued, for people to express their views in print or speech because the process necessitates the imposition of logical form and the provision of evidence – or the realisation that one lacks it. By this means, or by recognising the strengths of their opponent’s arguments, the open-minded individual is capable of recognising when their view is wrong and changing their mind.
Mill then spells out precisely why restricting free speech incurs moral costs. If each and every individual can change their mind through dialogue, free speech plays a crucial role in facilitating the self-development of character and intellect. Meanwhile, if society is simply a complex amalgamation of individuals, and each individual can progress in this way, then so too can society. Indeed, Mill’s argument was not simply that free speech can enable individual and societal progress, but rather that it was ordinarily tantamount to a necessary precondition of it.
Mill did not know the modern category of the ‘Overton window’ – the area within which mainstream public discourse about an issue can operate without the emergence of outrage – as it is a product of the 1990s, but he certainly provided an account of how it moves. It is only through free thought and expression that the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable’ – in academia or morality – are stretched. Mill himself campaigned for the legality of contraception and female enfranchisement long before either were enacted; in his own day, both were deemed unacceptably radical. We may thank generations of activists, politicians, and thinkers that neither are today, and therein lies the crux of Mill’s moral case for free speech.
Progress Through Free Speech Requires Eccentricity
Mill recognised, however, that such intellectual and moral progress depend upon ‘individuality’, and so he also provided a defence of eccentricity and ‘experiments in living’. Without plurality, the views entering public discourse coalesce, thereby hindering its public utility. Mill’s so-called ‘liberalism’ – a term he never applied to himself – and its defence of individual rights and liberty of action, was built upon this epistemic and moral foundation: an increase in the scope of personal freedom should improve rational discussion and hence improve individuals and society.
Pivotally, though, one cannot know how today’s eccentricity might generate tomorrow’s progress. It could not, for instance, be foreknown that Sir David Butler’s childhood obsession with cricket statistics would lead to the emergence of psephology as the quantitative analysis of election data. Nor would most of Bletchley Park’s female cryptographers have expected to put their love of crosswords to use decoding Nazi Enigma communications. Eccentricity breeds cognitive diversity, and such diversity is key to solving problems – even those, perhaps especially those, that are unforeseen.
But, of course, such eccentricity and associated free action have the potential to harm others, either directly or through the neglect of relational duties. Mill therefore also provided an account of the justified limits upon free action and speech, captured by his ‘one very simple principle’: the individual should be free to act in any which way they like, unless they harm another individual. Such a stipulation insulates Mill from the valid critique that unregulated free speech could incite violence, and here Mill recognises the need for legal protections against this.
Is Mill’s Category of ‘Harm’ Fatally Narrow?
This ‘one very simple principle’ – crucial to the real-world application of Mill’s theory – has always attracted most censure, and the critique appears stronger today. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Mill’s utilitarian contemporary, was the first to challenge the implications of excluding ‘offence’ from the category of ‘harm’ in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Almost all of Stephen’s examples – from public drunkenness to various degrees of public ‘nudity’ – can nevertheless fairly be characterised as reflections of his own mid-Victorian ‘Overton window’. More important is the fact that we increasingly affirm, developing the insights of the later Wittgenstein, that ‘Words are deeds’. In many contexts, such as childhood bullying, this has provided a welcome corrective to the older view that ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me’.
Should we therefore conclude that there are legitimate grounds to prevent the expression of views that will cause (widespread) subjective offence because that constitutes harm? No: we should hold firm to Mill’s position. (Speech-)acts should only be prevented if they directly harm, or incite others to harm, particular agents’ welfare or interests. Politics is a domain in which actual, physical harm should be prevented – and, during (civil) wars, it is tragically inflicted. Public discourse must not avoid this fact, and it should therefore not lose sight of the distinction between physical ‘harm’ and emotive ‘offence’. Ignoring and/or belittling the opinions of others is both disrespectful and rarely an efficient persuasive strategy, and politics ceases to function without co-operation, compromise, and understanding. It is surely better to confront the ‘offensive’ opinion before it quietly festers, fuelling later persecution.
Moreover, the precedent that ‘offence’ can generate enforceable obligations upon others, or restrictions upon their rights, is particularly dangerous within democracies. Should mere ‘offence’ at the presence of ethnic or religious minorities legitimise refusals to recognise their rights? Or is ‘offence’ at one’s chosen party losing an election legitimate grounds to enact a coup, or to reject the authority of the new government’s laws? I certainly hope not – even if the current Republican Party appears to disagree.
We therefore need to (re)learn to listen, with an open mind, to the opinions of others, and we must be inquisitive enough to uncover the presuppositions upon which these opinions rest. Then, having done so, we must be willing to respectfully accept or challenge their views, or else peacefully agree to disagree. The factual realities of information and communication have undeniably changed since the 1850s (and the 1950s), but it is hard to see how such structural changes render Mill’s secular case for free speech – on either the epistemic or moral level – redundant. They may even have increased its importance. Here, as elsewhere, our intellectual ancestors can still guide us – but only, ironically, if we still listen.
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