Freedom of Speech

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the most reverend Primate for giving us the opportunity today to discuss this profoundly important human right. In doing so, I declare an interest as set out in the register, but I emphasise that I am speaking from a personal perspective. I shall draw on my own background and experiences, as they have profoundly shaped my view of why this human right, the right to express oneself freely, is so important to those of us who care about a freedom-loving democracy.

As I grew up, I lived in several countries. What united them was that they were all authoritarian and all socially conservative. All were politically repressive in varying degrees, but the combination of the two, if you were a woman, was, at minimum, stultifying and at worst, led to a life lived in social and political ostracism. That loss of voice eventually snuffed out your fundamental autonomy. You retreated into family, religious sect and tribe, with a narrow space to express yourself that got narrower and narrower. For those of us who have been lucky enough to make it to democracies—I think I speak for many who arrive on our shores today—the allure of a democracy is palpable. It has meaning beyond knowing that you can vote; it is expressed most tangibly in the ability to think what one wants and to express that as one wishes, with bounds, but with few bounds. These two, the freedom to think and free speech, are inexorably bound together. One cannot have the one in the absence of the other.

For me, a thriving democracy is one where contestation is rife and vigorous debate allows us to change our minds, to be open to contrary perspectives and, indeed, to disagree—to disagree well, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us. The role of the Opposition in a democracy’s constitution reflects that public disagreement, and the reason we elevate and provide for the formal role of an Opposition is precisely because we accept that others have the right to hold a different view from ours. Periodically, we accept that their views must hold, and we peaceably move over to allow them to rule over us. That is the compact and we all observe it.

But we know that this space is being eroded, and its erosion is most dangerous in institutions which are integral to our values. I speak of education for young people and universities. In both spheres of education, there appears a diminution of the value of opposing thought, and an elevation of that of respect and tolerance, a perspective where individual “safety” is elevated as the principal objective, and where “harm” is alleged by exposure to ideas that might provoke. Let me be clear: I do not for a second believe that respect and tolerance are not important values. Indeed, without them, in this increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural society, we could not rub along together in coexistence, so they really matter. My point is that they are values that command our loyalty only because they follow from the freedom of speech and thought that is intrinsic to a democracy. The fact that we know we can disagree and express that disagreement publicly allows us to put up with views and actions that offend us. When we do not like what is said, we can say so and be listened to.

However, as we saw in Sussex University, in the case of Professor Kathleen Stock, and numerous others, we are in danger of a situation where tolerance for one perspective applies only when it is our perspective. “Join my tribe or lose your job”. She lost her job, supposedly because she made some people feel “unsafe”. Could it be that when young people open themselves up to these other, contrary ideas, which may be uncomfortable to accept, universities are actually playing an important role, beyond knowledge? They are building our resilience to prepare us for later life, when we all have to leave our tribe and rub along with, and even tolerate, those who do not hold our views. As a member of a minority, an ethnic and religious minority, I can testify that this is especially true for us. If universities become primarily spaces where, beyond a formal curriculum, in all other activities group-think prevails, eventually all are diminished, not only the academy itself.

One has only to look at the current issue of Prospect magazine; the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, referred to Alan Rusbridger, its new editor. Prospect this month has an article about freedom of expression, and it has a sorry list of academics, journalists and others who have been subjected to sanctions in the United Kingdom and the US, both societies, one would have thought, that pride themselves on freedom.

I close with a simple thought: in order to uphold our freedoms, we accept the proposition that the struggle to keep them is for every single one of us—every day, every year, as we go forward. Today marks the day the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in Paris 73 years ago. It has served us well, as it enshrined for the first time freedom of expression in international law. Today is a good day to celebrate that.