In full: Rowan Atkinson on free speech
With transcription
Society has created a society of an extraordinary authoritarian and controlling nature, that is what you might call the new intolerance, a new but intense desire to gag uncomfortable voices of dissent.
In full: Rowan Atkinson on free speech
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The forerunner of the Defend Free Speech campaign was called “Reform Section 5”. This speech by Rowan Atkinson at the launch event in Parliament in 2012 should be heard by every politician, journalist and campaigner before they start calling for laws to silence those they regard as ‘extremists’.
Transcription by Auris AI
1. My starting point, when it comes to the consideration of any issue relating to free speech, it's my passionate belief that the second most precious thing in life is the right to express yourself freely, the most precious thing in life.
2. I think is food in your mouth.
3. And the third most precious is a roof over your head, but a fixture for me in the number two slot is free expression.
4. Just below need to sustain life itself.
5. That is because I have enjoyed free expression in this country all my professional life and fully expect to continue to do so.
6. Personally I suspect highly unlikely to be arrested for whatever laws exist to contain free expression because of the undoubtedly privileged position, that is afforded to those of a high public profile.
7. So my concerns are less for myself and more for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile.
8. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay.
9. All the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult or the cafe owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.
10. When I heard of some of these more ludicrous offenses and charges.
11. I remembered that I had been here before in a fictional context.
12. I wanted to show So called not the nine o'clock news, some years ago, and we did a sketch where Griff Rhys, Jones played, Constable Savage, a manifestly racist, police officer to whom I as his station.
13. Commander, is giving a dressing down for arresting a black man, on a whole string of ridiculous, trumped-up and ludicrous charges.
14. The charges for which comfortable Savage, arrested, mr.
15. Winston could do go of 55, Mercer Road with these walking on Cracks in the pavement walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area during the hours of darkness.
16. And one of my favorites walking around all over the place.
17. He was also arrested for urinating in a public convenience and looking at me in a funny way, who would have thought that we would end up with a law that would allow life to imitate art.
18. So, Exactly.
19. I read somewhere a defender of the status quo claiming that the fact that the gay horse Case was dropped, after the arrested man, refused to pay the to pay the fine and that the Scientology case was also dropped at some point during the court process was proof that the law was working.
20. Well, ignoring the fact that the only reason these cases were dropped was because of the publicity that they had attracted.
21. But police sense, the ridicule was just around Warner and withdrew their actions.
22. But what about the thousands of other cases that did not enjoy the oxygen of publicity, but weren't quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention.
23. Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released, you know, that isn't a law working properly that is censorious Nurse of the most intimidating, kind guaranteed.
24. To have as Lord.
25. Dear says the chilling effect on free expression and free protest parliament's joint committee on human rights.
26. Summarized as you may know this whole issue very well by saying while arresting a protester for using threatening or abusive speech, May depending on the circumstances, be a proportionate response.
27. We do not think that language or behavior that is merely insulting should ever be criminalized in this way.
28. The clear problem with the outlawing of insult is the too many things can be interpreted as such criticism is easily construed.
29. As and sold by certain parties ridicule, easily construed, as in self, sarcasm, unfavorable comparison.
30. Merely stating an alternative point of view to the Orthodoxy can be interpreted as insult and because so many things can be interpreted as insulted as hardly surprising.
31. But so many things have been As the examples I talked about earlier show, although the law under discussion has been on the statute book for over 25 years.
32. It is indicative of a culture that has taken, hold of the program's of successive governments.
33. That would the reasonable and well-intentioned ambition to contain obnoxious elements.
34. In society, has created a society of an extraordinary authoritarian and controlling nature, that is what you might call.
35. All the new intolerance a new but intense desire to gag uncomfortable voices of dissent.
36. I am not intolerant so many people.
37. So many softly spoken, Highly Educated liberal minded people, I'm only in tolerant of intolerance.
38. And people tend to nod sagely and say well, yes, wise words are wise words, and yet, if you think about this supposedly inarguable statement for longer than five seconds, you realize that all it is advocating is the replacement of one, kind of intolerance with another, which to me doesn't represent any kind of progress at all.
39. Underlying prejudices in justices or resentments, are not addressed by arresting people.
40. They are addressed by the issues, being aired argued and dealt with preferably out.
41. Side the legal process.
42. For me, the best way to increase societies, resistance to insulting or offensive speech, is to allow a lot more of it.
43. As with childhood diseases, you can better resist those germs to which you have been exposed.
44. We need to build our immunity to taking offense so that we can deal with the issue of the perfectly Justified criticism can raise our Authority should be to deal with the message, not the messenger as President Obama said in an address to the United Nations only a month or so ago.
45. Laudable efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or oppress minorities.
46. The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression.
47. It is more speech.
48. And that's the essence of my thesis more speech.
49. If we want a robust Society, we need more robust dialogue and that must include the right to insult or to offend And as even if as Lord there says, you know, the freedom to be inoffensive is no Freedom at all.
50. The repeal of this word in, this Clause will be only a small step, but it will.
51. I hope be a critical one in.
52. What should be a longer-term project to pause and slowly rewind a creeping culture of censorious.
53. It is a small Skirmish in the battle, in my opinion, to deal with what sir Salman She refers to as the outrage industry self-appointed, Arbiters of the public good encouraging media stoat, outrage to which the police feel under terrible.
54. Pressure to react a newspaper, Rings up, Scotland Yard.
55. Someone have said something slightly insulting on Twitter about someone who we think a National Treasure.
56. What are you going to do about the police panic?
57. And they scramble around and then grasp the most inappropriate Read Lifeline of all Section 5 of the public order act, that thing where you arrest, anybody for saying anything that might be construed by anyone else, as insulting, you know, they don't seem to need a real victim.
58. They need only to make the Judgment that somebody could have been offended.
59. If they had heard or read, what has been said, the most ludicrous degree of latitude, the storms that surround Twitter and Facebook, comment have raised some fascinating issues about Free Speech which we haven't really yet.
60. Come to terms with firstly that we all have to take responsibility for what we say which is quite a good lesson to learn.
61. But secondly we've learned how appalling Lee prickly and intolerance Society has become of even the mildest adverse comment.
62. The law should not be aiding and abetting.
63. This new intolerance Free Speech can only suffer if the law prevents us from dealing with its consequences.
64. I offer my wholehearted support to the reform Section 5 campaign.
65. Thank you very much.