When did the left stop owning free speech?

Erica Blair is the pen name of a Belfast-based Free Speech Union member.

At the risk of doing a Kier ‘my father was a toolmaker’ Starmer, I was brought up in a left-wing household in working class Belfast. We read the Daily Mirror. The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse sat on a shelf beside the 1969 street directory, two Reader’s Digest encyclopaedias (A-L and M-Z), a dictionary and the bible. I still have the poetry book and the street directory.

When my dad went to political lectures and meetings, I gave him my autograph book (note to anyone younger than Gen X, autograph books were a big thing last century). That’s how I’m in the weird position of having Han Solo stickers on the front of this tattered orange relic of my childhood, and inside, the signatures of Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, John Prescott and Barbara Castle. My brother, older than me, has Harold Wilson in his.

I accompanied my Dad to rabble-rousing events, with me sitting in on the animal rights and CND sessions. We had many heated discussions about unilateral (me) versus multilateral (him) disarmament which my Da usually ended with that most Northern Irish of put-downs and discussion-enders “catch yerself on” lobbed in my direction.

Yet despite the proliferation of left-wing views in my family and of people we knew, worked with and met — the Socialist Worker sellers, the Marxists, the Trots, the Aneurin Bevan fans, the shop stewards, the ‘right lads, down tools’ brigade and the New Labourists — every socialist brother and sister in the 1970s and 1980s would have taken for granted the Voltairian sentiment: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

So what happened?

I recently read a reference to Free Speech Union members being ‘right wing’ – in the context of the organisation setting up a Northern Ireland Advisory Council to represent local members.

As an FSU member from Belfast, I was so taken aback I had to set down my copy of 1984 (joke, it was the Communist Manifesto, obvs) and think about this.

It’s true that this century at least, free speech in the West has become associated in a lot of public discourse with the right.

But the question shouldn’t be about why the right has become forefront in upholding the principles of free speech, but why the left has not.

It’s time for leftists to look to history — the battle of workers’ rights, the long tradition of anti-war protests which relied on free speech, to name just two examples — and, as it were, ‘take back control’ both of the discourse, and the activism.

Remember that cultural winds change. What’s the right side of history now may not be in five years’ time. Or even by Christmas.

And if you think that’s a good thing, that words have consequences and those voicing currently unpopular thoughts deserve all they get, then what happens when the wind does change and it is considered a criminal offence to say, for example, ‘trans women are women’?

Free speech isn’t a left or right issue, it’s a human rights issue. And it’s also not a given, it must be constantly supported, preserved and fought for.

No matter what you think of it as a campaign group — and many argue that it has lost it early focus and direction — even Amnesty International, highlighting Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writes on its website:

Your voice matters. You have the right to say what you think, share information and demand a better world. You also have the right to agree or disagree with those in power, and to express these opinions in peaceful protests. Exercising these rights – without fear or unlawful interference – is central to living in an open and fair society; one in which people can access justice and enjoy their human rights.

Isn’t that a great thing? To be able to agree or disagree publicly with those in power? Aren’t we lucky, those of us who live in countries in which, in the past century, disadvantaged political minorities have been the greatest beneficiaries of free speech?

Think of the civil rights movement in America and Northern Ireland, or the fight for gay rights. In 1981, FSU Northern Ireland Advisory Board member, Jeff Dudgeon, took a case to the European Court of Human Rights in the excellently-named Dudgeon vs United Kingdom, campaigning against our draconian criminalisation of sex between consenting gay men. The case resulted in NI aligning with England, Wales and Scotland in decriminalizing homosexual sex. The fact he was even able to state his case and take it to the highest court in Europe is thanks to people being able to exercise their freedom of speech.

Women as a class — left, right, gay, straight and bi, young, old, and, in the context of Northern Ireland, Nationalist, Unionist, republican and loyalist, of all religions and none — have perhaps the most to fear from the stripping away of free speech. In Afghanistan, amongst its many other horrifically authoritarian sanctions against women, the Taliban has now banned women from speaking outside their homes. It has taken away one of the few freedoms women had left in that country— their very voices.

That breaks my heart and strengthens my resolve to support free speech in my own country. I’m grateful to have been born in a time and a place where I have the freedom to, as Amnesty puts, “say what I think, share information and demand a better world”. And I want things to stay that way.

Since the FSU launched in 2020, 40% of its caseload has been individuals, mostly women, whose ability to discuss women’s rights has been unfairly restricted because of the ‘no debate’ culture surrounding the intersection between women’s rights and trans rights.

There are two such cases going on in Northern Ireland right now featuring local women and men from left, right, and centre, Protestant and Catholic, backgrounds. Together, they’re fighting to uphold the principles of free speech in general, and their own rights in particular. You can read about the cases here and here.

Yet the very topic of free speech has become so weaponised I’ve had to disguise my identity in the byline for this piece with a pseudonym. Best case scenario is that trolls would hassle me online, worst case would be that they write to my employers and try to get me fired. For upholding free speech for everyone, including them! Let that sink in.

The toxic stereotyping of free speech as a right-wing cause has to end. And that means that self-identifying leftists must step up, walk the walk, and actually stand up for free speech in word and deed. That means free speech even, especially, for people you don’t agree with.

The Free Speech Union will be hosting it’s second Belfast Speakeasy tonight (Friday 20^th September). All are welcome. Tickets available here.

This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.