60 the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.ukLIFEfree speechunion.org), people are
signing up at the rate of one every
five minutes.
There’s been some push-back, of
course. There was a puerile attack
in the Guardian in which a column-
ist pointed out that our name for the
basic level of protection extended to
all members — ‘Sword and Shield’ —
was suspiciously similar to a far-right
German festival called ‘Shield and
Sword’. As ‘guilt by association’ goes,
that’s almost as feeble as the attack
launched on Yorkshire Tea earlier
this week because Rishi Sunak, the
new Chancellor, posed next to a sack
of its teabags. After an army of left-
wing trolls called for a boycott, the
manufacturers had to issue a state-
ment making clear it had nothing to
do with the photograph and hadn’t
been told in advance of Sunak’s plans.
The discussion on the Today pro-
gramme was more elevated, thank
God. The presenter Justin Webb set
out the standard rationale for restrict-
ing free speech: for too long, the voic-
es of straight white men have been
allowed to drown out those of mar-
ginalised groups and by reining in
people like me you’re actually mak-
ing it easier for others to participate
in the public conversation. In other
words, the people who insist on ‘safe
spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings’ aren’t
opposed to free speech; they’re just
helping to create a level playing field
in which everyone feels able to speak.
In response, I quoted Ira Glasser,
the legendary former head of the
American Civil Liberties Union, who
said in a recent interview that it’s a
mistake to think the historical ben-
eficiaries of free speech have been
bigots and patriarchs. On the con-T
his week sees the official
launch of the Free Speech
Union — an organisation that
stands up for the speech rights of its
members. It’s my baby, but a num-
ber of people have come on board as
directors, including Douglas Murray
and Professor Nigel Biggar. I’ve also
had a lot of help behind the scenes
from people who got in touch after
reading about it in this column. I was
on the Today programme on Mon-
day to talk about it and have done
a number of interviews since. By the
time you read this, I’ll be recovering
from the launch party, scheduled for
Wednesday night.
So far, it’s going pretty well. About
1,500 people have contacted me want-
ing to join since I first started talking
about it in August and I’ve managed
to persuade some fantastic people
to be on the various advisory coun-
cils, including Sir Patrick Garland,
a former High Court judge; the his-
torians David Starkey and Andrew
Roberts; the satirist Andrew Doyle;
The Spectator’s columnist Lionel
Shriver; a number of journalists-
cum- intellectuals, such as Claire Fox,
Matt Ridley and David Goodhart;
and 17 academics, including a profes-
sor of history at Harvard, the behav-
ioural geneticist Robert Plomin and
the feminist historian Zoe Strimpel.
Now that the website is live (www.trary, without the protection of the
First Amendment, civil rights leaders
wouldn’t have been able to organise
protest marches in the 1960s. Defend-
ing free speech is in everyone’s politi-
cal interest, he pointed out, and the
left would do well to remember that.
A better line of attack is that it’s
hard to protect people being mobbed
on social media, something we’re
hoping to do, without appearing to be
against free speech. After all, when
thousands of Twitter users join a pile-
on against someone accused of say-
ing something offensive — which
happened to Roger Scruton last year
— aren’t they just exercising their
speech rights? OK, in Roger’s case
his words were taken out of context
and deliberately twisted to cast him
in a bad light. But what if the person
in question genuinely does possess
toxic views? Would the Free Speech
Union come to their defence? If the
answer’s ‘no’, the next question is:
well, where do you draw the line?
The temptation is to say, ‘Provided
they stay within the law, we’ll defend
them’, but that feels like a cop-out. In
some cases, what looks like a dog-pile
will just be an example of vigorous
democratic debate.
Clearly, when it comes to defend-
ing people from being harassed or
worse by the public authorities for
exercising their legal right to free
speech, we’ll go to bat for them. But
if our members are attacked in the
media — social or mainstream —
we’ll have to use our judgment. One
thing I know: if someone is the vic-
tim of a witch hunt, we’ll try to make
sure they’re given a chance to defend
themselves and not just presumed to
be guilty and tossed to the wolves.No sacred cows
How far should we go
to defend free speech?
Toby Young
MICHAEL HEATH
What if
the person
genuinely does
possess toxic
views? Would
we come to
their defence?Toby Young_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 60 26/02/2020 10:16