Freedom of speech is one of the longest enjoyed liberties in this country. This has been the case since the Glorious Revolution and the 1689 Bill of Rights which began the transfer of personal liberty to the individual citizen in England, and later Britain. The UK and its predecessor states have been the champions of the right of a citizen to possess and express any non-abusive, non-inciteful opinion or viewpoint they wish without fear of repercussions, no matter how dissenting or offensive that viewpoint or remark may be. Or so we thought...
At some point in recent memory, when exactly I'm not sure, this fundamental human right has been trumped by another right, a right which purports to encourage harmony and limit divisions within our society but in fact curtails our most important right of all. This new 'super-right' is the quasi-right to 'freedom from offence', that is the right to not be offended by the view or statement of another. This bizarre shift in the hierarchy of rights is evident in recent happenings, whether it be Reading University Student Union forcibly removing members of the University's atheist society for their "offensive" christening of a pineapple called Mohammed because it was offensive, the jailing of Matthew Woods for posting "grossly offensive public electronic communication" in relation to the disappearance and alleged murder of April Jones, or the chastising of Gary Lineker for his remarks that "Muslim players adopting a prayer position appeared to be "eating grass".
Somewhere along the way, this country and our society has lost understanding of what freedom of speech is actually about. Somewhere it was decided that we are only free to express what we want within the bounds of societal norms and acceptable behaviors. But this entirely defeats the point of the liberty in question. The liberty to freedom of speech is redundant in such a scenario, because if we only express views within the mainstream then there is no need for the protection that the liberty provides. The liberty specifically exists in order to protect views, opinions and exclamations which fall outside of what is deemed socially acceptable or within decent taste. The late US Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan made reference to this clash between the two rights in his ruling that we "[should not] prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable". Brennan was ruling on the issue of flag burning in the US but the principle is the same; freedom of speech exists to protect the individual's right to expressions which are otherwise disagreeable, offensive or both.
The current situation is one where those who are offended by x,y or z believe that it is society's responsibility to prevent and limit their potential to be offended. This is a complete shirking of personal responsibility and is part of a greater trend wherein these same people believe that not only do they posses the right to be free from offence but that they also posses the right to do something about the fact they have been "offended". Personal offence is just that, it is personal, and it is nobody else's responsibility nor business whether you are offended, it is specifically YOUR problem. The only rights you have are the right to be offended, and the right to get over it.
The right to freedom of speech and the right to be offensive go hand in hand. How exactly this belief in the new uber-right to freedom from offence has permeated into the criminal justice system is beyond me (as is the fact that posting "grossly offensive public electronic communication" is a convictable offense - what is this Iran?). Why has Matthew Woods been jailed for 3 months whilst comedians like Frankie Boyle who make a career from being offensive are free to be as offensive as they like?
We need a real conversation in this country about the role of freedom of speech. There is no doubt that jokes about the alleged murder of a young girl are (in most people's opinion) repugnant and vile and should rightfully be condemned, but a society wherein the right to be free from offence trumps the right to express individual viewpoints no matter how repugnant they may be is a dangerous and regressive one, and I for one don't want to live in it anymore.