Content
Our petition to the Scottish Parliament
Our petition to the Scottish Parliament
This was submitted in Feb 2006 :
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Tel. 0141-959-4194 email [email protected]. www.ukmm.org.uk
Thursday, February 9, 2006
A Petition To Parliament To Legislate For Freedom of Speech
We Petition Parliament to legislate to provide the right to freedom of speech and written expression, to exceed the circumscribed and conditional rights given by The European Convention on Human Rights.
"A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger�.... freedom of speech is protected "unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. . . . There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view." �Justice William O. Douglas, Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)
Supporting Argument:
The European Convention on Human Rights (Article 10, Freedom of Expression ) gives an illusion of freedom of speech and expression: in reality, it is very vulnerable to political and judicial interference. There is no great tradition of freedom of expression in Europe. This most essential human right is not robustly defended by a political educational and communications media Establishment who tend to suppress, rather than support freedom of expression other than in areas that are beneficiaries of �politically correct� dogma.
The Constitution of the United States of America, in it�s �Bill of Rights� has a much stronger First Amendment right that has proven to be resistant to the extremes of Right and Left, and to other agencies and influences that seek to suppress freedom of speech. Democracy is fundamentally dependent on the open expression of widely conflicting ideas, not merely the open expression of minor differences. Indeed, democracy may be defined by this freedom: expressing varying opinions with a narrow bandwidth of consensus is not democracy.
It is instructive to compare the freedom of speech statutes of Europe and the United States.
The US First Amendment is crystal-clear and absolute, and needs no judge to interpret it (although some members of the judiciary have sought to limit or suppress it.) A citizen of low intelligence with basic English can still understand his rights. By contrast, ECHR is opaque, complex, and with a host of qualifications that any government can (and does) employ to deny freedom of speech and expression to those opposed to its political or social objectives.
Substantial obstacles can, and are be constructed that can only be removed at a considerable cost of personal liberty or wealth, and sometimes they cannot be removed at all. The justiciary are too often complicit in interpreting these numerous qualifications in a way that is favourable to the State, rather than to its citizens.
The U.S. First Amendment was drafted over 200 years ago: it has stood the test of time, including The Civil War, two World Wars and 50 years of intense and perilous Cold War. By contrast, ECHR is a comparatively juvenile document not yet half a century old, which has failed time and again to protect freedom of speech.
Gagging freedom of speech for ostensibly virtuous reasons is an open door to censorship, as opinions on that which is virtuous and proper vary, often to extremes.
The contention that if the vast majority of those who are held to be �right thinking� regard a particular position to be of such virtue that it should not be challenged, is laden with danger. �Right thinking� in any political, social or religious system, is the thinking that profits most those who embrace it, and which, directly or by stealth, punishes those who express disagreement. � Right thinking� is espoused (even if not believed in ) not only by the �virtuous�, but by the lazy and the cowardly, and by those with great ambition and small principle. All tyrannies proclaim themselves to be the sole custodians of righteousness, and seek to silence dissent by establishing their values of such inherent self-evident truth that to question or criticise their values is inherently immoral. The next step is to declare the �immoral� illegal, which begs the question �if a position is of such inherent virtue, why should it fear being questioned and challenged?�
Many slave-owners no doubt thought their ownership of slaves as something that should not be challenged. It was the exercise of First Amendment rights that ended slavery in The United States, but it lingered on for a century later in many countries who had no such right of free expression.
The First Amendment has caused distress to many at various times:occasionally it has even triggered caused violence, but without those rights, the US would still have slavery.
In an age when there is a global mass-media with very little difference in editorial policy and political parties with very little difference in political philosophy, with both the body politic and the media largely singing from the same unholy hymn-sheet, it is even more important to allow freedom of expression. Thoughts running contrary to the dogma of these powerful forces already have very little opportunity for expression--there already exists a complete inequality of arms which should not be compounded by restrictive legislation.
This existing imbalance of freedom of expression is quite clearly illustrated by the different reaction of the European political and media Establishment to two men currently imprisoned awaiting trial; one, Orhan Pamuk, in Turkey, the other , David Irving, in Austria.
Mr. Pamuk( himself a Turk) is charged with 'publicly denigrating Turkish identity' by referring to the killing of over a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds during WW1 as a genocide.
Dr. Irving is in jail in Austria for �Holocaust denial� based on what he wrote 15 years ago.
Austria was effectively isolated in Europe for daring to elect Georg Halder, and it is now striving to show its new �liberal� credentials by jailing Dr. Irving. Mr Pamuk is in jail for publicising that which, in a Turkey also anxious to please Europe, would rather have kept hidden in the closet. Mr. Pamuk has become an international cause celebre. Dr. Irving is widely regarded by the Establishment as getting his just desserts, but both men are in jail for the same offence-- that of expressing an opinion. Both are in jail for the same reason--political expedience.
Neither would be in jail in the USA. Both would have said their piece-- the Establishment would have feted Mr. Pamuk and excoriated Dr. Irving, and the general public would have made up their own minds on either opinion.
This fundamental difference between European and American attitudes to free speech is rooted in the fact that Europe has a millennia-old tradition of being obsequiously deferential to power, whether that power be that of monarchy, decadent dictatorship,or professed libereal democracy, whilst the USA has a democratic tradition two centuries old of challenging power by allowing the free expression of all and any opinion.
Freedom of speech will, eventually, mean that at some point everyone will feel that they have been offended, insulted or threatened in some way, and occasionally it even may lead to harm. These consequences are regrettable, but infinitely preferable to the much greater evil of uniformity imposed by tyranny, and the dark deeds that flourish in silence and darkness. To quote US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ( Terminello V. Chicago, 1949) " (free)... speech . . . may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea." . Justice Douglas further ruled that freedom of speech is protected "unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. . . . There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view." This is an infinitely more robust judicial defence of a much more robust constitutional protection.
The Scottish and European approach is infinitely more accommodating to the State, the many exemptions in Article 10 of ECHR often become a judicial sledgehammer used to crack rather small but politically incorrect eggs. This unhealthy political and judicial enslavement to that which is politically correct has lead inevitably and predictably to restrictive and illiberal �hate law� legislation-- a condition remarked upon over two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome: � *Corruptisima republica plurimae leges�. (The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.])-- Tacitus, Annals III 27.
Legislators may feel that limiting freedom of political social or religious expression has the virtue that it will save some from abuse, but this is shallow and ill-considered, a triumph of expectation over experience.
The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, wrote in �The Dilemma Of Democracy� �There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty�.
To date, this Parliament has given the impression that they do not trust the Scottish people to accept, and respond to, any abuse other than those they have legislated legislate for.
If the Scottish Parliament wants Scotland to be, not a nation of oppressive laws and regulations, but a nation of liberties, it should first guarantee the most important right necessary to secure all others liberties: freedom of speech.
I confirm that I am the principal petitioner and sign accordingly.
George McAulay Chairman UK Men�s Movement
Addendum:
First Amendment Of The Constitution of The United States:
Article 10 Of ECHR:
Yours Sincerely,
George McAulay, Chairman, UKMM
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