Today, I’m in Westminster for the launch of an important new document. The air is thick with a sense of occasion, and rightly so. For too long, the public square has felt increasingly policed — not merely by those entrusted with keeping order, but by a creeping orthodoxy that would prefer the inconvenient voice to remain unheard. Today, however, the launch of a new Street Preacher’s Charter offers a bracing reminder that free speech is not a luxury bestowed by the state, but the birthright of any citizen of a true democracy.
At its heart lies a simple truth: freedom of expression is not just a person’s right to speak his mind, but also our right to hear different opinions. Without that freedom, society becomes an echo chamber, a hollow parody of public life, lacking the grit, challenge, and conviction necessary for democratic health.
Lord Justice Sedley put it best when he wrote:
“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to promote violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”
Those words ought to be carved over the entrance of every police station in the land.
