An entire generation are puzzled by the idea that anyone has the right to say things they don’t agree with

Dec 12, 2021 by Jill

by Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday:

Free speech is already dead in Britain. It is just that the chattering classes have not realised it yet. Once again we have a clear case of a mob successfully demanding that limits should be placed on what can be said.

Durham’s Professor Tim Luckhurst has had to apologise, because he called his own students ‘pathetic’ for their conformism. Some of them had walked out after a speech at Durham’s South College by the provocative writer Rod Liddle.

You might have thought ‘pathetic’ was a mild rebuke to such behaviour, in a university supposedly dedicated to the open-minded search for knowledge. But no.

This one word was enough to trigger a parade of noisy outrage and – more importantly – to send the university authorities running for cover. Did you think they would stand up for him?

There is still a very limited liberty to say a few nonconformist things in some newspapers and magazines, and perhaps in some universities and schools. It is also possible on one or two smaller low-audience broadcasting stations and bits of the internet.

I am – for the moment – one of the luckier ones. But I do not expect it to last for ever. I can see that, for most people, true free speech has ceased to exist.

Step outside the borders of acceptable thought in a school or a workplace and you can very quickly find yourself being denounced and in serious trouble.

On some issues, such as the transgender controversy, it is virtually impossible to say anything without attracting the attention of the Thought Police.

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