It is not falsehood that causes the greatest offence but truth
by Roger Scruton, The Conservative Woman:
To people like me educated in post-war Britain, free speech has been a firm premise of the British way of life. As John Stuart Mill expressed the point, ‘the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation. Those who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right they’re deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. If wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit: the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.’
That famous statement is not the last word on the question, but it is the first word and was during my youth the received opinion of all educated people. The law, we believed, would protect the heretics, the dissidents and the doubters against any punishments devised to intimidate or silence them, for the very reason that truth and argument are sacred and must be protected from those who seek to suppress them. Moreover, public opinion was entirely on the side of the law, ready to shame those who assumed the right to silence their opponents, whatever the matter under discussion and however extreme or absurd the views expressed. All that is now changing. Under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 it is an offence to stir up hatred towards religious and racial groups. ‘Stirring up hatred’ is an expression both loaded and undefined.
Do I stir up hatred towards a religious group by criticising its beliefs in outspoken terms? Under the terms of the Act, I would have to use threatening words and behaviour and also intend to stir up hatred. Under another piece of legislation, the Communications Act, however, Northern Irish Pastor James McConnell is being prosecuted for a sermon streamed on the internet in which he describes Islam as ‘heathen and satanic’.
His words have caused offence to Muslims and in particular to Raied al-Wazzan, executive director of the Belfast Islamic Centre, who is chief witness for the prosecution. But is the offence given by James McConnell a reason to convict him of a crime? The robust English view used to be that the correct response to offensive words is to ignore them or to answer them with a rebuke. If you invoke the law at all, it should be to protect the one who gives the offence and not the one who takes it. Now it seems it is all the other way round.
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