1 Mar 2012 | Uncategorized
Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
The perils of opposing orthodoxy are a constant of history. As Voltaire wrote to Diderot in 1758: “We are compelled to lie, and then we are still persecuted for not having lied enough.” There is, however, a voice prepared to insist on the right of free expression for heretics. It is Index on Censorship, a pressure group that marks its 40th anniversary this year and whose founding was assisted by The Times.
In 1967 this newspaper published a long appeal by Pavel Litvinov, a Soviet dissident. His article drew attention to the plight of three Russians on trial for supporting the free speech of a samizdat literary magazine. Litvinov, the grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister, had been told by the Soviet security services that he would be held “criminally responsible” if his account of the trial was published. [The Times] published it. Litvinov’s plea gained support from prominent British writers, artists and intellectuals, including W. H. Auden, A. J. Ayer, Henry Moore, Iris Murdoch and Stephen Spender.
That campaign was the origin of Index. The group has lobbied for writers throughout the world whose words are suppressed, and it has recorded instances of political censorship. The roster of contributors to the magazine is of extraordinary quality. It includes Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie. And while, like any campaigning organisation comprising independent minds and wills, it has had the occasional internal political argument, it remains an essential part of the cultural and political landscape.
Litvinov will be speaking at an event at the London School of Economics this evening alongside Michael Scammell, Index’s founding editor and the biographer of Solzhenitsyn and Arthur Koestler. They will have much history to reflect on.
The inspiration for Index, the treatment by the Soviet Union of political dissent as criminal or insane, has been superseded by history. In his celebrated columns in The Times in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernard Levin gave support to Index’s campaigning and, with remarkable prescience, predicted the fall of the Soviet Union.
But with new forms of communication have come increased powers for autocratic governments to control dissent. And some regimes bear a striking similarity to autocracies of an earlier age. Index has made a point of defending the rights of free expression in Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko, the last dictator in Europe, is resorting to familiar Stalinist methods of police violence and trumped-up charges against his opponents.
Threats to free speech come not only from malevolent regimes. The phenomenon of “libel tourism” in the UK and the creeping censorship of criticism of religion are newer issues that occupy free-speech campaigners. Their work is never complete; but what has been done merits recognition and admiration.
1 Mar 2012 | Uncategorized
A controversial academic paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics has triggered a torrent of abuse, including threats of violence and death.
Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini, who wrote After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?, argue that given that those who accept abortion typically do so for reasons that have nothing to do with the foetus’s health (even where the foetus clearly is a potential person), then where abortion is permissible, killing a newborn should be permissible, on grounds of consistency. Not a palatable conclusion for many of us, though it could be read as a Swiftian modest proposal that ultimately attacks the morality of permitting abortion.
But should we be free to discuss killing babies at all? Is that on a par with publishing articles that are pro-pedophilia? Julian Savulescu, the journal’s editor, has defended the decision to publish on the grounds that the goal of the publication is not to present an ultimate truth or a simplistic view based on morals, but rather to present well-reasoned arguments based on widely accepted premises. In this spirit, Savulescu is equally ready to publish coherent responses to the controversial article.
This is a test case for the liberal defence of free speech so eloquently advocated by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Mill believed that dissenting, provocative and challenging voices jolt us out of the complacency of our dead dogmas. Mill writes that “Both teachers and learners go to sleep as soon as there is no enemy in the field”. Unless we have had our fundamental views challenged, we are likely to hold them in a drowsy fashion, scarcely aware of why we believe what we do.
Most of us believe that killing babies is wrong; here’s an argument that suggests that if you think that abortion on non-medical grounds is sometimes acceptable, then you probably ought to believe that infanticide is sometimes acceptable. It’s clear from the context of presentation in an academic journal, too, that this isn’t an incitement to actual infanticide, but rather a provocative move in an ongoing debate, a plea for consistency. No doubt there will be a flurry of refutations submitted to the journal.
For Mill, as for many who defend free expression, the limit of free expression is the point where someone incites harm. But the only people directly inciting harm here are those issuing death threats. They seem to have confused a contribution to an academic debate with an invitation to kill. Here context is all and quotation out of context likely to lead to misunderstanding. Yet we can take even this category mistake as a stimulus to clarify what it is we value about freedom of expression in this context and where its limits lie.
Julian Savulescu has taken just this opportunity: “Free speech” he told me, “is not valuable in itself — hate speech, for example, is not something we should seek to protect. Rational argument that seeks to engage others — that is worth protecting.”
1 Mar 2012 | Campaigns, News and features
The Libel Reform Campaign welcomes the Government’s commitment to a Defamation Bill but current proposals do not yet address the extensive problems of libel bullying and the chill on public debate (more…)
29 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
A police officer today told how there had been fears of violence during a search of the News of the World premises during an investigation into phone hacking.
In written evidence referred to today in court, DCS Keith Surtees described how one officer “was concerned at the time that NOTW staff may offer some form of violence against the small police team in the building”. Surtees also said that officers had been surrounded and photographed by photographers from several News International publications, and that some had been refused entry to the building. The search took place in 8 August 2006, as part of of Operation Caryatid, the investigation which led to the jailing of Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman. Surtees was the Investigating Officer of the operation.
News International rejects any allegation that there could have been an air of violence during the search.
The Inquiry also heard from DI Mark Maberly, who confirmed that information belong to people on Witness Protection programmes had been found in Glenn Mulcaire’s notes. Lord Justice Leveson expressed alarm at that fact, describing such information as “Not just sensitive – horribly sensitive”.
The hearing resumes tomorrow with video evidence from former Met Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who is currently working with the regime in Bahrain.
In seperate developments, it was announced that James Murdoch had resigned as Executive Chair of News International.
Meanwhile, at Westminster, Tom Watson MP called for an inquiry into the death of priavte investigator Daniel Morgan, amid speculation that News International resources may have been used to undermine a 2002 investigation.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
