Freedom of expression in the United Kingdom is still defined negatively. The freedom not to be offended, abused, plagiarised or blasphemed against outweighs in most legislative terms the freedom to engage in any of these potentially enjoyable and...
Trying to remember when all this started, I rooted out from my shelves the other day a copy of a book I wrote as a young reporter on the Guardian. Its front cover is cracking and a bit faded with the passage of 27 years, but the cartoon by John...
For four months at the end of 2005, I was given access to an extraordinary series of Foreign Office documents concerning the government’s strategy to tackle the threat of radical Islam at home and abroad. Literally dozens of emails, position papers...
For much of its violent conflict Northern Ireland was afflicted by political censorship. The body that howled most about this particular form of suppression was Sinn Féin. North and south the party voice was emasculated to varying degrees. In the...
It is unlikely that the contents of the memo leaked by David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, for which the two men were jailed last week, will ever be disclosed. The British government has a long tradition of covering up its Middle East...
Index looks at the history, legacies, the present day traffic and the unfinished business of slavery 200 years after its abolition in British territories.
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These are the winners of the 2007 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards
The students, understood to be the editor and guest editor of unofficial Clare College magazine Clareification (renamed Crucification for an issue focused on religious satire) were interrogated under Section 5 of the Public Order Act (“harassment,...
Today is a special day for me, a happy one, I am going to a meeting with a former oncology ‘prisoner’. It is almost 15 years since we last saw each other, since the time I photographed him in the Baraŭlany clinic, one of many seriously ill boys and...
Darfur’s agony can be ended. It needs Sudan’s government and Darfur’s rebel leaders to make the right choice, today. The African Union’s “Darfur Peace Agreement” is not only a good deal on paper, but is workable on the ground. If those leaders sign...