Written by London Swaminathan

Post No. 14,793

Date uploaded in London –  24 July 2025

Contact – swami_48@yahoo.com

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From London Standard Newspaper

LORD LEBDEV delivered a speech in the House of Lords about freedom of speech. London Standard published his speech ; here some points he made:

In November last year a journalist, Allison Pearson, had the police at her door because of a single tweet. In January this year two parents were arrested – by six officers—and detained in a cell for 11 hours for private messages in WhatsApp group. In May this year the heroic human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was arrested for displaying a placard criticising the terrorist organisation Hamas. Last month the Turkish human rights campaigner Hamit Coscum was found guilty of burning a copy of the Koran.

And this month there have been reports of police investigation into what one act at Glastonbury said on stage and also calls from elected representatives for the arrest of columnist Red Liddle for what he said about that music festival.  These are all examples of the criminal justice system – the system which is there to defend our freedoms—being deployed to investigate, intimidate and punish those who take dissident positions. You do not need to admire any of the people I have mentioned above to find this deeply concerning. You can think them rude, mistaken or offensive. But the right to free speech means nothing if it doesn’t mean the right to offend. I dislike the symbolism and reality of book burning but to make a man a criminal – to find him guilty of  crime of racially  and religiously aggravated hatred—for an expression of an opinion is to bring back blasphemy laws by the back door.

…..And on average 30 people are arrested every day. In 2014 under the coalition government, something called non hate crime incidents were introduced. These are words uttered which are not in themselves –yet—criminal, but which the police should officially record nevertheless and hold against people.

Since then, more than 133,000 such incidents have been recorded – more than 12,000 each year. Some of those who had their names recorded in police files are children- whose words have been taken down when they were below the age of criminal responsibility and maybe held against hem for the rest of their lives. The innocence of youth has been replaced with the presumption of guilt.

WASTED POLICE TIME

The think tank Policy Exchange has estimated that investigating these incidents has taken up 666,000 hours of police time. Every hour devoted to policing speech is an hour not spent investigating phone theft, shoplifting, burglary or assault.  Juxtaposed with 90 percent of crimes in 2023 and 89 percent of violent or sexual offences in the year to June 2024 going unresolved. It is hard to conceive of a worse waste of police time.

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Last words

I would like to be given reason to hope that Labour– the party of George Orwell, Michael Foot and Tessa Jowel—still understands how precious free expression is and how important is that we defend it.

(The Title for his Speech given in London Standard “ I grew up in Soviet Russia. I know only too well the value of free speech.”)

–subham—

Tags- Free Speech, Freedom of expression, Lebdev, House of Lords, London Standard article, social media