So a young British Muslim man has been given a stiff community sentence for a post on the internet to the effect that he hopes British soldiers killed in Afghanistan go to hell. And a white boy gets 12 weeks inside for publishing something horrible about someone else which now escapes me. I am surprisingly unhappy about all of this.
I can't articulate my response better than the following, posted by one BuckHucklebuck on the Guardian's Commentisfree website this morning:
"The right to offend is sacred. The right to be a vile, disgusting, subhuman ... is sacred. The right to think and say terrible things about the dead, the dying, the best and brightest is sacred. Any abridgment of it is far worse than anything I could say about a missing child. There is no combination of hateful, hurtful, disgusting, lewd or vicious things I could say that would be worse than the removal of my right to say it."
Amen to that. Thankfully the DPP, Keir Starmer, is now looking afresh at s.127 of the Communications Act 2003. This section, passed by a Labour government, makes it an offence to send "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character". It effectively invites anyone to go to the police if they are offended by something you or I say online.
In its leader today the Graun observes that "in the end the solution will have to be rewriting or even repealing, as opposed to reinterpreting, this law". Fine words; and I'd have liked to post a grateful response to BuckHucklebuck online. However, on Commentisfree my contributions are now being pre-moderated. In practice this means if I post something, it doesn't appear.
Free speech for all then. Except on Commentisfree.
