With the news that the Electoral Commission is hand-wringingly apologetic about allowing the right wing Britain First movement to allow the slogan "Remember Lee Rigby" on its local election ballot papers, the thought strikes me (not for the first time) that not many people seem to be bothered about free speech any more.
The fate of Lee Rigby, hacked to death in Woolwich by Islamic fundamentalists, was grisly, ghastly and undeserved. In my opinion his death deserves to be remembered, and not just by Britain First (whoever they are); but on the other hand there'll be people who think Rigby was an agent of a corrupt and warlike state who got what was coming to him. And all shades of opinion in between. That's pluralism.
While I might find distasteful an attempt to make political capital out of Rigby's death, I wouldn't dream of standing in the way of any political party that wanted to do so. If freedom means anything, it means the freedom to say things that other people don't like.
So many of my fellow liberals seem to think that freedom means being able to say things that they themselves more or less agree with.
Extremists are defeated when people can see what they stand for and don't support them. Telling them what they can and can't put on the ballot paper merely helps turn Britain into the kind of country they claim it is already - one where ordinary people's voices are stifled, a kind of liberal police state where free expression is thwarted. People should be able to judge for themselves what Britain First are about and decide whether to vote for them accordingly.
This seems so self-evident to me that the really shocking thing is not that a loony Right party should use Rigby's death as a gory rallying flag, but that the press can report the Electoral Commission's embarrassment without the hint of a suggestion that there might be something undemocratic about it.
