Free speech for all or just for ‘gammon’?

This week, Connie and Jan discuss a new report released by the Government’s Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE). The CCE Freedom of Expression Survey asked 2000 people in England and Wales about their views on free speech with regard to politics, religion, race, immigration, climate change and transgender issues. It claims to reveal a ‘nuanced landscape of public opinion on free speech’ and highlight ‘the challenges of navigating free speech in a diverse society’, but Jan and Connie question whether it really provides valuable insights when it fails to explore why free speech matters to people, weights the sample to include more Muslim respondents than are present in the general population and unhelpfully pitches those who care about free speech against those who wish to protect people from ‘threats and abuse’.

They go on to relate some of the findings to the FSU’s most recent intervention in debate over whether an official, non-statutory definition of Islamophobia will having a chilling effect on free speech and actually protect Muslims from prejudice—a letter from 30 members of the House of Lords to the Chairman of the working group tasked with interrogating the merits of a definition.

Finally, Connie updates us on the cases of Scottish nurse Sandie Peggie, who was disciplined by NHS Fife for questioning the presence of a male nurse in the female changing room of the hospital where she works and Newcastle United fan Linzi Smith, who has succeeded in challenging Northumbria Police’s active participation in a Pride parade that declared itself hostile to gender-critical people. That's Debatable is edited by Jason Clift