The Bains Agenda

Article 10 of the Human Rights Act reads:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

It is incredibly vague and contradicting, point 1 states we have the right to free expression but then point 2 seems to directly contravene that.

It seems even the Human Rights Act doesn’t know what to do.

Recently, the UK has had a free speech debate concerning Lucy Connolly who sits in jail for her tweet after the Southport stabbing with mostly right wingers coming to her defence such as Braverman.

She tweeted direct incitement to violence (she quite literally said “set fire to hotels full of the bastards”) and last summer people acted on it and some tried to kill people in asylum hotels.

Failure to restrict such speech has and will lead to actual violence and possibly murder. She deserves some form of punishment.

I would not be saying this if Connolly said something racist, that is a right as bad as it is. But directly telling her followers to set fire to hotels – how is this even a debate?

I also have the same position for Ricky Jones who called to slit throats of the far right.

During Nazi Germany, perhaps if the state took a more robust approach to Hitler’s right to free expression he wouldn’t have risen so quickly.

The paradox of tolerance states very clearly we must not be tolerant of the intolerant lest it lead to intolerance.

There are absolutely instances wherein the UK has gone too far in regards to free speech restrictions.

Dying on the hill for a woman who directly incited violence? That only matters to people who were indifferent about the violence we saw last summer and those people aren’t worth thinking about.