Jeff Dudgeon: Enemies of free speech have been felled but the UK is still going in the wrong direction under Keir Starmer
Jeff Dudgeon has been appointed to the advisory council of the Free Speech Union (FSU). This is an edited version of his address to a meeting the group held in Belfast on Friday evening This tour d’horizon will deal with what has been happening since I spoke at the Free Speech Union’s first Belfast meeting in January – the highs and the lows, and the achievements.
Enemies of free speech have been felled with key woke warriors gone – Nicola Sturgeon, Leo Varadkar and Jacinta Ardern, not to mention Humza Yusaf in Scotland, and in Wales both Mark Drakeford and his successor.
So is free speech winning?
Well the United Kingdom is moving in the opposite direction under Sir Keir Starmer’s new government and quite dramatically so.
The long march by the woke through the institutions has been completed. All have been captured. Reversals have hardly started but there have been some victories, notably in the courts.
Scotland in particular has seen turn-rounds on gender self-identification, acceptance of the Cass report, conversion therapy, and a separate Scottish bill of rights.
The referenda in Ireland that I referred to in January have changed everything south of the border. I said then in a rare, accurate prediction: “In March, southern voters have to answer two related questions in a needless referendum. The first is whether to remove a somewhat outdated reference to women from the constitution – the only particular reference to women in the document. The second would redefine the family as anything you want it to mean. With defeat looming, this may be the high tide of Irish identitarianism.”
The result finished off Leo Varadkar, put the Greens out in the subsequent local and European elections, and checked the rise of Sinn Fein - who are in retreat in the south, although woke as ever in the north. But the hate speech crime legislation continues in the Dail.
The referenda gave impetus to, or enabled, a particularly nasty burst of ultra-nationalism in the Republic which continues.
The woke cannot deal with that sort of extremism as it can’t tell the truth. If you saw the academic talking heads on RTE’s programme on their riots you could see they had nothing to offer excepts complaints of misinformation and demands for stronger hate speech laws.
[The morning after this speech, the Irish Minister of Justice announced much of the harsh, restrictive parts of the hate speech Bill will be removed!]
So it has become our responsibility. We can explain, assuage and divert the rage but we need the media to be honest, and avoid it censoring reality which just feeds the frustrations of ordinary people.
In Northern Ireland, the Alliance Party may have peaked electorally but there is no sign of any waning in its enthusiasm for restrictions - much like the Liberal Democrats. Naomi Long’s hate speech legislation is still gestating although the more offensive part awaits a new Stormont Assembly mandate.
The UUP’s liberal leader was removed, (some said) for his liberalism, but replaced with an even more liberal (former) leader Mike Nesbitt
The DUP is split three ways between liberals, local heroes like Jim Shannon MP and Alec Easton MP and ‘Tuvvies’, the followers of Jim Allister MP who took out Ian Paisley in North Antrim. He leads the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), a party which has good instincts on free speech. This may be hard to swallow for some but it is true.
I was on the panel for the prestigious ‘(Gay) Pride Talks Back’ event in July, representing the UUP. As expected, I was the only voice out of step with the orthodoxy on trans and was duly shouted at and shouted down.
I pointed out some realities however.
The ban on puberty blockers for children, introduced by the UUP’s Minister of Health, Robin Swann, was here to stay, and rightly so. Since then the ban has been time extended, leaving Sinn Fein heavily exposed since that party failed to veto the extension.
Trans is now the test issue, much like gay marriage was earlier. Then you were either a good person, or one beyond redemption, depending on your position.
But the boot today is on the other foot and instead the progressive parties are being tested.
I also pointed out that Labour’s proposed conversion therapy law would be very limited legislation. Not least because of European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) Articles 9 and 10, freedom of expression and religion.
I said that Scotland was likely to ask Westminster to include it, while the same position would ultimately be adopted by the Assembly here.
It traditionally asks Westminster to take over when MLAs can’t agree on contentious matters, like welfare reform, abortion, legacy and gay marriage.
A very recent concern is the consultation on a draft Northern Ireland Public Health Bill (replacing a 1967 Act). Some of its proposed restrictions and enforcements are draconian. When I was first sent an excerpt I thought it was fake news and advised caution!
The draft text requires a person to submit to medical examination or be removed to a hospital; be detained in a hospital or other suitable establishment; be kept in isolation or quarantine; disinfected or decontaminated; forced to wear protective clothing; and forced to provide information or answer questions about their health or other circumstances. There may however be no forced vaccinations as the minister has just indicated. I don’t know from where these suggested restrictions originated, but they must be resisted.
The consultation ends in a week. Opposition is mounting.
[The consultation period was just announced as being extended for a fortnight!]
The ECHR has to be invoked, in particular the Articles on freedom of expression and belief as it will be here for at least another decade. In Northern Ireland we are only allowed by the academy and judiciary to speak of Article 2 in relation to legacy and lawfare against the state.
We can only go up now. Onwards and upwards.
• Jeff Dudgeon is a human rights activist who took a case to the ECHR in the 1970s that to homosexuality being decriminalised. He has since become highly critical of the way in which the convention is used to dictate UK government policy on matters such as immigration. Mr Dudgeon is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party.
The FSU meeting was held in Crumlin Road gaol. The News Letter editor, Ben Lowry, is also a member of the FSU advisory council in Northern Ireland