Ruth Dudley Edwards: We must fight the free speech fight for the sake of the next generation
’Policing the Streets vs Policing our Tweets’ is the debate the Free Speech Union (FSU) is to hold in the Ulster Museum on the evening of Friday, April 11.
We can guess the kind of nonsensical but dangerous decisions that will be discussed and ridiculed, like the recent one where the Hertfordshire Constabulary sent six cops to arrest a couple of impeccable respectability who had complained (civilly and for good reasons) on WhatsApp — a private messaging service — about deficiencies at their nine-year-old daughter’s school.
They were released after being kept in a cell for eight hours and interviewed under caution about allegations of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.
Five weeks later they were told there would be no case against them.
There are recent revelations that 94 pupils at UK state primary schools were suspended or permanently excluded in 2022/23 for homophobia or transphobia - including a toddler suspended from his nursery for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity”.
Believing that free speech is our main defence against totalitarianism, I’m a passionate supporter of the FSU.
I'm proud to be a member of its Northern Irish Advisory Council along with seasoned campaigners like my friends Baroness (Kate) Hoey, Jeffrey Dudgeon — who became famous for legally forcing Northern Ireland to stop criminalising private sexual acts between men, while being these days a leader of resistance against crazy trans activism — and this newspaper’s editor Ben Lowry, under whom the free speech banner is proudly worn by the staff.
I took part in an FSU event recently in London which was a discussion between Generation X, Generation Z and (as I describe myself, Generation Dinosaur).
I had rewarding conversations afterwards in private for an hour with some young men who declared themselves delighted that I was saying the unsayable and mourned the need to keep one’s unfashionable opinions to oneself at their universities.
The job of people like me is to give them courage to stand up to bullies. And that is made possible by the comfort blanket provided to tens of thousands by membership of the FSU. For as little as £30, members are protected from attempts to shut them up.
I can’t come on the 11th, but I envy you the opportunity to hear the inspiration that is ex-cop Harry Miller.
His tweets and retweets making fun of extreme trans activism include the lines, "I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don't mis-species me".
Investigated by Humberside Police in 2019 for being transphobic, he took to the courts and won two cases.
The High Court judge was appalled that police had gone to his workplace, breaching “a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Statsi”, but “the police's actions taken as a whole had a chilling effect on his right to freedom of expression”.
There are some sane lawyers out there.
This will be a perfect occasion to raise the well-meaning but foolish attempt by the young deputy leader of the Alliance Party, Eóin Tennyson, to have conversion therapy banned in Northern Ireland, thus putting at risk any parent, pastor, or concerned adult who asks a teenager if they’re sure they’re transsexual.
We must fight the free speech fight for the sake of the next generation.
l Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of ‘The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions’ and 'Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice.’
Ruth’s website is www.ruthdudleyedwards.com, Twitter is @RuthDE, Facebook is Ruth Dudley Edwards.