Free speech and academic freedom are at risk in our over-woke country

This week, the High Court ruled that a police probe into the tweets of Harry Miller, an ex-policeman, was unlawful. Mr Miller had been contacted by Humberside police after a series of statements he made about transgenderism – for example, “I was assigned a mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me”. Accused of a “noncrime hate incident”, Mr Miller got the impression that he might be prosecuted if he continued to tweet.

It’s part of a pattern: in June, a disabled grandfather, Brian Leach, was fired by Asda for circulating a clip of Billy Connolly targeting his famous rudeness at suicide-bombers, because it was deemed Islamophobic. He has since been reinstated.

Left-wing sceptics dismiss anxiety over free speech as a figment of an overheated imagination. Yet, that anxiety commands hard evidence, not just anecdotes. A 2017 report for the University and College Union found that, compared with other EU nations, the constitutional protection for academic freedom in the UK is “negligible” and the level of actual protection “equally poor (if not worse)”.

In 2019, a Policy Exchange report observed evidence of “a chilling effect” upon the free expression of students who hold non-mainstream political views. In the same year, the Legatum Institute’s prosperity index ranked the UK only 17th in the world for freedom of speech, a decline over the previous decade.

The threats to free speech are not imaginary. One is the confusion of reasoned criticism with hatred. Another is a radically subjective definition of “harassment” or “offence”, which lets guilt be determined entirely by the eyes of the beholder. Thus, the College of Policing tells us, a hate incident is one “which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice”. A further threat is posed by institutions such as universities, whose future so depends on attracting students that they daren’t risk appearing other than fully “woke”.

But there’s hope on the horizon. Later this month will see the launch of the Free Speech Union, which sports the bracingly liberal motto, audi alteram partem – “Listen to the other side”. Founded by the journalist Toby Young, the non-partisan, mass-membership union is no club for pale males: as well as Matt Ridley and David Starkey, its advisory council musters the novelist Lionel Shriver, the feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock, and the political commentator Remi Adekoya. The union promises to aid any member whose legal free speech is being shouted down by zealous mobs or betrayed by spineless institutions, through mobilising support and offering legal advice.

We have a problem with free speech in this country; the Free Speech Union is the beginning of a solution.

For more information, visit www.freespeechunion.org.

Nigel Biggar is a professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford

In June, a disabled man was sacked by Asda for circulating a clip of Billy Connolly joking about suicide bombers, because it was deemed racist