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Comment by cowtools | Hacker News Reader

Brits don't have freedom of speech AFIK. it was never in their social contract.

We had it through negative liberty, opposed to positive liberty. The approach was that everything was permitted except that which is forbidden.

So, instead of a 'right to' free speech, rather we _would_ have no laws restricting freedom of speech (libel and incitement excepted). This was the understanding that would've permeated Parliament, the courts, the palace, and the hearts and minds of everyone who understood it.

More or less, until 1997.

What happened in 1997?

The onset of Blairism, which accelerated all previous statist trends with a smiling face and suave media personality.

So we ended up with the Communications Act (2003) and its dreadful Section 127. As well as admission to PRISM, and making ourselves one of the CCTV capitals of the world.

And he's still taking aim at freedom from beyond the grave: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-tony-blair-think-fr...

The Communications Act Section 127 was based on the existing Malicious Communications Act (1988) passed by the Thatcher government. And the UK has had plenty of other speech restrictions like blasphemy laws (abolished by Blair) to suspiciously broad offences against obscenity existing since time immemorial.

The Online Safety Bill is the brainchild of a Conservative government, included as a flagship commitment in a Conservative manifesto aiming to appeal to conservatively minded voters, a successor administration to the Conservative government who brought us the national porn block. Nothing makes it easier for such legislation to be passed more than revisionist nonsense about how the wonders of negative liberty meant we never needed any of the positive protections this law specifically supersedes and it's all the left's fault anyway.

Probably the Treaty of Amsterdam - one of the EU's more entertaining reads

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/treaty/pdf/amst-en.pdf

The UK Human Rights Act landed in 1998. Schedule 1 Part I Article 10 covers "freedom of expression"

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part...

Even prior to the Human Rights Act the UK was bound by Article 10 of the EChHR, it just wasn't directly enforceable by UK courts (one first had to exhaust domestic legal challenges and then bring a case in Strasbourg at the ECtHR)

What happened in 1997?

I assume he means the McLibel case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case).

There's a 84 minute documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V58kK4r26yk

The constitution's amendments are different from other laws. Instead of restricting the people, it restricts the government power. It is there to make it harder for the government to devolve into a tyrannical one. The historical context (the US fighting against the monarchy of England for independence) is why it's there and it explains many of its regulation (including the right to bear arms, which was needed in order to fight against England).

The UK doesn't have it, which makes it a lot less stable, as seen in 1997

Until the Human Rights Act 1998 established it as a positive right.

> _would_ have no laws restricting freedom of speech (libel and incitement excepted)

This is optimistic ahistorical nonsense; the UK had a censorship regime until the Lady Chatterly trial. There has been intelligence service related censorship as long as those have existed, as well (see Spycatcher, Zircon). And let's not get into Northern Ireland. Nobody old enough to remember "Gerry Adams has his voice read by an actor" would claim the UK used to be a bastion of pure free speech.

Since HRA is just a bill, it can be trivially overridden entirely or on a case-by-case basis by any other bill, requiring only a simple majority in the Parliament, thanks to parliamentary sovereignty. So it doesn't really meaningfully protect anything.

Kind of a constitutional problem, but of course until Brexit it was guaranteed by international treaty. And still is in Northern Ireland:

https://www.dfa.ie/media/dfa/alldfawebsitemedia/ourrolesandp...

"The British Government will complete incorporation into Northern Ireland law of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), with direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the Convention, including power for the courts to overrule Assembly legislation on grounds of inconsistency."

The ECHR does not meaningfully guarantee free speech.

> The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the conviction of an Austrian lecturer who suggested that the founder of Islam, Prophet Mohammed was "a pedophile" for marrying a 6-year-old child.

https://neonnettle.com/news/5449-austrian-woman-convicted-fo...

> Woman’s conviction in Austria for calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile did not breach her right to free speech, European Court of Human Rights rules

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6316567/Woman-corre...

What happened in 1997?

There is a noisy contingent extremely proud of that fact for some bizzare reason. I can only hope they are an extreme minority.

Err... you might want to give the ECHR a read, and in particular Article 10.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/8KMsE7YCsR3t/

When this video is a criminal offence in the UK, you don't have freedom of speech.

Woman’s conviction in Austria for calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile did not breach her right to free speech, European Court of Human Rights rules

The woman, named only as Mrs. S, 47, from Vienna, was said to have held two seminars in which she discussed the marriage between the Prophet Mohammad and a six-year old girl, Aisha.

According to scripture the marriage was consumated when Aisha was just nine years old, leading Mrs S. to say to her class Mohammad 'liked to do it with children'.

She also reportedly said '... A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? ... What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6316567/Woman-corre...

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