I am a member of the Oxford University Society – London branch. Last week I attended one of their events at the Army & Navy Club. It was their Annual Lecture and it was delivered by Mr Toby Young, journalist, broadcaster, author, critic and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union.

An alumnus of Brasenose College, Oxford, Toby has enjoyed a wide and varied career in media. Since gaining his first in PPE he has worked for a number of publications including The Times, Vanity Fair, The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He wrote a memoir of his time in New York which was made into a film and a stage show in which he acted, co-wrote two satirical stage-shows and co-produced a Channel 4 documentary about the relationship of David Cameron and Boris Johnson, in addition to working as a food critic in print and on television. As an advocate of free schools he was co-founder of several including the West London Free School and is a former director of the New Schools Network, a free schools charity.

Toby's mother was a BBC Radio producer, artist and writer while his father, a Labour Life Peer, was a pioneering sociologist who coined the word ‘meritocracy’ - and perhaps with that parentage it is not surprising that they produced the Contrarian Prize-winning, outspoken and sometimes controversial social commentator that is Toby Young. In 2020, Toby founded the Free Speech Union which exists ‘to champion the right of people from all walks of life to express themselves without fear of punishment or persecution’. In an era when the terms ‘cancel culture,’ ‘no-platforming,’ ‘de-banking’ have become commonplace and ‘non-crime hate incidents’ require increasing resources from police forces, is ‘freedom of speech’ itself under threat from authoritarianism and intolerance? Or is a curtailing of some personal freedom the price to pay for a politer, more harmonious and inclusive society?

Toby explained that he founded the Free Speech Union in February 2020 with one other colleague because he cared a lot. He is proud of the pivotal role Britain has played in the development of parliamentary democracy and in the economic model that was its principal export in the 18th century. Free speech remains an essential ingredient in the English-speaking world. He does not think it could get any worse than what happened during the lockdown. Facing the COVID-19 pandemic broadcasters were censored and people who had reservations about government policy were considerably inhibited. He thinks that we might well have followed the Swedish model which was actually more successful in containing excess deaths while still leaving people relatively free to move around.

Despite his father's support of the Labour Party Toby is undoubtedly right wing but he believes that the left have become hostile over this issue despite the fact that very often the largest group involved are women. Restrictions on free speech are like poison gas- once it is released the wind can change direction. He cited the importance of free speech in the civil rights movement in the US.

He gave several examples of cases the Free Speech Union has dealt with. He believes there should be a judicial review of the actions of Bridget Phillipson, the new Secretary of State for Education and Science who torpedoed the Free Speech Act that would have created a complaint scheme. It was due to come into law on the 1st of August this year and Phillipson revoked that which is a clear breach of one of the fundamental principles of our constitution that a minister cannot defy the will of parliament. Another case involved Bernadette Spofforth who published some response to the Southport murders on X. She was alleged to be one of the first people to use X (formerly Twitter) to falsely identify the suspect in the killing of three girls outside a Taylor Swift dance class as a Muslim asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the UK by boat. The Free Speech Union offered to defend the 55 year-old businesswoman after she was arrested and held in custody for 36 hours on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications – this was in spite of the fact that she added the caveat “if this is true”, and deleted the tweet when she discovered it wasn’t.

She was wrong in what she said but that is of itself not a crime and we are entering into an example of two-tier law but he believes that Sir Kier Starmer is also almost certainly guilty of crime when he stated that the rioters were of the far right. Some may have been but in general what happened after the Southport murders was a spontaneous demonstration of general anger and it is possible that Starmer may have encouraged the Muslim counter activists. Misinformation and disinformation are tricky and so is hate speech. The question is who gets to say what is hate speech. Toby asked the question ‘do the authorities always get it right?’ He clearly believes that they do not.

The Free Speech Union now has 30,000 members having only been founded just over four years ago with just two and there was such outrage about the reaction to the riots that 6000 signed up on a single day in August more than had signed in the whole of June. The police are under considerable pressure and now we have this new concept of a non-crime hate speech. George Orwell would have recognised this kind of ‘doublethink.’  Non-crime hate speech may not be a crime but it does show up in your criminal record. Toby is clear that unless something is prohibited it is permitted and there are not many exceptions to that rule.

He raised the question of Donald Trump's belief that the election in 2021 was stolen. A year on from the result in January 2022 far more people now believed that the election result had been stolen than the number who believed that at the time. Toby goes back into history to show that the Weimar Republic sought to suppress the Nazis but it did not stop them. In other words that is not the answer but we can still see that kind of repression today and it shows that we haven't learned the lesson. In 1919 the outstanding jurist Louis Brandeis said the best remedy is more speech. Toby believes that social media have changed that. The authorities today don't engage. They just seek to control. Many people have lost the ability to argue. Many are not confident about what they really believe and so there is a conflict of values in an ever more polarised society.

Toby took a number of questions:

1.He was asked if one should make an exception in religious matters citing for example the French cartoon depicting Mohammed. Toby was clear that there should not be an exception for religion. Indeed throughout history religious leaders have sought to control what is thought and said, citing the example of the Vatican and Galileo. Even today many problems in society are because of different religious views and the inability of some people to discuss those openly and peacefully.

2. Should there not be some moderation of social media? Toby is clear that he does not trust the state to moderate what people say and write. The solution is to get people to moderate their own communications.

3. The threat of China and Russia and the risk that that poses. Toby said that while not denying the risk represented by China and Russia as authoritarian states, the security establishment in Western countries has set up massive programmes for censorship of domestic communication. He gave the example of President Biden’s actions and of those of Boris Johnson during the pandemic.

4. He was asked how friends and family can learn how to disagree and to get along with each other. It was a good question which was applauded by the audience but Toby answered it by stating that it is neglect of free speech that leads us into that situation and again we must learn how to get on with each other even when we disagree over important issues. We cannot leave that to some state sponsored rulebook. That is what happened in China and Russia and Nazi Germany.