Silence of Speech

So, over the last couple of weeks since the slaughter of three little girls at a Southport dance class Great Britain has experienced a dizzying transformation into a frightened society in which the spoken or written word can land an otherwise blameless person in prison. Powerful dissident voices predominantly on the political right have grown noticeably quiet on Twitter and Facebook frightened by headlines of ordinary people being banged up for a hasty tweet or an expression of anger online and it is this silencing which is precisely what Starmer and his Blairite acolytes want of course.

Free speech is complex and the law has normally wrapped itself around the issue largely satisfactory until now the example often used is whether you should be allowed to shout fire in a crowded room? Some say no, I say yes because people aren’t stupid and they will use their other senses, an awareness of heat or smoke to decide if they are in danger, but underpinning so much of the rhetoric of the last two weeks is the idea that British people are stupid and cannot be trusted to type words online in case they make other people do stupid things.

Labour MP Jess Phillips largely kicked this off this week when a gathering of Muslim men amassed in her Birmingham constituency and she tweeted all day rumours have been spread that a far-right group were coming and it was done entirely to get Muslim people out on the street. It is misinformation being spread to create trouble. Now these locals eventually raced their boy racer cars and their Palestinian flags around a roundabout cause frightened pub goers to barricade the doors and eventually beat up a customer in the pub car park.

Phillips could have tweeted; “take responsibility for your own actions regardless of whether you feel goaded online, don’t come out looking for trouble.” But that isn’t fashionable anymore, gone are the days of telling people to take control of their own lives. We’re now under Labour government where you can look for the state to pay for your life and blame someone else when you inexplicably find yourself in a riot.

Prince Harry waded in and blamed the internet for the post Southport riots. What happens online within a matter of minutes transfers to the streets he said. People are acting on information that isn’t true as though people were sat at home watching TV with a cupper until they are gripped like a zombie by a tweet and decide to smash in the window at Greggs.

Social Media Terrifies Politicians

It is patronizing nonsense and Harry’s idea that this is because information isn’t true, contains the assumption that if controversial facts about an aggressor or a situation are true that would make rioting somehow okay. It is Bonkers, we need to stop blaming everything on social media, it is lazy, it is thick and it’s leading us towards accepting a closed society in which the narrative is dictated entirely by the state in collaboration with a compliant media and the individual, you and me are reduced to a passive, silent, stupid objects who can’t be trusted to think properly.

Social media terrifies politicians and newspaper editors because it gives us, the little people the ability to exchange information in a world where five billion people use social media every day. Some of it will be inaccurate just like some things in newspapers have been inaccurate for decades, but democracies rely on the ability to exchange opinions and information, we need to tell our conflicting stories so that we continue to evolve into the 21st century rather than retreat into a weak, ineffectual, tyranny of silence.

So, joining me now is Francis Hoar, Public Law Barrister, Francis good to see you, I’ve just been talking about how I personally I find it quite terrifying the last couple of weeks and the very firm fist with which Two Tier Kier Starmer has been stamping out. It almost feels like quite personal to him in his role of former director of public prosecutions he seems to be very much involved in these cases to Stamp Out dissent, particularly on the right.

How has it appeared to you from your legal perspective? Well, I think there are two elements and afternoon it’s good to see you. The first is the riots the actual riots themselves, punishing those who have rioted and use the word in a non-legal sense necessarily I mean public disorder in general terms and also which is I think connected to social media which was directly encouraging riots for example tweets saying get out on the streets boys and burn down the hotel.

Those will always be punished severely and quickly if people plead guilty, as those who’ve been punished have done, that’s not new it goes back to as long as that the courts have been operating and it is necessary to show to have a very quick reaction that stops public disorder. It happened in 2011 and it’s happened now and it happened, has happened many times in the past, that’s one thing questions will and can and should be raised about the proportionality and the extent of the sentences in due course.

Nudge Theory

I’m not going to comment on those in detail, but the other concerning element has been the use of the public safety act and as you say the messaging by the government and also the suggestion by the government which they knew would be picked up by the media about intelligence, what might be intelligence or might not be, but we have absolutely no way of knowing for example saying there are going to be a hundred riots on the streets tomorrow. I’m sceptical and I say that having spoken to a number of people who might know about this, I can’t say more than that but I’m very sceptical about the truth of that and I know that this comes from a government machine and I say government machine because of course it predates the new government.

A government machine that has experience in the last few years as we both know and many others of nudging people of setting out messages that are not necessarily true or certainly bending the truth in the way that they want to do so to manage people’s behaviour, so just to explain because people may not know what you’re referencing there so this was the telegram group.

So, telegram is another social media app where people can exchange information and on that telegram group appeared suggestion that on the Wednesday night of last week there were going to be a hundred organized riots and that was then used as the catalyst for all of that buildup of tension on that particular day. There’s going to be 100 riots, going to be 100 riots as it turned out there wasn’t. I for one didn’t think there was going to be at all, I don’t think there are that many people who have sat at home who want to go out and smash in police windows with a piece of four by two.

I just wasn’t reading the mood of the nation like that, so is your suggestion Francis therefore that there could have been, there could be because we know that the organization exists the disinformation government unit, that there might have been some tinkering behind the scenes to provoke public discord? Well, it’s very simple, the problem is it’s impossible to know and we can’t know, we won’t know for some time, but we should do and obviously there’s good reason for government departments, some government departments to be clouded in secrecy and we don’t know for example the number of terrorist attacks that MI5 filed and there’s good reason for that, but is there a good reason for there to be privacy and absolute government privacy about communications on telegram that may or may not have been true?

Public Disorder

No, I don’t think so, I think in due course we will, we should find out about that and then we’ll be in a better position to comment, but it did seem to me and as I say, I can say no more, indeed surprising that this message was put out and was picked by so many media organizations.

I understand if I recall the chronology correctly, I’ll be correct if I’m wrong, but I understand that was the day before there were lots of anti-riots and some of those anti-riots were mostly, they were in good order, but there was some public disorder on some of those as well, so yes as you say it does fit with a sort of government narrative at the same time.

As I said at the outset, I absolutely accept that the authorities need to clamp down on public disorder very hard and very fast to avoid it spreading as it did in 2011 and it did this, didn’t spread as much as it did in 2011. The crown prosecution service Francis have been, it’s no exaggeration to say bragging on X formerly Twitter, genuinely bragging about the number of people who have been arrested in the aftermath of the disruption that we saw in the last couple of weeks, that that feels unprecedented to me and that feels like a very strong message being sent out to the country which is just, be careful what you say on social media and maybe there is some logic, a little logic to that.

Be careful what you say on social media because look at this example of this young lad I mean we’ve had you know this idea of there was a Lincolnshire man as I say, who was charged under information against the state I think, you know anti-establishment rhetoric that was the phrase forgive me anti-establishment rhetoric that’s surely unprecedented in this country?

I don’t know about that whether it’s unprecedented or not but what I will say firstly is that it is not unprecedented but it is quite new for the CPS to have a major media presence and to be making statements. What I saw also and I was concerned about was the Attorney General congratulating himself effectively on social media using the official AG web Twitter website saying I have approved the charging of individuals who have pleaded guilty.

So, to be clear he wasn’t putting in jeopardy the fairness of their trial, but it seems totally inappropriate to me and if not unprecedented until recent times for Law Officers to boast about what they are doing for public disorder, that is for the Home Secretary.

Tough on Law & Order

It’s perfectly acceptable for the Home Secretary and the home office ministers to give rhetoric about being tough on Law and Order that’s what they’re there for, they are political but the Law Officers are not and the CPS are not and they should not be and another part of this is the police, I personally I understand why the police need to communicate but I personally would be very happy if much of their communications of the police ended immediately because a lot of it is simply as you say bragging about their successful scalps, so yes okay a police Twitter presence is extremely important to say we’ve got an unknown perpetrator we’re looking for, somebody we’re looking for.

That’s fine of course, that’s important, but a lot of what the chief constables do and what they authorize is totally wrong in my in my view so that’s one element but that does absolutely feed into this government message and this managed message of a particular response that is fine from the Home Secretary fine absolutely no problem and for the Prime Minister, they’re politicians but what they shouldn’t be doing is using neutral agencies to spread this message.

I do not think it’s appropriate for the CPS to be saying if you do X and Y you will get Z. Again, that is for the Home Secretary to say, but the CPS are a neutral, disinterested in the correct meaning of the word ‘public prosecutor’ they don’t have an interest in people being convicted, they are putting forward.

I used to prosecute, I did when I did crime and I was a Minister of Justice and inculcated in the bar is this sense with a small M you have a duty to put forward the case in a neutral, fair winded way you’re not aiming for a conviction you’re aiming to ensure that the jury or the magistrates are in a position to do it sending out these messages, even if it is after pleas of guilty and even if it is after convictions. I don’t think it sends out the right message and I think it’s wholly wrong for these neutral public agencies to do that because it can only be about weaponizing fear against the British public. Francis, good to see you as always thank you so much for your Insight.