CRITICS of the Government’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill have hailed the amendments passed by rebel MPs as a “triumph” for freedom of expression. That is a strange way to describe the passage of yet another law limiting free speech.

There are already, one study claims, almost 50 statutes curbing the freedom to say what you believe. Now we have one more. The amendments reduced the scope of the Bill, for example limiting the offence to “threatening” rather than including “abusive or insulting” words. But even if no case is ever brought under this mess of a law, it reinforces the idea that there is too much freedom to speak.

So what’s to celebrate? Many of those who wanted the Bill amended seemed not to champion free speech, so much as “Me! Me! Me! speech”. What they were demanding was less the right to free expression than protection for their own privileged self-expression.

Why were the Rev Ian Paisley and evangelical Christian groups — not always thought of as champions of civil liberties — such prominent opponents? They sought to defend their freedom to insist that there is one true God and to call Muhammad’s marriage to a child immoral. Fair enough. But it is hard to imagine them fighting for the freedom of their critics. Indeed, their complaint was that that proposed law would not have banned the “blasphemous” Jerry Springer — the Opera.

Artists and writers were understandably in the forefront of the opposition. Yet many seemed concerned to protect their own freedom to produce offensive books or plays, not the right of others to offend their sensibilities. One author, while hailing offensive art as “exhilarating”, also worried about the impact on “less rational people” of offensive ideas from the political platform or the pulpit. Those who asked that we look at the law from the comedian’s point of view presumably did not have in mind Bernard Manning or even Jimmy Carr, the TV comic condemned for cracking gags about gypsies. Nor have many of these champions of artistic freedom defended Jamaican reggae artists censored for anti-gay lyrics.

The Muslim leaders who wrote to The Times demanding their freedom to hate homosexuality while supporting the proposed ban on religious hatred revealed a similarly one-eyed attitude towards free speech. The competing proponents of “me speech” all tend to portray themselves as potential victims, in need of special protection from the law or their opponents. Thus humanists got the new laws extended to protect “religious belief or lack of religious belief”. Many on both sides also seem to share a deep fear of the allegedly irrational mob, whom they imagine as a pogrom waiting to happen.

Call me a free-speech fundamentalist, but I agree with George Orwell that the only ideas that really need defending against informal or formal censorship are those seen as outlandish, extreme or offensive. It is by defending free speech for “them” that we uphold our right to free thinking — the freedom to hear and judge every idea for ourselves, and to revile, ridicule or ignore it as we see fit, rather than being denied that opportunity by our not-in-front-of-the-children culture.

As Orwell pointed out, quoting Rosa Luxemburg, the German revolutionary, freedom must mean “freedom for the other fellow”, not just free speech for me, me, me.

• THE LESS controversial Animal Welfare Bill is also back in the news since The Times revealed that bizarre codes of conduct for pet owners will accompany the new law. As if cat owners were not already obsessed with their pets’ welfare, they are to be given 18 pages of guidance on ensuring that kitty has sufficient “mental stimulation” and privacy, and does not suffer feline obesity.

  These proposals capture the spirit of the entire Bill. Far from simply dealing with the few cases of cruelty that make the front pages, it is based on the assumption that none of us can be trusted not to drown a goldfish without the long arm of the new “pet police”. Yet almost the only criticisms of this human-bashing Bill in Parliament have been that it does not go far enough. The Government’s response — promising that the law can be expanded later to cover invertebrates — suggests that spinelessness is not the preserve of the cephalopods championed by certain MPs.

  Mick.Hume@spiked-online.com

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