Only twice in my life has politics brought tears to my eyes. The second time was yesterday.

The first, 21 years ago, needs less explanation. It was late on a winter afternoon on Tuesday, February 2, 1988, when I heard that the House of Lords had just passed what was then Clause 28 of the Local Government Act. This was the anti-gay measure's final hurdle, and until that moment (and having written to scores of peers) I had persuaded myself the Lords might stop it. Had I not, since becoming a Conservative at university, shared a profound belief in individual liberty? Wouldn’t that count with Tory peers?

On hearing the vote I was overcome by something worse than disappointment: a sense of my own stupidity. I had trusted in reason, in philosophy. They had let me down. In the twilight I trudged over to the other side of the valley and sat where I could see the lights of my house through the bare branches of ash trees in winter, and wept.

An affecting scene, or nauseating, depending on your point of view. But whatever your viewpoint, we have to admit, do we not, that my feelings were touched by self-interest? I was, after all, gay. Disappointment at my country was mixed with self-pity.

Yesterday was different. It was the morning after the Question Time appearance of the leader of the gay-hating, immigrant-baiting British National Party, and a significant test of our national commitment to the foundation of freedom: free speech. So I had laid out many of the day’s papers: a mosaic of news and commentary. Stepping back, what made tears well to my eyes was the overall picture into which this mosaic resolved itself. Most were hedging. Everyone sounded nervous.

I saw an entire national intelligentsia, in a time of relative peace and stability, unthreatened by any serious challenge to the values they hold dear, and in the face of no more than a gnat of a man leading no more than a rag-tag party with no more than a dishcloth of a manifesto, flinch — seriously flinch — in its commitment to free speech.

On the one hand this, and on the other that; six of this . . . ; finely balanced judgments; agonies of indecision; reluctant conclusions; “I’m all for free speech, BUT . . .”; Jesuitical distinctions between censorship and the denial of a platform; quibbling over format . . . almost every voice sounding nervous, agonised; every judgment, when finally reached, offering first a frightened little curtsey at the throne of An Awfully Difficult Decision.

Was it? Really? Wasn’t this, rather, an absolutely obvious, straightfoward, open-and-shut case? Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.

I ploughed on through newsprint, resting finally on a fresh cause for dismay. Jan Moir in the Daily Mail has felt forced to recant.

Last week the columnist wrote a hurtful article in a sharp and lively style (when does a week pass in which we do not read half a dozen such?) that nastily insinuated that the late Stephen Gately (the gay boy-band singer who died mysteriously in Majorca, after a night’s clubbing) led a sleazier life than his sweet-faced image suggested, and that this told us something about civil partnerships. An unpleasant mixture of speculation and nonsense, of course, but it went with the grain of what some think, and against the grain of what others think, and struck me as publishable.

I realise that such journalism can fan hatreds, even violence, just as I acknowledge (the pro-censorship brigade are right in this) that offering a platform to the BNP may give the party a boost. Nor do practical liberals like me believe in free speech regardless of its effect; they would not support free speech if they expected it to lead permanently to great harm.

But nor do they believe in free speech only when confident that their preferred opinion will win the immediate argument. They know that free speech can help bad ideas to gain ground as well as good. But they have enough faith in the persistence of human reason to believe that in the ebb and flow of argument, and over time, the better argument will eventually prevail.

And — crucially — they believe that free speech will strengthen and sharpen the critical faculties of the whole citizenry, producing a society less susceptible to herd mentality. In short, they do not deny that free speech can hurt, but believe that in time it makes a people stronger.

Moir’s column, however, had provoked a deluge of complaint from people calling themselves progressive. The Mail had been failing to defend Moir. In fact, hardly anyone (but me) had been defending Moir. And her stomach-churning apology yesterday bore the hallmarks more of fear than of repentance. Sad.

A melancholy creeps over me, as in that winter of 1988. Why am I committing so heavily to an abstract idea? Can’t I see that people believe in freedom only for what they do not find objectionable? Why would Nick Griffin imagine that The Guardian, for freedom’s sake, would defend his platform as a proto-fascist? Why was I defending the Daily Mail, when — once it heard the baying of the mob — abandoned its position anyway? I thought of John Clare’s To a Fallen Elm, during the Enclosures . . .

I see a picture that thy fate displays

And learn a lesson from thy destiny

Self interest saw thee stand in freedoms ways

So thy old shadow must a tyrant be

Thoust heard the knave abusing those in power

Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free

Thoust sheltered hypocrites in many an hour

That when in power would never shelter thee

Thoust heard the knave supply his canting powers

With wrongs illusions when he wanted friends

That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers

And when clouds vanished made thy shade ammends

With axe at root he felled thee to the ground

And barked of freedom — O I hate that sound . . .

and again tears filled my eyes. Does reason, does philosophy matter? Or am I wasting my time?

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