>IMPLYING
kiwifarms.net
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- 14 de Dic, 2022
Splitting hairs, but it does exist.
It's just exclusively the right of politicians.
The link you provide says it only protects them within Parliament, but it also extends beyond it. Again, it's a privilege enjoyed only by MPs and the like, even party leaders. It's why they couldn't officially "charge" Oswald Mosley in the 1940s, though they did "intern" him.
The Bill of Rights 1689 overwrote all the previous speech-inhibiting bills passed by parliament up to that point. The website can't highlight any significant examples of free speech violation between 1689 and 1986 because the UK had freedom of speech.
There is a strong argument to be made that freedom of speech was stronger in the UK prior to the 1980s onward than it is today. The article points correctly to the bill which bears the blame for all of this: The Public Order Act 1986, This was passed by the Conservative party in response to widespread strikes and disorder following the wave of corporate and industrial offshoring to China which fucked the whole West over at the time. It also acts as precedent for why you shouldn't pass a law that is surely to come bite you in the ass again, especially if it involves restricting civil liberties.
I wanted it noted that in response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government passed the colloquially known, "Intolerable Acts."
What's noteworthy about these acts is not a single one of them actually prevented or inhibited individual speech or the right to protest. There was never any attempts to arrest the then-leaders of the revolution because Freedom of Speech was actually a valued tenet. Say what you will about taxation, but the right to gather and speak what you will was sacrosanct. One of the acts—The Massachusetts Government Act of 1774—gave the governor the right to dissolve the provincial congress, when an alternative one was set up in defiance of the order, nothing could be done about it. There was never even an order issued for the arrest of any revolutionary leader, with the order preceding the Battle of Concord and Lexington be the destruction of supplies (The order issued on the 18th of April 1775)
None of this is to rebuke the American revolution, but mostly to punctuate why I resent the idea the UK "never had freedom of speech" or anything that amounts to it. The reason being is it belittles the fact we did have it, and until fairly recently too. It makes the notion of regaining it far more possible because of how easily it was stolen in the first place. It's not some mythological right that we could only gleam from across the Atlantic in envy, it was taken by a government that didn't want to lift a finger in response to things getting shitter and to clamp down on organic organisation. Before then being used as the foundation to prevent native people from criticising browns (Harassment Act 1997 + Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2007). 5 bills more or less stand in the way of Freedom of Speech in the UK, and they can all be un-done with a single bill.
As a side note: even gun rights only saw the severest restrictions in the 90s:
Firearms Amendment Act 1997 & Firearms Amendment Act (no 2) 1997. (These were in response to a mass shooting by a man who acquired a handgun illegally so wouldn't have even been subject to any checks in the first place).
Up until this point you could own any handgun chambered in any calibre. But with the big unpleasant caveat of a certificate, and with the knowledge that "self defence" wasn't a valid reason to own a firearm since 1937.
Also notable: much like the restrictions on organising and free speech in the Public Order Act 1986, firearm usage was restricted shortly after mass strikes and protests following severe economic downturn at the start of the decade. And, just like speech restrictions, gun restrictions only made more severe once the Conservative government got replaced with a Labour one.
I won't argue that the USA is unparalleled in this regard, Americans do have the best gun rights, and it's probably the thing I most envy about the USA.
The moral of the story:
