Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Was there a particular event that made you so passionate about freedom of speech?
I was shocked at university to discover the “no platform policy”. I just couldn’t understand how in an environment of academic freedom we could ban someone because of their views. I always thought that you could win arguments if you have them in public, but it appeared to me that people were frightened of having the arguments. That is what got me interested. A number of different organisations were “no platform” when I was at university.
Which ones?
There was a big fuss that anyone with racist or homophobic views should not be allowed on campus, and there were campaigns to not have anything offensive said in student union meetings. Obviously I didn’t have any sympathy with those views, but it struck me that there was a real sense of insecurity if you couldn’t have the argument. I was very passionate about the issues that I thought were important. In those days, we used to get over 1,000 students a week along to a union general meeting. And it seemed to me that having robust arguments about different topics was exactly what was needed. Also I think that from an audience’s point of view, if you ban an organisation on the basis of their views you make them more powerful and flatter them. I think that most of those organisations, if they were allowed to speak, wouldn’t have much to say and the audience should be allowed to find that out for themselves.
Your first choice, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, is very much the bedrock of some of these ideas.
This is a fantastically important book even today, written by one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers around. To me, it seems to enshrine the Enlightenment notion attributed to Voltaire that “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. What is rich about this work is that it doesn’t just assert the importance of free speech for the speaker without going into why it is important. One thing that very strongly impressed me over the years is its argument that we can all improve. Our arguments can only be improved by airing them in the public sphere.
We have to hone them, and people have to listen to and dissect them.
Indeed. Also, we always have to be prepared that possibly we are wrong. It is only by having those debates that you can improve your own arguments, but also possibly reconsider your position. John Stuart Mill says, “Truth gains more even by errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.” I think it is better to have people try out ideas in the public sphere, even if they are wrong, than to simply parrot the right answer. That is what I think Mill is saying there. One of the important things about On Liberty is this idea that we shouldn’t just adopt certain positions or say certain things because it is fashionable to do so.
Why do you think that John Stuart Mill is still relevant today?
Because he encapsulates why tolerance and freedom have to be actively fought for and actively asserted.
Your next choice is almost a modern sequel to Mill. Frank Furedi’s new book On Tolerance challenges the idea that we are largely a tolerant society.
John Stuart Mill argues clearly for tolerance, and he is very popular in this modern era. People quote him in school essays and formal debates. But Frank Furedi, in his new book on tolerance, looks at how the spirit of John Stuart Mill has been destroyed in the contemporary era, despite our paying lip service to the term “tolerance”. He talks about an insipid understanding of tolerance.
What does he mean by that?
We have come to interpret the very opposite of what Mill meant, that tolerance means that we should be respectful of all opinions. When we say our society has got to be tolerant, it becomes a relative thing – almost therapeutic mush that we are not allowed to offend anybody. This kind of tolerance leads to a situation where we refuse to challenge or test out arguments in the public sphere.
That is what is so ironic about the contemporary understanding of tolerance. It effectively says you must bite your lip and tolerate all views. This was not at all what Mill meant. Furedi takes on how tolerance has become degraded. He says tolerance has to be robust, interventionist and judgmental. You should tolerate all views, but that does not mean silently sitting by and agreeing with them. He makes a very interesting point about how in the name of defending tolerance, we’ve seen the introduction of hate-speech legislation which defends people from intolerant views. Actually, in the name of tolerance we have seen the growth of illiberalism. A kind of intolerant tolerance.
Which shuts out different parts of society.
Yes, we basically say you are intolerant therefore we won’t tolerate you.
Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas, which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint. She convenes the Battle of Ideas festival, their flagship annual event which will next take place in London at the end of October 2011. She is a panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze, is regularly invited to comment on developments in culture, education, politics and the arts, and is a frequent contributor to national newspapers and specialist journals
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