Writer Robert Locke recently warned that “free speech may become illegal in England.” He focused specifically on the case of Nick Griffin, “chairman of a small opposition party called the British National Party.” Griffin is apparently facing trial for saying, “at a private political meeting,” that “Islam is an evil and wicked faith. Unfortunately for him,” Locke reported, “government thought police were watching, and recorded him on video tape… Such things really do happen in Britain today. Let us pray they do not happen in America tomorrow, and draw the line now,” Locke excoriated:

“Most Americans know that America’s precious civil liberties were born in England, out of English common law, English ideas of individual rights, and British parliamentary democracy.
Most Americans don’t know that this glorious tradition, in defense of which Americans and Britons fought two world wars and a Cold War together, is dying where it was born.
Today, believe it or not, civil liberty is under attack in the UK as it has not been since the dark days of 1940.
Then, as now, it is threatened by a would-be United Europe, and by those at home who lack the courage to defend it.
Today, European Union laws have snuffed out many of the cherished rights in Britain—rights Americans still take for granted, like the presumption of innocence and the right to elect their own government—and they threaten to snuff out more, from freedom of speech to the right to trial by jury. British liberty is in danger of being swallowed whole by the alliance between Political Correctness and an alien and Napoleonic legal tradition from the Continent, where freedom is nothing more than a loan from the state, revocable at its convenience. [More on the European “superstate” in Adieu to the Evil EU]
Make no mistake: the unelected masters of the European Union know full-well that British liberty is one of the biggest roadblocks on their drive to create a superstate that will rival and displace the USA. They cannot allow the virus of freedom to infect any part of their bureaucratic despotism, and they mean to eradicate it. Tony Blair is their enthusiastic collaborator.
The present British government—just like in the 1930’s—has responded to the aggression of a diabolical foreign ideology by deciding to appease it. Then it was major newspapers hushing up the truth about Hitler. Today it is the fact that in Britain, a man can be thrown in jail for telling the truth about Islam’s agenda of world conquest [my emphasis].
If you know that Islam has waged holy war from Arabia to Lower Manhattan for 1,400 years, aiming at the forcible conversion of the world, you will know this is the simple truth. If you know its holy book, the Koran, explicitly commands every Moslem to wage jihad, you will understand why the world needs to know. If you remember 9/11, you will understand why this is the crucial issue of our time.
…You understand how important free speech is. Without it, all other liberties are moot, as no-one can tell the truth about threats to them [my emphasis]. Islamic radicals are hoping to exploit the British courts—using rights Islam would abolish—to silence criticism of their jihad agenda. If they win this case, they will have acquired enormous powers of intimidation.”

I share Locke’s outrage. England has stooped as low as Turkey, which is prosecuting novelist Orhan Pamuk for “denigrating Turkishness.” That’s Orwellian for daring to acknowledge and decry the Armenian genocide during the First World War and the mass slaughter of the Kurds, also vital truths that should not be forgotten. Locke and I, however, would agree that Turkey has no legacy of free-speech to lament.

In 2002, France prosecuted the brilliant author, Michel Houellebecq. He was dragged before a French Revolutionary Assembly (English for a Parisian court) for calling Islam “a stupid religion.” And there’s Oriana Fallaci, forced to flee her native Italy, because of persecution by that government, acting as a proxy for Muslim groups. Although Locke would not be surprised by these events, I’m sure he’d condemn the assaults on these people.

However, it is not entirely clear whether Locke would defend Holocaust denier David Irving’s right to speak his misguided mind. Unless I have misunderstood him, Locke appears to decry the state’s assault on Griffin because he happened to speak the truth. What of liars? Is their speech a legitimate target of state aggression? Do the British “Rights of Englishmen”—the inspiration for the American Founding Fathers—protect only speech that is true?

American jurisprudence allows the regulation of speech only under very limited circumstances. If speech poses a “Clear and Present Danger,” it can be censored. While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect words that are likely to cause violence, the required threshold is extremely high. And so it should be. In fact, the preferred course of action against imams who publicly preach and incite violence against Americans on American soil is deportation, not censorship.

Locke ought to have emphasized the imperative of protecting all speech, truthful and untruthful. That’s the American way—and the right way—although it is clearly no longer cool in Cool Britannia.