Let’s hear it for contempt

The Blairite ‘Respect agenda’ is bunkum. We must all be free to insult each other or else only bullies will prevail

Stealthily, an idea which was born under New Labour has wormed itself into the imagination of post-millennial Britain. It is the concept of Respect, not least as applied to how we talk or write about each other. The implications of the ‘Respect agenda’ for free speech are perilous, and subterranean — the more insidious for imposing self-censorship by means of a model of supposed 21st-century good manners backed by laws which ‘send a message’ and chill the climate in which ‘hate-speech’ might otherwise occur.

The message is that we may argue at will in abstract terms, but should not offend other groups in society by speech or writing that they find personally hateful.

At first glance this rule sounds innocuous. But I believe that the freedom to give gratuitous offence, to mock, sneer, scorn, belittle, deride and verbally abuse, is one of the most important pillars in the power of language to challenge belief and behaviour. Hate-speech, far from being gratuitous, is a cornerstone of our liberty.

I know from the response whenever I write contemptuously about religious belief or practice that many readers think my error has not been arguing against what some believe, but being ‘gratuitously’ offensive to the people who believe it. Words like ‘superstitious’, ‘idiotic’ or ‘delusional’, all of which I’ve used of certain religious believers, fall into this category.

I know from responses to my somewhat lonely defence last year of Jan Moir’s right to publish her oblique attack on the late Stephen Gately, that sneering at him personally — not arguing against homosexual practice in general — was the error many thought the Daily Mail’s columnist should have been censured by the Press Complaints Commission for committing.