Madam, – Michael O’Driscoll (April 13th) applauds those protesters who succeeded in preventing Prof Len Doyal from speaking on euthanasia in Cork last Thursday, stating “We don’t generally debate the merits of ideas which we wholeheartedly reject as a society”.
One may rightly ask the question: who is to decide which ideas fit into this category? Mr O’Driscoll? If so, one can only hope that he can offer a plausible method of identifying such ideas.
Mr O’Driscoll’s attitude, as well as that of the protesters, seems to show a profound lack of respect for the right to free speech, but more disappointingly, a lack of faith in this right.
It was open to those protesting against Prof Doyal to denounce and reject his views in a spirit of open debate, and I have no doubt that they would have been joined by many supporting voices. Instead, they decided to promote their respect for the rights of others (to equality, human dignity and life) by denying Prof Doyal his right to free speech; a right to which he, no less than they, is entitled.
One may reject his views in the strongest terms, but nevertheless defend his right to propound them.
Nor is this an isolated incident. In a similar manner in 1999, a crowd forced the cancellation of a speech by Prof David Irving, the reviled Holocaust denier, at UCC’s philosophical society.
In each case, I have noted a worryingly muted reaction from newspapers and the public (a notable exception being the editorial in the Sunday Times of April 12th). In 1999 this was not surprising given that the State and the courts had at that time a lamentable record regarding the right to free speech, protected by Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution. Seven years on, it is more surprising, with the courts having increasingly strengthened the right in a number of cases, inspired by the more robust approach to the right in foreign courts and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Freedom to utter the acceptable is not free speech – the point of the right, as the European Court of Human Rights has put it so well, is to protect not only that which is “favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.”
What is most depressing about the actions of the protesters in both the Doyal and Irving incidents is that it is my fellow citizens, and not the State, who are acting to infringe the right to free speech. It shows that the right to free speech, encompassing both the specific right in our constitution and the general concept, has yet to attain any central status in Irish society.
Yet, free speech is vital to our political system, our society, our very health as a nation. A society that does not believe in free speech cannot consider itself a truly democratic society. More importantly, a society that refuses to allow unpopular positions to be voiced is one that cannot look at itself honestly, for fear of what it might see.
We are lucky to live in a country where free speech exists (for the most part at least). Citizens should be seeking to promote increasing protection of the right, not the opposite. – Yours, etc,