speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Excesses of State Regulation
the flow of immigration, or even advocating the repatriation of
people who have come here from abroad .... It is claimed that
jobs will be lost, that, goodness knows, we have a million and a
half or more unemployed already and that all the immigrants are
going to do is to occupy the jobs that are needed by our local
population. These are matters upon which people are entitled to
hold and to declare strong views expressed in moderate terms. . .
. Were [the words "One down and a million to go"] threatening?
abusive? insulting? It is said that he insulted the dead. There is no
charge known to the law of insulting the dead .... [l]s there
anything that is pointed to that indicates that he was urging action
activated by hatred? ... He is obviously a man who has had the
guts to come forward in the past and stand up in public for the
things that he believes in.
The obedient jury acquitted in ten minutes. Discharging Read,
McKinon added: "You have been rightly acquitted but in these days
and in these times it would be well if you were careful to use
moderate language. By all means propagate the views you may have
but try to avoid involving the sort of action which has been taken
against you. I wish you well."
Summing up the first decade under the Act, the Home Office
conceded that racists had learned to evade it; propaganda "tends to
be less blatantly bigoted, to disclaim any intention of stirring up
racial hatred, and to purport to make contribution to public education
and debate." 4 The government responded by amending the law
to obviate the requirement of intent. The next prosecution should
have been an easy victory even under the old law. Two British
Movement members had ranted in the Warwick marketplace about
"wogs, coons, niggers, black bastards." "It was shocking that white
nurses should have to shave the lice ridden hair of these people."
"[A] nurse wiping froth off a coon's mouth and, as a result, dying of
rabies. That is what these black bastards are doing to us." The
defence chose the novel tactic of arguing that these views were so
extreme that "what was stirred up more than anything was sympathy
for the coloured people . . . ." An all-white jury acquitted under the
Act, though it convicted one speaker of words likely to cause a
breach of the peace. Suspending a six-month sentence, the judge
cautioned: "You have got to learn to curb what you say. It is not a
question of preventing people from expressing their proper opinions
but there is a way in which it can be properly expressed." 5
Although juries convicted 15 of the 21 tried during the first four
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