Picture shows Congressman Jim Jordan
One of the things that I have consistently admired about the American political system and indeed its Constitution, is their First Amendment to that Constitution. Coming from a country, the United Kingdom, that has no such provision in our constitution or any legislation that guarantees freedom of speech, I find myself somewhat envious of these rights that my American friends have but which I, my family and my fellow British subjects do not possess.
It is because of my admiration of the First Amendment I heartily welcome Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan’s intervention on the subject of freedom of speech in the United Kingdom. He’s been in the UK to criticise the dire effects that the British Online Safety Act (OSA) is having on the ability of Americans and American companies to operate and express opinions freely. He’s done some media appearances in the UK that are well worth watching and he has been excoriating about Britain’s lack of freedom of speech and the OSA’s negative effect on Americans ability to speak freely a right protected by the First Amendment to their Constitution.
Congressman Jordan has also been quite vocal on the X platform about the OSA and how it is negatively affecting US citizens and US companies. This is because Americans who wish to comment on big issues for Britain such as immigration, Islam, border control, transgenderism, two tier policing, corruption or any other issue that the State would rather the British people don’t talk about, get censored on online platforms along with those British subjects who also wish to speak on these matters but are prevented from doing so. I’ve put a link to Congressman Jordan’s video and X posts at the bottom of this article.
I know from my understanding of the US Constitution and US history that the First Amendment has not always been a big thing in the American public’s mind, from what I can gather it’s just been there in the background, a bit like sudden rain is in the UK. But when it needed, when freedom of speech is not just a nice thing to have but absolutely essential, it comes to the fore both in legal prominence and in the minds of the public.
The Civil Rights Movement in the USA of the 1950’s and 1960’s was, for example, in a very large way assisted by the First Amendment. It allowed for the publication of campaign materials, free association, the Press to be able to report on developments and much more. Court rulings by the Supreme Court of the USA made judgements based on the First Amendment that protected the membership lists of groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People from being forced to disclose said list to their opponents and strengthened the ability of Americans to freely associate and campaign. One of the Civil Rights First Amendment judgements made by the Supreme Court also restricted the use of libel laws by politicians and public servants to silence public criticism of them.
We can see from the situation regarding the US Civil Rights Movement that freedom of speech is not something abstract or something to be confined to academic and legal debating chambers but something that can have real world positive outcomes. The First Amendment allowed people to speak, to assemble, to campaign, to bind themselves together in order to bring legal cases against the authorities and to publish. If you are a Black American or indeed any American then you can vote, speak and campaign freely because of the First Amendment and the judgments made based on it either in whole or in part.
In Britain we have no such rights. What rights we do have to speak, assemble and campaign regarding the issues that concern us are heavily restricted by the State. We cannot speak freely lest we find ourselves arrested and gaoled for up to five years for being ‘grossly offensive’ even though the judgment of whether something is ‘grossly offensive’ is highly subjective. For example there’s stuff that I find offensive which others do not and vice versa, should my feelings be the legal arbiter here? I don’t think so. If we assemble then there are a plethora of public order laws that give the police immense power to control that assembly and too often it’s done in a highly two tier and biased manner. We have seen too many situations where the police have allowed one, favoured, group of demonstrators to engage in conduct that if undertaken by this group’s opponents would result in criminal action. We have Moslem clerics who are allowed to spout the most outrageous Jew hating nonsense in their sermons but who face no sanction from the state yet a nationalist demonstrator on the streets who said something disparaging about the Moslem deity Allah gets arrested and faces gaol.
Britain’s libel laws are draconian to say the least. I know from experience as a court report and from talking to crime journalists years ago that these libel laws often prevent the thorough investigation of stories that might be very much in the public interest. For example back in the late 1980’s a whole lot of people in the media had strong suspicions that the DJ and charity campaigner Jimmy Savile was very dodgy sexually and that he was indulging in practises such as necrophilia that would disgust the general population. However the press, or at least those who I was familiar with socially, told me that they could not investigate or publish anything on this story because of fear of libel. Yes the fact that necrophilia was technically not a criminal offence back then in the UK could have played a part in hesitancy, but it was libel that the journalists were primarily concerned about. Because Britain’s libel laws are so wide ranging and powerful Britain has become a ‘libel case shop’ for the rich and powerful from across the world, a tool that they can use to silence their critics and sometimes continue to oppress those who work or worked for them. Americans do not have this problem as libel, as I understand it, needs to be proven by way of proving malice on the part of the person who has made the alleged libel. In Britain, a mistake by a journalist or just having one evidential duck out of many not in the proverbial row can destroy their career or bankrupt the publication they work for if it causes the libel case to be lost.
The right to speak freely, the right to publish, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to not have the State poke through the membership lists of groups that we might belong to and the right not to be oppressed by draconian libel laws are all powers that the average American citizen has. Sadly these are powers that are too often denied to Britons.
I fully support Congressman Jim Jordan’s intervention into British politics. I don’t know much about this man and frankly I don’t really care that much as anything else about Mr Jordan’s politics are primarily a matter for the American citizens to whom he is beholden to to worry about. I do care however that Congressman Jordan is also standing up for the rights of Britons by standing for the rights of Americans to continue to be protected by their First Amendment. Congressman Jordan’s intervention is very very welcome here and he may not realise just how many Britons are cheering on his decision to criticise Britain’s grossly oppressive communications and speech laws. If I’m ever in Ohio I’m going to buy Congressman Jordan a drink in thanks for his intervention but I’ll probably have to join a massive queue of Britons also wanting to do the same.
We in Britain need more of what Congressman Jordan has done. We need more US politicians to criticise those UK laws that impinge on the freedoms of American citizens even though these UK laws are primarily designed to oppress and silence British subjects. The Parliamentary free speech provision in Britain’s 1689 Bill of Rights was exported to the nascent United States and probably inspired those tasked with drawing up First Amendment the US Constitution, but America did it better, America extended the rights of free speech only allowed to legislators in Britain to the entire population of the USA. The concepts of freedom of speech and the importance of it were in part born in the political, religious and social maelstrom of the Britain of the 17th century and later and these concepts were taken up by America and Americans. If political interventions on this issue by American figures helps Britons regain the massive amount of freedom of speech that we’ve lost over recent decades, then Americans will have helped to bring free speech home to Britain. It should not be a crime for a Briton for example to point to social, economic or political problems and be imprisoned for voicing their opinion. Let’s make Britain free again, let Britons speak freely.
Links
Jim Jordan on UK news outlet GB News
https://x.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1950648628285948400
Crown Prosecution Service guidance on communications offences
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/communications-offences
Background information from a Tennessee university about the impact of the First Amendment on the Civil Rights movement.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/civil-rights-movement
Further information from above source regarding reform of US libel law inspired by the First Amendment
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/new-york-times-co-v-sullivan
X platform comments from Congressman Jim Jordan on the subject of UK censorship and its affects on both Americans and Britons.
https://x.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1950368307372020086