憨豆演讲一点也不憨 ROWAN ATKINSON (Mr. Bean)

of any issue relating to free speech is my
passionate belief that the second most precious
thing in life is the right to express yourself
freely.
The most precious thing in life I think is
food in your mouth and the third most precious
is a roof over your head but a fixture in
the Number 2 slot for me is free expression,
just below the need to sustain life itself.
That is because I have enjoyed free expression
in this country all my professional life and
expect to continue to do so, I personally
highly unlikely to be arrested for whatever
laws exist to contain free expression, because
of the undoubtedly privileged position that
is afforded to those of a high public profile.
So, my concerns are less for myself and more
for those more vulnerable because of their
lower profile.
Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling
a police horse, gay.
Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church
of Scientology a cult.
Or the café owner arrested for displaying
passages from the bible on a TV screen.
When I heard of some of these more ludicrous
offences and charges, I remembered that I
had been here before in a fictional context.
I once did a show called Not the Nine O’Clock
News, some years ago, and we did a sketch
where Griff Rhys-Jones played Constable Savage,
a manifestly racist police officer to whom
I, as his station commander, is giving a dressing
down for arresting a black man on a whole
string of ridiculous, trumped up and ludicrous
charges.
The charges for which Constable Savage arrested

Mr. Winston Kodogo of 55 Mercer Road were
these:
‘Walking on the cracks in the pavement.’
‘Walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area
during the hours of darkness’ and one of
my favourites ‘Walking around all over the
place.’
He was also arrested for ‘Urinating in a
public convenience’ and ‘Looking at me
in a funny way’.
Who would have thought that we would end up
with a law that would allow life to imitate
art so exactly.
I read somewhere, a defender of the status
quo claiming that the fact that the gay horse
case was dropped after the arrested man refused
to pay the fine and that the Scientology case
was also dropped at some point during the
court process was proof that the law working
well, ignoring the fact that the only reason
these cases were dropped was because of the
publicity that they had attracted.
The Police sensed that ridicule was just around
the corner and withdrew their actions.
But what about the thousands of other cases
that did not enjoy the oxygen of publicity?
That weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract
media attention?
Even for those actions that were withdrawn,
people were arrested, questioned, taken to
court and then released.
That isn’t a law working properly: that
is censoriousness of the most intimidating
kind, guaranteed to have, as Lord Dear says,
a ‘chilling effect’ on free expression
and free protest.
Parliament’s Joint committee on Human Rights
summarized, as you may know, this whole issue
very well by saying ‘While arresting a protestor
for using threatening or abusive speech may,
depending on the circumstances, be a proportionate
response, we do not think that language or
behaviour that is merely insulting should
ever be criminalized in this way.’
The clear problem with the outlawing of insult
is that too many things can be interpreted

as such.
Criticism is easily construed as insult by
certain parties.
Ridicule is easily construed as insult.
Sarcasm, unfavourable comparison, merely stating
an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy
can be interpreted as insult.
And because so many things can be interpreted
as insult, it is hardly surprising that so
many things have been, as the examples I talked
about earlier show.
Although the law under discussion has been
on the statute book for over 25 years, it
is indicative of a culture that has taken
hold of the programmes of successive governments
that, with the reasonable and well-intended
ambition to contain obnoxious elements in
society, has created a society of an extraordinarily
authoritarian and controlling nature.
It is what you might call The New Intolerance,
a new but intense desire to gag uncomfortable
voices of dissent.
‘I am not intolerant’, say many people;
say many softly spoken, highly educated, liberal-minded
people: ‘I am only intolerant of intolerance’.
And people tend to nod sagely and say ‘Oh,
wise words, wise words’ and yet if you think
about this supposedly inarguable statement
for longer than five seconds, you realize
that all it is advocating is the replacement
of one kind of intolerance with another.
Which to me doesn’t represent any kind of

frogress at all.
Underlying prejudices, injustices or resentments
are not addressed by arresting people: they
are addressed by the issues being aired, argued
and dealt with preferably outside the legal
process.
For me, the best way to increase society’s
resistance to insulting or offensive speech
is to allow a lot more of it.
As with childhood diseases, you can better
resist those germs to which you have been
exposed.
We need to build our immunity to taking offence,
so that we can deal with the issues that perfectly
justified criticism can raise.
Our priority should be to deal with the message,
not the messenger.
As President Obama said in an address to the
United Nations only a month or so ago: ‘Llaudable
efforts to restrict speech can become a tool
to silence critics or oppress minorities.
The strongest weapon against hateful speech
is not repression, it is more speech.’
And that is the essence of my thesis, more
speech.
If we want a robust society, we need more
robust dialogue and that must include the
right to insult or to offend.
And as, even if, as Lord Dear says, you know,
the freedom to be inoffensive is no freedom
at all.
The repeal of this word in this clause will
be only a small step, but it will, I hope,
be a critical one in what should be a longer-term
project to pause and slowly rewind a creeping
culture of censoriousness.
It is a small skirmish in the battle, in my
opinion, to deal with what Sir Salman Rushdie
refers to as the ‘outrage industry’ - self-appointed
arbiters of the public good, encouraging media-stoked
outrage, to which the police feel under terrible
pressure to react.
A newspaper rings up Scotland Yard: ‘Someone
has said something slightly insulting on Twitter
about someone who we think a national treasure.
What are you going to do about it?’
And the police panic and they scrabble around
and then grasp the most inappropriate lifeline
of all, Section 5 of the Public Order Act,
that thing where they can arrest anybody for
saying anything that might be construed by
anyone else as insulting.
You know, they don’t seem to need a real
victim, they need only to make the judgment
that somebody could have been offended if
they had heard or read what has been said.
The most ludicrous degree of latitude.
The storms that surround Twitter and Facebook
comment have raised some fascinating issues
about free speech, which we haven’t really
yet come to terms with.
Firstly, that we all have to take responsibility
for what we say, which is quite a good lesson
to learn.
But secondly, we’ve learnt how appallingly
prickly and intolerant society has become
of even the mildest adverse comment.
The law should not be aiding and abetting
this new intolerance.
Free speech can only suffer if the law prevents
us from dealing with its consequences.
I offer you my wholehearted support to the
Reform Section 5 campaign.
Thank very you.