When I was preparing for my A-level history papers, I remember being taught about a man called Peter Wentworth. He argued for freedom of speech in the House of Commons and was concerned about the succession to Queen Elizabeth I, who had banned all debate of the subject, whereas he believed Parliament ought to discuss it.
He went as far as to say “none is without fault, no, not our gracious Queen” in a speech in the Commons in 1576, for which he was summoned before the Privy Council and subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was the first man to claim the right of free speech in this way and suffered regular periods of incarceration for his pains.
Freedom of speech, although central to our constitutional settlement, was not one of the earliest rights the English enjoyed. The rule of law and property rights clearly predate it, while, as Peter Wentworth kept on being elected to Parliament, at least some element of democracy existed well before Parliament's right to free speech was confirmed in 1688-9.
Yet the Bill of Rights only provides freedom of speech in Parliament, not in the country at large. Unlike in the United States, in the United Kingdom there is no equivalent to the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”. This means that in the UK, freedom of speech cannot be taken for granted, and is regularly under threat.
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