152: Protests, Placards, Palestine and Private Eye

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Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye Office.

This episode is going to be a slightly upside-down one.

In the second half, we're going to be joined by Ian, Helen, and Adam.

But in the first half, we're going to have an interview.

And the reason for that is that this is our summer freedom of speech special.

We're going to be talking about policing, about protest, and about proscribed organizations.

The reason this is in the news so much at the moment was all kick-started by a group called Palestine Action.

Now a proscribed organization, but until recently simply a direct protest group, their direct protests on behalf of the Palestinian cause culminated at the start of July when some members of the group broke into an RAF base and sprayed paint into the engines of two military aircraft, which the group claimed were helping to refuel American and Israeli jets.

Just a few days later, plans were announced to ban the group group by the government, and it is now categorized as a prescribed organization on roughly the same level as Islamic State, say.

When the government prescribed Palestine action, the Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis said that that prescription, quotes, would not impinge on people's right to protest.

Those who wish to protest or express support for Palestine have always been able to and can continue to do so.

That has not been strictly true.

Dozens of people have been arrested not only for holding placards supporting Palestine action, but many more for holding placards which were not about the group Palestine action, were simply in support of the Palestinian cause.

And recently one man in West Yorkshire was arrested for holding a placard which, although it mentioned the words Palestine and action, was not a placard supporting the group.

And we can say that for sure because it was a joke from the last issue of Private Eye.

John Farley, a retired head teacher from Yorkshire, had printed out the joke which he thought made a good point.

He put it on a placard and promptly found himself arrested by the West Yorkshire Police.

He was bundled into a police van.

He was driven to the nearest police station where he was held for about six hours.

He eventually got a solicitor and was interviewed by counter-terror police before eventually being released on bail pending any charges, charges which were not eventually brought.

And it's a good thing that Mr.

Farley is still at liberty because it means he is free to join us now.

John, hello.

Hi there.

So, John, you went on this march.

Was it a Palestine action march or was it simply a pro-Palestine march?

No, it wasn't Palestine action.

It's organized by Leeds branch of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

They've been doing them almost continuously since the situation started.

And

I've been on quite a few.

I've not been on all of them, you know, but I've been on quite a few.

So you went on this march, you had a placard with you.

We should say at the start of things that it was a joke from Private Eye.

Can you just tell us what the joke was, please?

Yes, I can.

It said at the top, in quotes, Palestine action explained.

And then underneath, it had in sort of on red background, unacceptable Palestine action,

spraying military planes with paint.

The other bit in green, it said acceptable Palestine action, shooting Palestinians queuing for food.

And I should add, actually, underneath I put copyright symbol private I

number 1653.

And that was really the thing the punchline if you like for it because the march was about the denial of food aid to that was the theme it was a silent march and that was the theme of it can you tell us in your own words what happened on the day it was a silent march which you don't which we sometimes do so it was very solemn you know and people were carrying boxes to symbolize the aid that's been denied into Gaza.

So I'm holding this up and I passed serious policemen on the way and then

we were more than halfway round and I saw two officers on the side and they just saw me and made a beeline straight to me and I thought they must have good eyesight because you know I wasn't that near them.

But they said can we have a word with you?

And I said well can you come to the pavement and have a word with me?

And I said well we can have a word here if you like and they said no we want you so then they just grabbed me by the arms took me to the pavement and I'm not quite sure how but some I ended up sitting on the pavement.

I think I went a bit limp as they dragged me over.

Yeah.

And

they said, it's about the placard.

And I went, oh,

I said, I bought the private eye with me because I thought possibly somebody might say something to me, you know.

So

I said,

it's in my rucksack.

I can show you private eyes.

It's from that.

And at that point, I realized that I had a handcuff on one hand and they were saying, you're under arrest under section 12 of the Terrorism Act.

I thought they might say something to me first,

but I just, yeah, and I was a bit surprised.

So then they said, You're resisting.

I said, I'm not.

And he said, But your arms are tense.

And I thought to myself,

I feel pretty tense.

I've just been dragged to the pavement by two cops, you know.

Anyway, they put the handcuffs on and they said, Will you walk to the van?

So I said, Well, I will.

If you take the handcuffs off, let me show you the magazine and you can see where it's come, you know.

And I kept saying, it's a cartoon from Private Eye.

And eventually people stood around me.

They all started, they heard that and went, it's a cartoon from Private Eye.

It's a cartoon from, so it went on like this.

No, they weren't interested.

And as I did suggest before, I don't know, but I think they'd not, they weren't readers and they may not have heard of it.

You know, their loss.

Their loss.

I was in shock, to be honest.

It was really only when I got in the van I thought, crikey.

So you were,

I presume, driven off from the protest?

Yeah,

people sort of surrounded the van and that, but obviously

they took me away.

And then lying back in the van, I was on the floor.

I said to them, they said, what's your name?

And it was beginning to sink in then.

And I said, well, look, take the handcuffs off because I thought I'm in the van.

I'm not going to get in two burly coppers, you know.

And I'll i'll show you that no and then so he found my bus pass and he said oh you're you're alan farley because before that he said well if you don't tell me your name what can i call you and i said call me sir

seemed reasonable enough but he didn't like that so by this stage i thought well you know i better not say anything else now then i got booked in i was feeling a bit stroppy by then so they said things like are you vulnerable or do you feel vulnerable And I said, Yes, I do.

And they looked at me a bit surprised.

I said, Well, I'm in a police station, and you know.

I presume this is your first arrest.

Yes.

Right.

They give you cards out with a solicitor's number on the demo, which I've had in my pocket and I've never used, obviously.

And they said, it's better not to use the duty solicitor.

You get them to ring this one.

Could I find this card?

No.

And I accused falsely.

I apologise to her shortcut.

I falsely accused you of throwing it away.

In fact, it was tucked into my phone case all the time I found out upon release.

But luckily I could remember the name and they said, oh yes, we know them, we can call them.

And I could just about remember my wife's phone number.

So I asked them to call her and they never did, to be fair.

But she was also on the march, but elsewhere.

So she was one of the last people to find out that I'd been arrested.

So then they said, do you want to read the police and criminal evidence guidance?

And I thought, well, I don't know how long I'm going to be in there and they won't let me take my copy of Private Eye.

So I said, yes.

So I've read most of West Yorkshire's guidance.

They took my fingerprints, they took DNA swabs.

Then I got a call from the solicitor via the intercom, which was hard to make out, but she said, don't worry, I'll be there fairly soon.

And I asked, could she ring my wife?

And she took the number and she did ring my wife.

I had a cup of tea.

They gave me a cup of water.

I had a fairly horrible heated up meal.

How long were you held all in?

Just over six hours, I think.

I was arrested just before two

and I got out about eight.

Oh, and I got to see a nurse while I was in as well.

Okay.

Because I'd asked my medication.

I'm mildly asthmatic and I'd ask my medication because in a stressful situation it can be a bit worse, you know.

Which somebody got and brought down to the police station.

And I got to see a nurse, very friendly nurse, a paramedic, NHS.

And one of the things she did was take my blood pressure.

I said, Oh, I'm going to see my doctors about that this week.

And she said, Well, you can tell them your blood pressure's fine, which it was.

Even in trying circumstances, yes, exactly.

I said, I thought that was an unyou know, I said, Well, that's one positive that's come out of today, you know.

Then the solicitor came, we had a brief chat.

She said, Look, I advise you just no comment in their questions because

if we're going to have a debate, we'll have it in court.

They asked me all sorts of questions.

I mean, one of the questions, I can't remember what it was, but he sort of I rolled my eyes as he said it, and he sort of looked a bit apologetic and said, I know, but we do have to ask these questions.

I'm sure you understand.

Is this question about whether you were a member of Palestine Action?

No,

no, no.

They asked me if I said, do you support Palestine Action?

So obviously I said, no comment.

Or I might have just said no to that one.

And then they said, did someone force you to carry this placard?

did you make it did somebody else make it and one of them one of them said this is the counter-terrorism police he said I see the advert in the magazine was very small and I thought advert

what's going on anyway I said he said he said did you blow it up yourself And I thought, you're counter-terrorism police, don't say things like that to me.

That's a very leading question to ask, yeah.

I mean, you must have done, otherwise your placard would have been one inch square.

Well, exactly, yes.

So through that interview, I began, I thought, are they taking this that seriously?

I wonder if they are.

You know, the solicitors felt quite confident.

She said, I think, you know, said, don't know, but, you know, got quite a strong case.

Okay, so eventually you were released without charge?

Yes.

Well, no, I was released on bail.

charges going pending going they said they were going to send my file to the cps

i hadn't committed an offence and they they must have been beginning to think, you know, what's in this.

And my bail conditions said I wasn't to go on any Palestine action demos or protests.

And I said to the solicitor, I wasn't on a Palestine action protest, and I've never been on one.

And in any case, are they illegal?

So at this point, John, I probably have an apology to make to you

because it was actually me who wrote that joke for Private Eye.

And I did not think

it would have a result because the classic result of writing a joke for the MA is nothing, nothing happens at all.

And so it wasn't our intention to get anyone banged up, particularly not if they haven't done anything wrong.

So I'm very sorry about that.

Well, it's not your fault.

I saw it, and I did think that will make a good placard, not least because it's different from the standard ones that are handed out, you know, the same old, same old.

Everybody's heard the same stuff before, and I thought this is a clever and nuanced take, but makes the point really well.

You know, good old private eye.

It'll have been through the lawyers.

What could go wrong?

I thought.

So did you know about Palestine Action before?

Did you know that this group had been prescribed?

I'm sure you keep up with the issue in general.

I'd heard of them, and yes, and I was aware of the prescription.

So, you know, and I knew I didn't want to do what other people have done and gone out and saying they support them.

But when I could say I saw that and I thought that uses that phrase, but in a different way to make the point about people are being shot queuing for food.

We're going to be talking a bit later on in the podcast

with the I team about freedom of speech, heavy-handed policing, all of this kind of thing.

I mean, in your opinion, do you think what happened to you was simply really clumsy policing or do you think it kind of indicates a general problem with freedom of speech at the moment in the UK?

I'd say a bit of both.

I mean, they were clumsy because they didn't give me any chance to explain.

The solicitor said to me later, they didn't even give you words of advice, I believe is the phrase.

But they chose to arrest me.

Somebody showed me a video that had been taken.

There's people who follow us around videoing us, and they post them.

And it showed the van driving around, parking up.

They walked out, stood to the side.

And then as soon as I came by, they would come straight out for me.

So I think they'd already seen this.

I don't know.

I presume they'd seen the sign at some point and thought, right, we're going to arrest him.

So yeah, I think it was clumsy, but also they weren't, I think, right, we need to get off the street straight away sort of thing.

I wasn't thinking I'd get arrested.

I thought they might say, I thought perhaps they'll say something.

Somebody, a friend said to me, oh, you sure about that?

I said, well, it's been in private eye, you know.

So I wasn't completely oblivious to it.

Oh, I mean.

But I thought at the worst, they'd say, you can't carry it, you know, or whatever, you know, and I would have just said, all right, you have it.

As it turns out, stuff being printed in private eye is not a guarantee that you won't be sued over it, as the magazine's found out to its cost many times.

That's true.

Very dangerous, very dangerous idea.

So, part of this was shutting down the use of those words on any placards whatsoever, no matter what the context was.

What happened next?

Did it work?

Has this absolutely been chilled and shut down, and the words have never appeared again on a placard?

Quite the opposite.

Well, on Monday, they rang me at 10.30 and and said no further action's being taken.

Okay.

I said would you and they said would you like that email or I said write to me.

Well I've had the letter saying that although it says they still reserve the right to investigate further for you know but no quite the opposite.

Last Saturday we had another march and I reckon there was a double the number of people there.

My son came along, friends I hadn't seen for ages came along and then as we were going round I thought that looks familiar and it turned out somebody had made about 50 copies of the placard that I had and were carrying around.

And, you know, and I thought, I mean, somebody had one hanging from his carrier bag.

I thought, that's very casual.

And there was

one person, he had one, and he would, he was walking along and he left the march and he'd walk up to a policeman, stand next to them.

And at the end,

somebody was collecting him in, and some police said, Oh, can I keep it?

So there's probably a few hanging up in people's houses somewhere.

So yeah, no, it's had the opposite effect.

And I've had so many messages.

In fact, an old friend who I hadn't seen, well, since the 80s, he sent me a message.

He found me on Twitter or X and sent me a message and said,

we were at school together.

And he said, I'm having a birthday party on Saturday, next Saturday in London.

Can you come down?

So I am.

So it's working as friends reunited.

So there you go.

There you go.

If you want to connect with an old friend, just pick up your copy of Private Eye, find the most inflammatory drug you can and print it out.

Terrific.

Thank you so much for speaking to us, John.

That's my pleasure.

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So, now for the second off the show.

I'm still in the private eye office, but I'm joined now by Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen, and Ian Hislop.

And this is going to be our summer free speech special.

Very exciting.

Something to listen to on the beach.

So, yes, Palestine Action was prescribed interesting, little bonus info for you here.

On the same day as the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russia Imperial Movement, which are two neo-Nazi groups.

So, Palestine Action is classified as a terrorist organisation, which is, I think, an interesting conflation of a protest group and a terror group.

So, the nature and scale of a group's activities, I believe, have to be taken into account before you prescribe it.

And most of Palestine Action's actions

had been marches, protests, that kind of thing, rather than breaking into places.

Does this follow climate groups as well, like Extinction Rebellion, getting designations as targeted groups?

It certainly follows very heavy sentences being dished out to members of climate groups which have taken direct action.

That is true.

But what's also true is that, presumably, breaking into a military base and damaging planes is also covered by existing criminal laws, isn't it?

I believe it is, yes.

And this was the argument inside government

before they rushed to do this.

And there were voices saying, don't do this in a hurry, it may end up making you look ridiculous.

And before Private I had written this joke, we had written a number of pieces saying if you're going to do this,

surely it's covered by criminal damage.

There are ways of prosecuting people if that's what you want to do, without making them a terrorist group,

and also without making people who support any sort of action about Palestine into supporters.

It was obviously going to conflate things that would lead to misunderstandings and in this case the arrest of poor John.

And it's also crazy to leave those decisions at an operational level at actual demonstrations, isn't it?

Because I mean there are many difficult things that coppers on the beat have to do.

Possibly passing private eye jokes and deciding whether or not they're offensive or funny shouldn't really be one of those, should they?

It just strikes me as a really, really badly drafted law.

Like a lot of these kind of knee-jerk things that come in and hey, so I'm thinking of also, do you remember the Dangerous Dogs Act?

And that came in, and suddenly police were having to make decisions on what breed a dog was, you know, when they're not trained up by the Kennel Club.

Take the time to make these things specific.

I'm still in shock over the fact that the police officer who made the arrest didn't know what Private Eye was, which is,

you know, a really shocking thing in the morning.

He should be in prison, that's what you're saying.

Well, John.

Mr Farley said that he kept saying, Look, can I just get my copy of Private Eye out of my rucksack?

But if you've just arrested someone on a potential terror charge and they keep saying, Can I go and get something from my bag to show you?

Fair point.

They didn't go for that for some reason.

So, Ian,

is this just badly drafted law then having its inevitable consequence on the streets?

Yes, if you're told to take some sort of I hate to say the word action

when demonstrations happen, and it's really unclear what you're meant to do, then ridiculous things will will happen.

And this is both absurd.

And also, I mean, he spent six hours in custody.

You know,

he was put on the ground and cuffed.

It's not nothing.

And the freedom of speech issue is something that's important at the moment.

And we get it every which way at Private Eye.

Nearly all the time, there's someone who wants to ban a joke from the last issue or a piece from the last issue, or says, Why do you never write about anti-Semitism when we've written three pieces about it in that issue?

Or why do you accept that we need a new blasphemy law with Islamophobia, which we didn't do?

And there are concerns there.

You have to, I think, have what John called nuance here, and that's in the legislation.

That can't be in the policing of it.

I think it's a particularly difficult one because, actually, this is a subject on which Britain's politicians are, until now, have been actually slightly out of touch with popular opinion.

So, the kind of elite popular opinion about Israel's right to exist and being supportive and an ally to Benjamin Netanyahu, actually, in the polling, the British public is a lot more sceptical of Israel, its government, its actions in Palestine, the Gaza Strip, than our kind of political class has been.

So, I think that's a particularly dangerous time for, you know, because we hear all the time about all politicians are so out of touch.

This is a way in which people really feel that their voices weren't being heard.

And now, more than 250 MPs from across the parties have all signed a letter put together by Sarah Champion and calling for a Palestinian state.

Now, to some extent, that's a symbolic question at this point in time.

I don't believe we get to make the call.

Right, exactly.

Since Mandate Palestine, it's not really up to us anymore.

But nonetheless, it's a point about the fact that lots of MPs are constantly hearing from their constituents, and not just people with large numbers of Muslim constituents, although you'll note those people are really well represented in this, but across the political spectrum, people are feeling real unhappiness from people.

It's not a kind of lefty, liberal, hand-wringing kind of concern, this one.

And I think the realization has dawned that there are protests in Israel.

There are opposition newspapers in Israel written by Israelis, which have been rather more strident than any press in Britain.

I think the last few days and

a couple of really shocking pictures and videos have slightly changed the climate.

Yeah, so Benjamin Atanyahu has said there is, quote, no starvation in Gaza.

And there is a lot of kind of trutherism around about some of the more high-profile photos saying that one of the babies who look really malnourished actually has a kind of muscular disorder.

Nonetheless, you know, there are just so many reports from inside that aid has been having difficulties getting through.

It's, you know, that the food cues, per your joke, are really violent and dangerous for people to get into.

To the extent that Trump was asked about it this week in Turnbury in his appearance with Kirstama, and he said, this is a classic Trump answer, from what I see on TV, a lot of people look hungry.

That's how he does his policy making.

But, you know, and the fact is that Israel has declared an effective ceasefire and daylight hours in order to get aid to get through is the closest you'll ever get to a kind of concession that actually the situation had become intolerable.

You know, one of my friends said they'd just seen the picture of that baby and gone home and hugged their own baby, right?

I just think lots of people, particularly parents, see photos like that and it hits them really, really viscerally.

I think you're right as well about the way that it's crossing the usual lines.

It isn't just the usual suspects.

It was really interesting that one of the first papers to go big on those photos last week in the sort of live aid type presentation of we need to do something about this was the Daily Express, which did a full-page, really, really shocking picture of one of those emaciated children.

So, you know, it isn't just, as you say, you know, lefty rabble rousers that are onto this one.

It is really crossing a lot of political lines.

Well, like Alan Curdie, the Syrian little boy who dried coming off a boat, you know, that was across the media, including right-wing papers who otherwise are very concerned about illegal boat crossings.

I think there is just a thing that people really don't like to see pictures of children suffering.

And you know, you'd have to be even more out of touch than Donald Trump not to recognise that, which is unfortunately, it turns out where Benjamin Netanyahu is right now.

Right.

And also, the Netanyahu line that Israel has the right to defend itself does not extend, in most people's imaginations, to starving children, and that becomes an issue.

And when he says,

There's nothing I can do about this, then decides, yes, there is something I can do about this, because internationally, this is getting a bit hot, even for him, then somehow there are ways of defending the convoys that come in.

There are ways to pause the fighting.

Suddenly, this problem is not insoluble.

And that, I think, is a fairly major giveaway.

Questions about free speech always end up coming down to questions about power.

Who are you allowed to criticise?

Who are you?

Which are groups necessarily treated the same?

And so, you know, this is something that I think you'd find traditionally left-wing Palestine protesters to say, we're not being treated the same.

At the same time, you'll get there's big, big moves on the right to say things like the people who supported the riots last year, you know, have received unduly harsh sentences.

You know, that they will say that you can't criticise immigration, you can't criticise small boats, these are clamped down on.

I think all of these arguments end up to some extent becoming whataboutery, which goes back to your point, Ian, which is the idea that you just need to have some sort of broader principles and the police need to be seen to applying them equally, not based on who is a favoured or disfavoured group to the police at that particular point in time.

I think you're absolutely right.

I mean, the kind of key one on that side is the case of Lucy Connolly, who was the woman who tweeted an incredibly offensive tweet at the time of those riots last summer.

Well, she called for an asylum hostel to be set on fire, didn't she?

Yeah, she said to set it on fire, I don't care, burn the bastards for all I care.

She did think better of it, but she had the slight misfortune that by that point it had been reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, which is one of those cases of where the line is between social media and just something you might say to a friend in a kind of hot-headed moment, isn't it?

Because that went slightly beyond it.

But she was, and this has become a sort of cause celebra in certain circles, she pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred, but she was given what does seem to me like an incredibly harsh sentence, 31 months, which is way beyond some of the people who were actually physically involved in some of the violence out those protests.

But there's an odd line with that, because it's become such a cause celebre on the right now that it's sort of, the unfairness of the sentence has been kind of looked over into this more sort of, it should be an absolute free-for-all and anyone should be allowed to say anything online.

Yes, I mean, the argument has moved from is 31 months excessive to, well, she should have the right to say that.

The traditional line is that

we all believe in freedom of speech, but that doesn't extend to shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

But nowadays, what people are shouting is, let's set fire to the theatre,

which is slightly different.

And I would say the Connolly case does brood that.

Can I ask?

I know this varies a lot internationally, and I read one argument claiming that had Lucy Connolly written that tweet in America, given that it did not call for a specific act of violence, for example, she would most likely not have been arrested, charged, imprisoned.

So is this

a difference between saying, I would like this particular person to be attacked, and saying, oh, burn the lot down for all I care?

Well, again, I think this comes back to that initial point that we made about these guidelines need to be really, really carefully drafted.

Because, I mean, I've read stuff by very eminent legal commentators saying, actually, you know, according to the sentencing guidelines, this was completely risky.

It went to the Court of Appeal, who said that it wasn't manifestly unjust.

It stands as a sentence.

But in that case, maybe we do need to have a look at the sentencing guidelines on that thing, because that does seem a crazy situation where inciting violence gets a harsher sentence than committing violence itself.

Yeah, and

in Scotland, they wanted to go even further than that.

They wanted an offensive stirring up hatred that you could be guilty of, even in your own home, even in kind of Adam's example of saying it to your own family, which didn't ever go through.

But, like, there are, that is definitely a force in political life at the moment, is that people do want more restrictions on speech.

And look, I can see why, you know, I think lots of people feel very worried about violence and harm.

You know, I know lots of Jewish people feel that there's been a real uptick in anti-Semitism.

And if you go on some of those Palestine marches, I went on one now 18 months ago, and the vast majority of people there were completely peaceful and making a legitimate political statement.

But there were also really grim, vile signs that were slipped in amongst them.

And this, again, I think comes back to the how much can the police be expected to do that?

They always have to make a call when there are things that obviously cross the line about is it worth the ruck to go in and sort that out, or are we actually going to, at that point, does it tip into violence?

Right?

They are making fine policing distinctions.

And they were criticised on a number of those marches for not arresting people who had paraglider symbols on their back on the grounds that, well, we're not quite sure what that means.

And then those people were subsequently arrested after public pressure and then were not given a custodial sentence, if you remember, on the grounds that emotions were running high.

We should say that paragliders being the ones that were used by Hamas in the October attacks on Israel.

So it cuts both ways, this why don't the police act, usually because they're not quite sure, or because, as you said earlier, they're worried about stirring up real trouble in which arresting people turns into something else.

I mean, all these points are appreciated, but the essential principle is

if people are committing an offence, they should be arrested, and if they're not, they shouldn't.

But that's inherent to the problem, isn't it?

I mean, having covered the feminism wars for more than a decade, the problem is when you give police the ability to make these distinctions, they tend to err on the side of who is quite easy to arrest and right in front of me now, rather than like dealing with mobile phone thefts or whatever.

So there have been some kind of really, you know, like people, you know, someone said at some point the suffragette ribbons were a threatening sign, you know, that there is just this wildly overexpansion of what constitutes threat.

You know, there are people within Labour who'd like to bring back blasphemy laws, for example, right, as a kind of way of saying religious offence is also kind of a harm.

And at the same time, you've got this much greater idea that speech can cause harm.

So, there's just been two, this is tangentially related.

Two Jewish comedians have just been had their bookings cancelled at the Edinburgh fringe, and one of the rationales given was the venue saying our staff are worried about being unsafe.

Now, this used to happen to feminist meetups all the time during the the 2010s.

And the problem was, it was essentially saying we're going to have protesters and we can't hack that.

Back in 2020, I was supposed to be doing an event at the South Bank Women in the World Festival for difficult women.

And on my panel were Ama Buerse, who had played netball for England, Aisha Hazarika, who's now in the Lords, and Julie Bindle, the feminist campaigner on lots of things, including grooming gangs and also gender.

And I got a phone call from the venue two nights before saying the staff union has said that because Julie Bindle is going to be there, they don't feel safe.

And I thought, is she going to like hecto about she doesn't like Panatoni?

That's about the worst thing that's going to happen.

But it was, and they tried to, you know, essentially get me to cancel her on her behalf.

And I said, well, look, if she walks, I walk.

And I phoned the other two panelists and they said the same.

And it went ahead.

And guess what?

We didn't even talk about trans stuff, which was obviously what was behind it, because the book isn't about that.

But it was this sense that you could suddenly just get anything cancelled just by saying it's a safety issue.

It's a safety issue.

It's a safety issue.

And I think there has to be a certain level of robustness that people can be incredibly offensive up to the point of invoking really unpleasant stereotypes.

Nonetheless, it is not the same as violence.

And I think that distinction is increasingly getting lost.

And I think just saying the staff are either feeling unsafe or being unsafe, it would mean very little gets published.

I mean, certainly the satanic verses, all the controversy after that, one of the things that that brought up was if people are sufficiently violent in their reaction to what they perceive to be blasphemy, then nothing gets published.

And again, I don't think that is a position that the law should be taking.

I mean, I remember feeling not entirely comfortable in this very office in 2015, the week after the Charlie Hebdow massacre, when every single

news broadcast seemed to be describing it as the equivalent of private eye in the UK.

Oh, we're really not, actually.

But, you know, you turn up because you believe in something and you do the work.

And I probably would feel better if I was different about it, if I was, you know, behind the bar on minimum wage in an Edinburgh venue.

But again, but sure, when I was reading it, I was thinking about your Tommy Wildblood novels and the fact that so many LGBT campaigners through the 70s and 80s went to work in drag shows and in stand-ups when they knew there'd be a might be a police raid, right?

And they'd all be carted off.

Like, that was real bravery.

If you believe in a certain level of free speech, you know, there are risks that you take them.

And I think if you work in a venue that is a comedy venue or a stand-up venue or free speech venue, that's sort of part of the vibe, isn't it?

There are other bars you could work in that are completely apolitical.

Well, two of those acts are apolitical, aren't they?

Well, so

one of the comedians had

essentially done what I consider to be slightly tedious whataboutery online, saying, Oh, you're protesting about Palestine, but what about the hostages?

Now, I just find that's a sort of route one thing when you just want to kind of, you know, just make everybody just derail what everyone's currently talking about, mate, and talk about what you want to talk about.

But it's absolutely legitimate level of free speech.

You just disagree with his emphasis in that particular conflict.

It was a Jewish cabaret involving Jewish and non-Jewish artists and then a show called Ultimate Jewish Mother, which I'm just going to guess was probably about like having a Jewish mother.

I mean, maybe, maybe it was a trenchant commentary on the Middle East.

But that's the problem, is that there's just an incredible heckler's veto on speech.

And then I think the same thing happens with these groups, which is saying even voicing support for someone is the same as doing it, you know?

That the speech itself is seen as a kind of harm.

So this is what I mean about favoured and disfavoured groups.

I think I came into this debate in the 2010s from the kind of feminist perspective of that the internet was causing a huge uptick in abuse of women and minorities, thinking something should be done about that.

And actually, almost every time I've seen tightening up of speech laws, it has ended up affecting whoever has got the currently unfashionable opinions.

And I'm just not sure you can get past that.

Something that really struck me in reading the headlines over the last few days was Sunday Telegraph's reaction to the news that police are going to be monitoring social media in an attempt to sort of stave off any more protests and riots outside of certain hotels like last year.

This was absolutely presented presented as kind of like this is Big Brother, this is Orwellian, this is the Stasi they are spying on us.

And then the other stories I've been reading recently have been particularly about the failures of the Prevent programme and that they didn't intervene earlier with David Amis and they didn't pick up on all of these signs of extremism in either his killer or the Southport killer either.

You can't have it both ways.

I mean if chatter is out there on open source information, which is effectively what social media is, you cannot object to the police taking interest or anyone else taking interest.

If you're putting that stuff out there, it's going to get reacted to, including by law enforcement agencies.

there's a piece in the telegraph this week which is really outraged about a a pro-Palestinian kind of Perma protest in Nine Elms it's near the American embassy and it consists of some tents and it consists of a kind of open kitchen and it's on a bit of the footpath near the river I've walked past it a few times I've seen that when I'm in the embassy yeah yeah it's um it's not I would say severely in anyone's way.

No, I don't live.

It's not disruptive or threatening, right?

I don't live directly next to it, but

I don't believe there have been sort of direct threats outside of it.

It's not even as annoying as Teve Bray and his bloody accordion

outside Parliament, yeah.

But

that is the subject of a piece in The Telegraph with a lot of really outraged people saying, well, the police should shut this down immediately.

Their other state of position has been much more on the other side of the coin.

So it slightly goes back to Helen's point about favoured groups or just who you want to have the microphone at any one time.

And free speech tends to be, I believe in the freedom for you to speak things that I agree with.

Elon Musk and the whole of Twitter is a perfectly good example of this.

What he wanted to see on Twitter were people who agreed with him.

And that's what you get now.

And people who are even to the right of him are now free to say whatever they like.

If you're going to make a case for freedom of speech, it does have to include opinions that you don't like and don't agree with.

I mean,

it's all well, really.

Ian, do you have a kind of benchmark of what free speech absolutism is?

Or do you think there are really examples in which you can go too far in supporting the right beyond incitement to actual physical violence?

I think my own freedom to say and print whatever I feel like has always been

primary.

But I do expect other people to go beyond that.

I think that probably is a rule that everyone could agree on, that what they want to say counts as freedom of speech.

Anyone else's is hate speech.

Your other rule, which is essentially never tweet, have you considered not posting on social media and has also, I think, been vindicated by history, right?

Which is when you were saying that, Adam, I was thinking, if you don't want the police to read your lads, let's all meet down the, you know, pick and whistle and have a riot, maybe don't put it on Facebook.

Maybe don't put it on the face.

Well, I think another thing is that still, where are we at?

Twenty years into social media now, people haven't worked out what it's for.

People haven't worked out whether it is chatting to your mates down the pub or whether it is, as it legally is, actually publishing stuff which can be seen by other people.

If you were organising something in the old days through setting up a a newsletter or or something and sending out to people and saying, Let's have a ruck down at let's pluck the mill wall ground

out of thin air.

Other football clubs are available.

Then, you know, you would expect the police to take an interest in that.

If you're doing that on Facebook or just on Twitter off your own bat, then you know, it's out there, it's public.

People are going to take an interest in that.

People are going to react to that, whether they agree with you or very much virulently disagree with you or think it's illegal.

Yeah, I mean, there is that gets into a wider question about, which is a free speech question, about how much should the social networks be responsible for the riot-encouraging slop that they allow.

And they have just taken a view that it's absolutely nothing to do with them, they're just platforms, in a way which you, as editor of this magazine, simply wouldn't be able to do, just hold your heads up and go, Some contributor put something in at the last minute.

I can't be held responsible.

Well, that's pretty much how they did it, The Spectator, isn't it, with Tacky for many, many years.

Whenever he wrote a racist column, they just go, Well, you know, I'm only the editor, I can't tell him what to write.

I can't tell him what to write in praise.

It's never quite been your approach, has it?

No.

And I do agree with Helen.

The idea that you just put on one of your platforms something that is not only manifestly untrue, but is likely to stoke up a riot straight away, shortly after you've just had some real riots.

I mean, it seems to be reasonable to expect people to take some care with that.

What we really need to talk about, though, is the fact that Adam is ringing his shame bell.

Ah.

Yes.

Inaudibly.

It's a very high-pitched shame bell, so only younger listeners will be able to hear it.

That's what it is.

We come to the bit of the podcast, just like on page two of a newspaper.

Corrections and clarification.

Exactly.

Um, I wish to apologize.

Uh, in a previous episode of page 95 of the Private Ally podcast, specifically our questions and answers to listeners, one, I think it was last February, wasn't it?

We talked about, amongst other things, um, super injunctions.

And I said very, very clearly, as far as I know, they are a thing of the past, and I'm pretty certain about this.

Listeners, I was wrong, as you will know by now, there was one very, very spectacular and long-standing super injunction which was awarded to the MOD, the Ministry of Defence, back in August 2023.

It was massive headline news over the last few weeks.

To summarise it, basically, it was about the leak of a list of names of Afghan people who were being considered for resettlement after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The MOD didn't actually realise the list had been put out there by accident for another 18 months.

So it was August 2023 when they went for not a superinjunction, simply an injunction that would cover the kind of security of these people while they worked out what to do about it because obviously these people were in danger of reprisals by the Taliban.

It then went on for months and months and years and years after that and has finally only been dropped after a review brought in by the incoming Labour government which said it was not necessary and not needed anymore.

In that meantime it has covered, this is the extraordinary bit, the relocation of 20,000 or more people, which we weren't told about, which obviously migration into this country being quite a hot political topic for the last few years, it does seem rather relevant.

And

as the judge noted in the the final judgment on this, billions of pounds of taxpayers' cash being spent on this as well, with no oversight from either the public or, more to the point, from Parliament.

So,

yeah, it was quite a biggie, really.

This was an MOD list.

This was a.

It was within the MOD, it was about the people who needed resettling from Afghanistan because of the work they had done with British troops out there.

So, it's people like translators and facilitators and drivers and all that kind of thing.

Was there not a suggestion, too, that some of them had put as their references names of serving army officers, potentially serving intelligence officers as well.

There were, it turned out, in a slightly separate legal action, the names of certain MI6 officers and special forces soldiers also revealed in the league.

And it was a superinjunction used for what they were traditionally used for, which was to cover up what had happened and make sure no one took any blame.

Well, it was a really odd one because initially you could see the argument for keeping this stuff secret.

And in fact, the media organisations that initially approached the MOD, which was actually Lewis Goodall at the News Agents podcast, and Independent were involved at quite an early stage as well because they'd heard about this league.

They said, look, we understand that there are security information.

Journalists generally, this may surprise listeners, but we don't want to get people killed.

It's really not what we came into the game for, for the most part.

And they were willing to hold back on that stuff.

And it was, in fact, the judge, a man called Mr.

Justice Robin Knowles, who interestingly is not from the media list, he's from the financial list.

This is a case when we, you'll remember this, Ian, going back to the days when superinjunctions and injunctions were being cast all over the place.

It tended to be the judge who was on duty and was called there in his pajamas and didn't really know what area he was talking about and would just say, well, why don't you have one of these then?

That's exactly what happened in this case.

No one was going for a superinjunction.

It was Mr.

Justice Knowles who came up with it and said, well, why didn't you have one of these?

So arguments to be made.

As I say, the journalists were quite happy to keep the stuff a secret.

And there are precedents for this.

Do you remember 2008, Prince Harry, when he was deployed to Afghanistan?

There was no kind of formal system to keep that a secret while he was over there.

It was sort of gentlemen's agreement, gentlemen, gentlewomen's agreement, I guess, across the press, that they would keep that a secret.

And it was only blown by the Drudge Report, which is a pretty down market kind of American website

that blew the whole thing open in that case.

So it could have worked that way.

We're in a slightly more feral world now, as we've been saying, with social media.

But actually, the list was leaked partially on Facebook by someone in Afghanistan.

And actually, because of the feral world of social media, as far as I can see, there was no way of imposing the superinjunction on him.

And the only actual thing that happened as a result of that was that he got his own resettlement expedited as a result.

Which sounds a little bit odd blackmail, which is one of the other things that used to get thrown around in the cases of celebrities.

It's outrageous.

I'm voting reform.

But as the joke pages had it, normally these superinjunctions were to cover incidents where celebrities were getting screwed as opposed to the entire country for billions of pounds.

It does seem slightly more important than what Harold Donald from Take That was doing with his winky, doesn't it?

Good lord.

Not only do I know what you're referring to,

But I wish I didn't.

In fact, it was actually discharged, this superinjunction, in July 2024, and then promptly reinstated by the Court of Appeal.

Whenever on the media side of it, and there were a lot of media organisations involved by that point in the legal action, thought that's it, we're there.

And then the MOD appealed it.

It went back to the Court of Appeal and has been the subject of various more hearings until this point.

But it also meant that a number of commentators found their heads exploding because they had to move from, why can't we stand by our Afghan allies, into what are we doing doing having another 24,000 people flying in here without any checks?

So

it had follow-up effects as well.

And it covered the period, of course, in the run-up to the general election as well, when unchecked migration was an enormous issue.

So

it was a hell of a political hot potato that was being covered up.

I found it quite cheering.

I mean, we actually managed to organise all of that repatriation for people without anyone finding out.

And it was a level of British state capacity I didn't know we possessed.

Yeah, if we could apply that same zeal to like building some houses or something, how wonderful that would be.

Okay, but in many ways, what I'm hearing, a win for Britain.

Right, that's it for this episode of Page 94.

We'll be back again in a fortnight with another one.

My thanks to Ian, Helen, Adam, and of course to John Farley.

Thank you to you for listening.

If you would like more examples of untrammelled free speech, which nonetheless maintains the boundaries of usually taste and decency while still being very funny, then why not buy a copy of Private Eye?

Go to private-eye.co.uk.

You can get a year's subscription to Private Eye for the cost of, I would say, about six coffees.

So

that's worth doing.

Plus, unlimited black arts to print out and take to your next protest.

I'm taking a frib poem along to my next one, whether it's relevant or not.

You'll be arrested for the scansion.

So thank you very much again

to all of you for listening and to Ollie Piart of Rethink Audio for producing.

Bye for now.

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