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Speakers’ Corner Trust is a new charity, established in 2007, which seeks to provide a stimulus to civil society both in the UK and in emerging democracies overseas by creating new opportunities for citizens to exchange ideas and opinions in open, face-to-face debate. SCT’s founding patron is Václav Havel , the playwright, human rights campaigner and former political prisoner who became the first President of Czechoslovakia, and subsequently of the Czech Republic, following the collapse of communism in 1989. SCT’s all-party Advisory Council , which includes representatives from the universites, the law, the media, business and the voluntary sector, is chaired by Jack Straw , Secretary of State for Justice and former Home and Foreign Secretary. The Speakers’ Corner initiative is the outcome of a year-long consultation with a wide range of think tanks, government departments and NGOs. Our first UK pilot was launched in Nottingham in February 2008 and, following the development of a prototype in Prague in 2004, further projects both in UK and overseas are being considered. |
News
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August 2008 - SCT’s Partnership with Central St Martins College
SCT has formed a new partnership with Central St Martins College of Art & Design, part of the University of the Arts in London. Post graduate students will, over a ten week period starting in October, research and write papers, including a guidance note, on issues to be considered in designing successful public spaces and, in particular, Speakers’ Corners. The material will be available to SCT for use on its website and through other media.
Between January and April/May, post graduate students will work on designs, first on a series of ‘generic’ Speakers’ Corners and then on location-specific designs (which will focus on neighbourhoods in which SCT is promoting projects) and designs for a mobile Speakers’ Corner which can be taken out to, for example, housing estates or places of work.
The project, which will involve work with school students, is being funded from the University of the Arts’ Widening Participation programme which aims to increase the proportion of young people from low income backgrounds entering arts higher education and the creative and cultural industries
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April 2008 - SCT’s National Launch
Following the successful launch of Speakers’ Corner Trust’s pilot project in Nottingham in February, SCT was itself launched as a national charity on 22 April at a reception generously hosted by Clifford Chance at its headquarters offices in Canary Wharf.
Guest of honour Jack Straw, Secretary of State for Justice and chair of SCT’s Advisory Council, told 100 guests from the public, private and voluntary sectors:
“A hundred and fifty years ago, open air 
meetings in towns and cities were at the heart of the hurly-burly of political life on everything from corn prices to electoral reform. At a time when politicians and institutions are seen as remote and out of touch, the Speakers’ Corner initiative is an important attempt to revitalise this tradition and encourage local communities to take part in political debate and have their say.
“In the UK we sometimes forget how lucky we are to have free speech and what an important part it plays in our modern day life. The Speakers’ Corner project is a celebration of that freedom and a vital tool in the drive to combat political disengagement at home and abroad.”
For news of SCT’s Nottingham pilot project, please click here.
And to see Eddie Izzard’s message to Nottingham or his interview with Jon Sopel on BBC1’s Politics Show (Sunday 17 February) in which he speaks of his support for the Speakers’ Corner initiative, please click here.
Our Aims
Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park was sanctioned by Parliament in 1872 but grew out of the campaign for civil liberties and the widening of the franchise.
The Speakers’ Corner project aims to promote freedom of speech, public debate and active citizenship as a means of revitalising civil society in the UK and supporting its development in emerging democracies.
It will do so by forming local partnerships to develop initiatives which could include the designation of public spaces in town and city centres as new Speakers’ Corners, and in all circumstances will feature organised schedules of public events supported by educational programmes in schools, colleges and the community.
The project is being developed by Speakers’ Corner Trust (SCT), a charity established in 2007 by Peter Bradley, the former MP for The Wrekin, and Euan Edworthy, whose work led to the inauguration in Prague in 2004 of the first Speakers’ Corner on mainland Europe.
A Brief History of London’s Speakers’ Corner
Nearly 3,000 years ago, Homer wrote in The Iliad that “to speak his thoughts is every freeman’s right.” But it is only in recent times that that right has been articulated in the declarations and conventions of the United Nations and European Union and in the statutes of modern states.
While Britain’s constitution remains famously unwritten (and it was only in 1998 that Parliament formally adopted its own Human Rights Act), this country has had a tradition of respect for freedom of speech and the right of assembly which has not only shaped its own democracy but has also inspired and continues to influence the development of others.
One of the most powerful symbols of that tradition is to be found on a parcel of land which lies roughly between the site of the old Tyburn gallows and the Reform Tree in London’s Hyde Park. There for over a century men and women, some famous but most not, have dissented and denounced, canvassed and converted, preached and proselytised, and in so doing given expression to the fundamental rights of citizens to gather together to hear and be heard.
Speakers’ Corner was itself born out the struggle for civil liberties in Victorian Britain and its establishment was a significant milestone in the development of our democratic institutions.
It occupies a parcel of land where, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Chartists held mass protests against the suppression of the rights of working people, including the right of assembly, and the Reform League organised huge rallies to demand the widening of the franchise.
The Times, reflecting the unease of the establishment of the day, declared after one such demonstration that “it is against all reason and all justice that motley crowds from all parts of the metropolis should take possession of Hyde Park, and interfere with the enjoyments of those to whom the Park more particularly belongs”.
But, reporting on the same event, the radical Reynolds’ Newspaper of 29 July 1866 declared exultantly that despite the attempts of the police and troops to prevent them, “the people have triumphed, in so far as they have vindicated their right to meet, speak, resolve, and exhort in Hyde Park.”
In the end the Government had to bow to popular pressure. In 1872 Parliament granted the Park Authorities the right to permit public meetings and Speakers’ Corner, already heavy with history, was born. For over a century it has been a focus for protest and debate and the symbol of a free society and a mature democracy.
Other Speakers’ Corners in the UK
We know from our work there that Nottingham had an informal Speakers’ Corner in its main Market Square at least until the early 1970s.
Liverpool also had its own Speakers’ Corner on the Pier Head. It 
was commissioned by the Transport & General Workers Union and designed in 1973 by the architect Jim Hunter and the sculptor Arthur Dooley. It won a RIBA design award in 1975 but disappeared when the City Council redeveloped the Pier Head in the 1990s.
And not far away, in the Wirrall, Merseyside boasts another Speakers’ Corner on the Egremont Ferry Quay in Wallasey (photograph courtesy of allertonOak).
A block of granite marks the space and, alongside the Wallasey coat of arms, bears the inscription County Borough of Wallasey Speakers’ Corner. This area is set apart as a place for the delivery of public speeches.
It is thought that the granite was excavated during the construction of the Kingsway Tunnel under the Mersey between 1966 and 1971. As Wallasey lost its county borough status in the local government reorganisation of 1974, this suggests that the Speakers’ Corner was established some time in the preceding eight years. But why and by whom and who spoke there?
Does anyone know what became of the Speakers’ Corner on the Pier Head or have any further information about the one in Wallasey?
And does anyone have knowledge or memories of other Speakers’ Corners in the UK or overseas? If so, we would love to hear about them.
Please get in touch with SCT’s director Peter Bradley at peterbradley@speakerscornertrust.org.
Free Speech and Democracy
The Athenian statesman Pericles in the agora
The exchange and development of ideas among citizens has been at the heart of vigorous civil life from the time of the first classical experiments in democracy. The agora of ancient Athens and the Roman forum were market places not just for goods but also for the public debate which provided the focus for civil society then and have influenced western culture ever since.
Click image to expand
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, long before the introduction of either the universal franchise or electronic communications, those who could read devoured and debated the thousands of political, philosophical, scientific and religious tracts which rolled off the presses each year. In late eighteenth century France, as the ancien régime neared its end, 10,000 pamphlets a year were being printed for or against the monarchy or the revolution.
Estimates of the 1776 print run of Common Sense, Tom Paine’s argument for American independence from the British crown, vary from 150,000 to 600,000. Even the lower figure is astonishing given prevailing literacy rates.
Both traditions acknowledged not just the potency of ideas but also the role of citizens in making them a decisive influence on public policy.
Now freedom of expression is enshrined in the declarations of the world’s great assemblies. It is the right of those who live in democratic societies and the aspiration of those who do not.
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Timeline: A History of Free Speech 399BC Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: ‘If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind… I should say to you, “Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you.”‘ 1215 Magna Carta, wrung from the unwilling King John by his rebellious barons, is signed. It will later be regarded as the cornerstone of liberty in England. 1516 The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. ‘In a free state, tongues too should be free.’ 1633 Galileo Galilei hauled before the Inquisition after claiming the sun does not revolve around the earth. 1644 ‘Areopagitica’, a pamphlet by the poet John Milton, argues against restrictions of freedom of the press. ‘He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.’ 1689 Bill of Rights grants ‘freedom of speech in Parliament’ after James II is overthrown and William and Mary installed as co-rulers. 1770 Voltaire writes in a letter: ‘Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.’ 1789 ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man’, a fundamental document of the French Revolution, provides for freedom of speech. 1791 The First Amendment of the US Constitution, as enshrined in the Bill of Rights, guarantees five freedoms: of religion, speech, the press, the right to assemble and the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. 1859 ‘On Liberty’, an essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, argues for toleration and individuality. ‘If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’ 1859 On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, expounds the theory of natural selection. TH Huxley publicly defends Darwin against religious fundamentalists. 1929 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the US Supreme Court, outlines his belief in free speech: ‘The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.’ 1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is adopted virtually unanimously by the UN General Assembly. It urges member nations to promote human, civil, economic and social rights, including freedom of expression and religion. 1958 Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, identifies negative liberty as an absence or lack of impediments, obstacles or coercion, as distinct from positive liberty (self-mastery and the presence of conditions for freedom). 1960 After a trial at Old Bailey, Penguin wins the right to publish D H Lawrence’s sexually explicit novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. 1962 One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes life in a labour camp during Stalin’s era. Solzhenitsyn is exiled in 1974. 1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie over the ‘blasphemous’ content of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa is lifted in 1998. 1992 In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky points out: ‘Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favour of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.’ 2001 In the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act gives the US government new powers to investigate individuals suspected of being a threat, raising fears for civil liberties. 2002 Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel incenses Muslims by writing about the Prophet Mohammed and Miss World, provoking riots which leave more than 200 dead. 2004 Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is killed after release of his movie about violence against women in Islamic societies. 2005 The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act bans protest without permit within 1km of the British Parliament. This timeline was compiled by David Smith and Luc Torres and originally appeared in
The Observer of 5 February 2005.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited
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Speaking of Free Speech
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”
Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975, German political philosopher
“Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the elements of disease and bring new elements of health; and where free speech is stopped, miasma is bred, and death comes fast.”
Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887, American preacher
“A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.”
Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821, French Emperor
“Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful… Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.”
Charles Bradlaugh, 1833-1891, British social reformer
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don\’t believe in it at all.”
Noam Chomsky, 1928 - , American linguist and political activist
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one\’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason… Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
Frederick Douglass, 1817-1895, American author and abolitionist
“Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1832, American writer
“We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.”
EM Forster, 1879-1970, British novelist
“The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Goebbels and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.”
Nadine Gordimer, 1923 - , South African novelist
“The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894, American physician and writer
“To speak his thoughts is every freeman’s right, in peace and war, in council and in fight.”
Homer, pre 700BC, father of Greek literature
“Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate.”
Hubert Humphrey, 1911-1978, US Senator and Presidential candidate
“Freedom and order are not incompatible…truth is strength…free discussion is the very life of truth.”
Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895, British biologist
“Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the souls of our democracy.”
Jesse Jackson, 1941 - , American civil rights campaigner and preacher
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.”
Samuel Johnson, 1709-1794, British essayist
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824, French essayist
“Having a good discussion is like having riches.”
Kenyan proverb
“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.”
Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855, Danish philosopher
“Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice.”
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870-1924, Russian revolutionary leader
“Freedom to speak… can be maintained only by promoting debate.”
Walter Lippmann, 1889-1974, American journalist
“Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.”
Naguib Mahfouz, 1911 - , Egyptian writer
“In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.”
John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, British philosopher
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
John Milton, 1606-1664, British poet
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell, 1903-1950, British writer
“Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.”
Antoine Rivarol, 1753-1801, French journalist
“I believe in active citizenship, for men and women equally, as a simple matter of right and justice. I believe we will have better government in all of our countries when men and women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the basis of their different areas of experience and their common concern for the welfare of their families and their world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962, chair of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafting committee
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want…everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear…anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”
Franklin D Roosevelt, 1882-1945, US President
“Literature is the immortality of speech.”
August von Schlegel, 1767-1845, German poet and critic
“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.”
Adlai E. Stevenson, 1906-1965, American lawyer and politician
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Francois Voltaire, 1694-1778, French philosopher and writer
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
George Washington, 1732-1799, first US President
“I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”
Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924, US President
Universal Declaration of Human Rightsadopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, 10 December 1948 |
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Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Article 20: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association. |
European Convention on Human Rightsincorporated in the UK Human Rights Act 1998 |
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US Bill of Rights 1791First Amendment to the Constitution |
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. |
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 1789 |
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| Article 10: No-one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, providing their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law. | |
| Article 11: The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may accordingly speak, write and print with freedom but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. | |