FREE speech is an essential weapon of the working class in its struggle for emancipation.

It is more than ever necessary when the media — both traditional and new — is in the hands of big business and sworn to uphold capitalism and elite politics.

It is an issue around which there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy. Nigel Farage went to the US Congress this week to denounce Britain as a place where free speech was routinely disregarded.

Yet his own county councillors in Nottingham have banned dealing with local media because of its critical approach to their conduct of affairs, and Reform has barred reporters it does not like from attending its conference in Birmingham this weekend.

Likewise, figures on the right claiming their own rights are infringed are silent about the mounting clampdown on pro-Palestinian protest, including those dissenting from the proscription of Palestine Action.

US Vice-President JD Vance embodies this hypocrisy, flying to Europe to condemn restrictions on speech while justifying the deportation of students from the US because they express pro-Palestinian views.

And some issues which the right loudly claims are about “free speech” are nothing of the sort. Take the case of Lucy Connolly, who was imprisoned for publishing a tweet inciting arson and murder against migrants, having wrongly assumed that a migrant was responsible for the killing of three girls at a Southport dance class last year. 

It is possible to argue that Connolly’s sentence was excessive, given she rapidly deleted her tweet. But there is no country in the world where such outbursts, constituting direct incitement to criminal conduct of the most serious kind, would be protected.

In the age before social media her obnoxious views would have been confined to her home or local pub. Had she tried to present them in a letter to the newspapers, she would not have found a publication in the country willing to print them.

However, the left should not seek to mirror the right’s hypocrisy, nor ignore the threat that a state clampdown on free speech would represent to its own interests. The arrest of comedy scriptwriter Graham Linehan is a case in point.

Linehan stews in bitterness and churns out constant online invective, in support of Israel as well as attacking trans people. The latter prompted his arrest and his tweets on the subject are designed to be offensive even by the standards of a social media culture that promotes confrontation and relentless mutual denunciation. But such incitements as they may contain are clearly rhetorical and performative.

This should not be a police matter. Offensive speech should not be sanctioned on those grounds alone, absent any specific encouragement of criminal conduct. Views which, if expressed in those terms, would be unacceptable in a workplace or an educational institution, have to be permitted on social media, where they can of course be robustly challenged.

Driving hatred out of public institutions, and pressing organisations to protect vulnerable minorities while ensuring equality for all, are legitimate subjects for public campaigning. Preventing comedians from running their mouths off is not.

Anyone tempted to cheer Linehan’s arrest should forebear. The Metropolitan Police which detained him is not a different body to the force restricting protest against the Gaza genocide and charges people for wearing a T-shirt challenging government policy.

Empowering the state at the expense of people’s rights is a double-edged sword for the left. Whatever gestures may be made at trying to police hateful comment will be entirely overshadowed by the consequences for the labour and progressive movements.

In the end, the only test of commitment to any right, including free speech, is accepting its exercise by those who one may disagree with. Let the left stand for liberty.