‘It’s time that we reclaim free speech for what it is – the right to speak up against the powers that be’

It was November 2010 and a crowd of people were gathered inside grade 1 listed St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street (fittingly known as the journalist’s church). Facing the alter and the cross, the ultimate Christian symbols of selfless sacrifice, they listened as war reporter Marie Colvin gave a speech that outlined the price of freely and openly speaking the truth: “Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price.”

Just over a year later, Marie Colvin was dead.

Photographer Paul Conroy was with Marie and French photojournalist Rémi Ochlick when they were killed in Homs. He was the only one who survived and reported that they were packing their gear in an attempt to flee when Syrian government artillery hit them on February 22 2012. Marie’s journalism was honest and deeply courageous. Her last report spoke up for the most vulnerable and voiceless.

“It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass,” Marie had said.

She spoke those words just three days before she was murdered in an attack on a building being used by journalists whose voices were feared. Marie knew that we need free speech because we need to know the truth. She understood that we need courageous people who speak against regimes that silence the weak.

Marie Colvin

In our generation of students at the University of Bristol, too many people on both sides of the free speech debate ignore that reality.

At our university, free speech has become a platform at best for ‘shitposting’ (Urban Dictionary defines this as ‘to make utterly worthless and inane posts on an internet messageboard’), and at worst for alt-right hate speech. University of Bristol Freedom of Speech Society have set up an anonymous forum and the people who use it post things such as: “Islam is one of, if not the most, Conservative belief structures in the world. With extremely regressive views on women, homosexuality, trans people and non-Muslims.”

Statements like these are homogenising and lack any context or evidence to back them up. The anonymous platform means that people cannot be held to account. If that’s free speech to them, then it is a sad, sad state of affairs in which people believe they should be able to hatefully generalise without any facts to base them on.

These statements are actively provocative, but we shouldn’t just ignore them, we should respond with evidenced disagreement. However, tragic as it is that so many in my generation think free speech is just about the permission to state things that are hateful, there is no need to silence them.

Scarlett Sherriff argues that university students should use their youth and education to speak out

We don’t need to try and shut these people down and no-platform the speakers they invite. That can play right into the hands of precisely those who like to portray a narrative of pathetic, ‘snowflake’ leftists against ‘brave’ alt-righters who are in favour of free speech and who fight against the dangers of gagging.

Instead it’s time that, as students, we reclaim free speech for what it is – the right to speak up against the powers that be. If that’s not what free speech is truly about, for what did Marie Colvin die for?

Now, more than ever, the defence of free speech is important. Julian Assange may well not be perfect, after all he has been accused of rape (and for that he should face the courts), but one of the main reasons why he has been arrested and could well be extradited to the US, is because he used Wikileaks to highlight the actions of the US in Afghanistan. He spoke against the most powerful government in the world and whether you agree with his tactics or not, that is free speech.

Students have our own issues to speak up on. Universities’ are in a process of endless commercialisation and competition, and, at least in the Russell Group, they are some of the most socially and economically segregated places in our society. At the University of Bristol nearly 40 per cent of undergraduates admitted last year were privately educated. At university we should be using free speech to tackle these issues. We should acknowledge inequality when we see it, and speak against the powers that be when fees are £9,250 a year – but our vice chancellors’ already earn more than the prime minister.

It’s almost Easter, so let’s think about sacrifice. Marie Colvin died reporting on the atrocious situation in Homs. On October 16 2017, journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb after investigating government corruption in Malta. Julian Assange, for better or worse, has sacrificed a lot for Wikileaks.

It’s insulting if those of us who support free speech don’t, at least in our own small way, attempt to use it bravely- to speak against the powerful rather than against the vulnerable- especially while we have the privileges of youth and an education.

Scarlett Sherriff

Scarlett Sherriff  is a final year student at the University of Bristol studying French and Spanish.

Read more: 50 years of protest at the University of Bristol