“HALOGE” asks, Letters, 28 September, “Whatever happened to ‘free speech’ and the right to offend?”

I don’t think we have ever had a ‘right to offend’.

What we have is a right to say what we like, even if some others find it offensive.

A right to offend is simply a licence to attack, and I would interested to learn from Haloge where this is enshrined in UK law.

But, in practice, we don’t have a right to say what we like, even if some others find it offensive.

Zechariah Chafee Jr, an American civil libertarian, said: “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins”.

Or, if you prefer, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic”. In other words, when we exercise what we fondly believe is an inalienable right, we are required, morally and in law, to do so in full recognition of our collusion in what ensues.

And we have to take responsibility for the consequences.

It’s no good someone saying: ‘Well those people chose to riot and stampede and crush themselves to death: I was just exercising my absolute right to shout: “Fire!” whenever I felt like it’.

This is an extreme example with which, I assume, most people in Stroud would agree.

The problem arises in lesser cases: the politician, for example, who, knowing that what he/she says is simply a lie, nevertheless repeats the lie, on the basis that they have a right to freedom of speech and it is other people’s problem if they were stupid enough to trust them.

Why doesn’t the politician have a duty of care to his/her constituents?

Jeremy Marchant

Stroud