Far from freedom

Two weeks ago, I gave a talk to a small audience at a café in East London to promote my new book Rebel Sounds: Music as Resistance. The location was kept secret and only people known to me, or the event organiser, were invited. It was supposed to be a public event at a pub to an audience of book and music enthusiasts, but it was cancelled due to safety concerns after the location received emails and phone calls from far-right activists.

Rebel Sounds is a collection of stories about how music has been used as a form of resistance against racism, colonialism, invasion and dictatorships. It tells of those rare and brave people who loved a record so much they risked imprisonment or even death just to listen to it. Those who danced through the night in back rooms and derelict warehouses of bombed out cities to forget pain and vanquish fear. Those people who remained free despite the oppression that surrounded them. Those who resisted not with guns and bombs, but with trumpets and drums.

While our secret gathering can’t be compared to the remarkable musicians and activists covered in the book, the irony that we had been forced to gather in secret to hear their stories because of far-right threats was not lost on anyone who attended that evening.

That event was one of four that have now been cancelled because of safety concerns. Three other talks to promote the book, due to be held at two small independent book shops, were also stopped because the time and location was circulated amongst far-right activists and in at least one case the shop received threats. Another went ahead but the police were called when a well-known fascist attended and disrupted the start of the evening. 

"Unfortunately, upon listing the event, we have been immediately receiving threats. I think we are too small of a venue to ensure safety for both staff and attendees, and as so, we have gone ahead and cancelled the event," read one of the cancellation emails.

What this string of cancellations shows is that people fear the far right, and who can blame them after this summer’s horrifying racist riots across the UK?

It is of course not the fault of the book shops or the pub that the events were cancelled. They have no option but to put the safety of their staff and patrons first. Yet what this string of cancellations shows is that people fear the far right, and who can blame them after this summer’s horrifying racist riots across the UK?

While some of the emails and social media posts pressuring the venues did make passing reference to the contents of Rebel Sounds, most were about my work for the anti-fascist organisation HOPE not hate. As director of research at the NGO, I spend every day monitoring and exposing the beliefs, plans and plots of the far right. I know how dangerous they can be. I understand why people feel they have no option but to cancel in the face of threats and intimidation. Sadly though, this is exactly what the far right want. 

There is much talk in the media about a supposed assault on free speech, often wrapped up in the language of "culture wars". Yet unsurprisingly, those who most frequently bemoan the suppression of free speech rarely, if ever, speak out when it is the far right doing the suppressing.

This never-ending debate has become infuriatingly myopic and misfocused on examples of venues and publishers refusing to platform certain activists and authors. No writer, me included, has an inalienable right to be published by whomever I want or to speak at any venue I choose. Publishers, book sellers and venues have a right to decide who they want to work with and can refuse to promote, platform and profit from racist and far-right material such as Holocaust denial.

Some fail to grasp the difference between their right to say what they want (a right they have) with their desire to be published by whomever they want or to speak wherever they choose. These are not the same thing and should not be confused. All too often, those condemning the supposed clampdown on free speech fundamentally underestimate the potential for social inequalities to be reflected in public debate, and seem ignorant to the nature and extent of these inequalities in the "marketplace of ideas".

Yet, that isn’t what has happened here. The venues did not cancel my events because they disagreed with the contents of my book. They were pulled because of fear resulting from far-right threats. That is a suppression of free speech and an important reminder the real enemies of free speech are not those who reject racism, fascism and hatred of any kind, but the far right themselves.

There shouldn’t be any town, street or bookshop in the country where people can’t meet to discuss the books and music they love because of fear. Worryingly, this string of cancellations shows that, at present, that isn’t the case.