The last decade or so has seen a renewed interest in the question of free speech, not only within the universities (where it can get easily confused with questions of academic freedom) but within wider society as well. One of the more fascinating elements of this renewed interest in free speech is how it has become recalibrated – at least in many minds and discussions – as a right-wing cause and identity. This is of interest because in New Zealand the question of free speech tended to arise in reference to Left-wing speech and causes. As such it is, I believe, useful to be reminded of a time when such arguments for free speech – and the wider question of civil liberties – were made from a variety of left-wing positions.
In 1954 the newly formed Canterbury Council of Civil Liberties held a public meeting on July 14 in the Central Mission Rooms in Cathedral Square, to discuss why they felt it necessary to have such a council. The NZ Council for Civil Liberties had been founded in Wellington in 1952 as a response to government actions during the 1951 Waterfront Strike/Lockout/Dispute (which term you prefer depends on your politics…) and the passing of the Police Offenses Amendment Act (1951), the Waterfront Emergency Regulations (1951) and the 1951 Official Secrets Act. The Wellington committee included the noted historian JC Beaglehole, lawyers, politicians, and public servants. The NZ Special Branch apparently saw this as “clearly a communist front organization” (https://nzccl.org.nz/the-founding-and-early-history-of-the-new-zealand-council-for-civil-liberties/), which was not surprising giving the rampant Cold war atmosphere.
The Canterbury Branch was founded in 1954. Again, there was a Special Branch presence and report), probably in part because Wolfgang Rosenberg, the noted socialist, lawyer, and economist was the interim secretary at its first meeting.
The meeting was considered important enough to grant a long report in the local Press newspaper under the heading ‘Guarding Civil Liberties’ (15 July 1954).
Philosopher Arthur Prior (as I have discovered, himself subject of an SIS file as a suspected communist), was the first speaker and the Press reported the following:
“I would suggest that in a country with our traditions, there is only one word that really fits people who are anxious to clamp down on our intellectual freedom, and that is the word ‘subversive’,” said Professor A. N. Prior, professor of philosophy at Canterbury University College. “People in positions of influence who are careless of our liberties and even unhappy about them, are subversive in a more subtle and sinister sense than the handful of Communists and pacifists to whom the term is usually applied, for they are undermining that for which we as a nation stand.” “This duty of defending the free world presupposes more fundamental duties,’ Professor Prior said. “If we have a duty to defend the free world, we have a more fundamental duty to be the free world. For this reason, I cannot help being disturbed when politicians talk, as some of them have been talking lately, about a supposed duty of giving up certain ‘intellectual freedoms’ to which we have been accustomed.”
The Presbyterian Minister and school chaplain Rev. M. Wilson was the second speaker and stated his support of civil liberties was theologically based:
“He believed it was the will of God that people should have freedom. The churches had often suppressed men’s freedom, but he was convinced that when they did that, they had been false to their King and Head.”
The Press reported that: “Mr Wilson said he thought it should be compulsory for politicians to read Milton’s “Areopagitica” once every three years. Milton said there could be no real virtue without knowledge of good and bad. No real understanding of truth without knowledge of falsehood. New insights, concepts, and discoveries always had to overcome the conservative streak in the community. There could be no progress while there was suppression of expression or opinion. The basic belief of democracy was that truth, if allowed free expression, would ultimately win.”
Mr H. G. Kilpatrick, General Secretary of the NZ Freezing Workers and Related Trades Association was reported as stating that the average trade union member was not conscious of his rights, and accepted the position as it was. It was only when a crisis arose that he started to think about such questions.
His discussion then referenced the attempt by the National Executive of the Federation of Labour to ban Dick Scott, author of 151 days, (the history of the recent Waterfront dispute), from attending the Wellington FOL conference.
“You read that the Federation of Labour took three days to whether a man was a bona fide delegate.” Mr Kilpatrick said. “I do not believe in a great deal of what the man had to say, but I believe had the right to say it. As I see it, liberty is only defended by the few. It only at times of crises that enough of the multitude rallies round.”
In its editorial on ‘Civil Liberties’ (17 July 1954) the Press defended the expression of civil liberties but questioned whether there was in fact the need for any council or organization to defend them. Rather, it argued:
“All freedom is relative and no freedom can be absolute; but in this country, as in most British countries, the freedom of the individual to think and speak and act as he pleases, so long as he does not break the law or harm other people, is jealously guarded by Parliament, the judiciary, the press, the university, the learned societies (which have special reason to value freedom of thought), and by innumerable public and semi-public bodies. Nor can the people generally be said to be careless of their rights and liberties and docile in submitting to infractions of them. The people themselves must decide, in the long run, what is freedom and what is an infraction of their freedom. Undoubtedly there is a growing tendency for the democratic welfare state to order increasingly the lives of its citizens. To some this is ‘regimentation’ only slightly less abhorrent than the’ complete subjection of the individual to the State in totalitarian countries. To others this is a new and fuller ‘freedom’.”
Prior answered, in a letter to the editor on July 19, 1954:
“l am astonished that you should read into the aims and objects our Civil Liberties Council so poor an opinion of the liberties we now possess. I, for one, feel, as you do, that in this country we are tolerably well off in that regard, and I should be happy if it turned out that there is really nothing here for a Civil Liberties Council to do. But such councils have not proved superfluous even in countries (such as the United Kingdom) with a still better record than our own. And your own recent reports of the proceedings of the R.S.A., and even of Parliament, make it clear that there are individuals who would take chips out of our liberties if they could; they need to be watched, and answered.”
Reading these discussions 70 years on, I am struck by how easily they could all be applied, in various ways, to the current debates on Free Speech in New Zealand society – and to the existence of the Free Speech Union. What is interesting is that, on the face of it, it seems to have been socialists, and is now libertarians, who are most concerned with articulating free speech and arguing for Civil Liberties. Yet, the Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL) is still in existence and, on the strength of their website, very active: https://nzccl.org.nz/about-nzccl/
In response, a series of questions arise.
Is the problem the reduction of focus from the communal focus of civil liberties to that of the more individualized focus of free speech?
Why is there the need for a Free Speech Union if there is a Council for Civil Liberties?
Can free speech be properly thought of and articulated without a wider frame of civil liberties?
We must also add the Human Rights Commission into this discussion, as they are very clear that they support freedom of expression as part of a series of civil and political rights: (https://tikatangata.org.nz/human-rights-in-aotearoa/freedom-of-opinion-and-expression)
It may well be that the FSU and the NZCCL exist on different sides of a political divide; but at the moment the FSU seem to be dominating debate and attention. Is this a question of media attention – or the lack of it? A question of funding and organization?
But if the FSU is so effective and, in the views of many on the left, so problematic, where are the centre-left alternatives? Or is that presumed to be the HRC? And is that a true representation of the HRC?
Perhaps the real issue is why has the HRC been effectively dismissed and/or sidelined in the minds of those who support the FSU? And why is the NZCCL so unknown to so many?
Who are, in Prior’s definition, the subversives of the 21st century?
