Je suis Charlie indeed. This is the problem with placards — there is rarely enough room to fit in the caveats, the qualifying clauses and the necessary evasions. I suppose you could write them on the back of the placard, one after the other, in biro. Or write in brackets and in much smaller letters, directly below ‘Je suis Charlie’: ‘Jusqu’a un certain point, Lord Copper.’ Then you can pop your biro into your lapel as a moving symbol of freedom of speech.
Only a few of the British mainstream national newspapers felt it appropriate to reproduce the front cover of the latest, post-murder, edition of Charlie Hebdo, which shows the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH, natch) saying: all is forgiven. Nobody else was quite Charlie, although BBC Newsnight held up the front page very, very briefly, as if it were on fire. Credit to them at least for that.
Of course, our MPs had their pens out as well, waving them around in the chamber in a show of solidarity. Their number will have included plenty who voted in favour of Section 5 of the Public Order Act, and particularly the clause that prohibits people from saying stuff to which other people might possibly take offence. ‘Using threatening, abusive or insulting words to cause alarm and distress’ was the original wording of this charter to protect the perpetually outraged; the word ‘insulting’ has since been removed, after a long campaign from, among others, the excellent Conservative MP David Davis. But the rest of it’s still there, a restriction on freedom of speech primarily to protect the sensibilities of people who feel that they have a human right not to be offended and enjoy ringing the police any time that they are.
This strikes me as a little hypocritical of our noble members, a point made with some force by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who said: ‘The irony appears to be lost on some politicians who say in one breath that they will defend freedom of expression and then in the next advocate a huge encroachment on the freedom of all British citizens.
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