In defence of Gareth Roberts

Readers need to be able to trust The Spectator. Every fact you read in the magazine must be true. And every opinion uncensored. 

On 21 May this year we published an article by the brilliant writer Gareth Roberts headlined ‘The sad truth about “saint” Nicola Sturgeon’. Gareth was reporting on the former Scottish first minister’s appearance at a literary festival in Sussex. Ms Sturgeon was discussing the controversies which had attended her time in office – including her views on independence and gender recognition laws. Gareth noted that she ‘was interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender’. 

Juno Dawson subsequently complained about those words to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the regulator of print and digital media established in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry. It was claimed the words were inaccurate, a breach of section 1 of the Editor’s Code, which governs inaccuracy; a breach of section 3, which covers harassment; and a breach of section 12.1, which holds that ‘The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability’. 

Ipso found there was no breach of section 1 or 3. Gareth’s words were not inaccurate and were not harassment. But Ipso concluded they were a breach of section 12.1. In its judgment, the article had included a reference to the complainant’s gender identity that the committee considered to be both pejorative and prejudicial. The committee had expressed its concern that this reference was personally belittling and demeaning toward the complainant. Given the nature of the breach, the appropriate remedial action was the publication of an upheld adjudication.

We publish what Ipso requires of us here. But I am in no doubt this is an outrageous decision, offensive to the principle of free speech and chilling in its effect on free expression.

Most popular

Ed West

Why Elon Musk cares about Britain’s sinking reputation 

Michael Taube

Justin Trudeau was Canada’s worst ever prime minister

Louise Perry

The Rotherham cover-up

When Ipso was set up it was established as a lesser evil. The Leveson Report had called for effective state regulation of the press. The Spectator was resolutely opposed. In place of that undoubted curtailment of free expression, media organisations, including The Spectator, instead agreed to be bound by an independent regulator, whose remit was both to uphold high standards and defend free speech. Ipso was set up to fulfil that role. The Spectator agreed, with other media organisations, to fund the body, subscribe to its Editor’s Code and abide by its rulings. We did so on the basis that self-regulation by an independent body was infinitely preferable to state regulation. But our first duty is not to any committee, no matter how well-intentioned – it is to you, our readers. We are here to report honestly, uphold freedom of speech and defend the right of our writers to express themselves, within the boundaries of the law, as they see fit. 

When Gareth Roberts wrote that Juno Dawson is a man who claims to be a woman, he was exercising his right to free speech and indeed expressing a view that many would consider a straightforward truth. Dawson may have a Gender Recognition Certificate but no piece of paper, whatever it may say, can alter biological reality. Parliament may pass laws, but they cannot abolish Dawson’s Y chromosome.

Respecting the right of people to live as they wish, and exercising consideration and sensitivity towards them, is a virtue. Society has, understandably, sought to accommodate and make changes to ensure people who wish to live as trans women, even though they were born biological males, have every opportunity to find the happiness they seek in their assumed identity. Juno Dawson is no exception. But Dawson cannot dictate how others think, nor decide what language others use when they describe the reality they see.

Gareth Roberts’s right to see as he finds and write as he sees must be defended. It may be offensive to some and difficult for others. But as George Orwell argued: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

And upholding the right to speak freely on questions of gender identity and gender reassignment is not some quixotic cause to be defended as a matter of purist principle. It has saved lives. It is only because campaigners and journalists have pursued the truth, in the face of vehement opposition and attempts to silence them, that wickedness perpetrated in the name of gender ideology has been exposed and stopped.

The activities undertaken by NHS clinicians at the Tavistock Clinic to reassign the gender of children involved unquestioning affirmation, chemical interventions to halt and delay the onset of natural puberty and set children on the pathway to surgical mutilation. It was only thanks to the campaigning and investigative work of journalists that this scandal was uncovered and the Tavistock closed down. The testimony of victims of these practices, such as Keira Bell, is heart-breaking. Subsequent work by the distinguished paediatrician Hilary Cass laid bare the unethical, unscientific and unsupportable nature of what had been going on. 

We trust our readers to make up their own minds on vital and sensitive questions of moral and ethical importance. We believe that individuals are better able to do so if they can read and hear from writers and thinkers who ask uncomfortable questions. We will continue to give free thinkers and brilliant writers such as Gareth Roberts a platform. And we will resist any effort to pressure them into conformity with another’s morality. For The Spectator, free speech is not a cause among many others which we may champion – it is the essence of our existence.