14 December 2005
Wednesday 14 December 2005 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Surrounding the controversy about the government's New Racial and Religious Hatred Bill Night Waves Undercurrents explores the meaning and history of Free Speech in Britain.
Programme details
The government is trying to push through a controversial new bill that makes it an offence to stir up hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds. In Night Waves; Undercurrents, Philip Dodd and guests examine the context of the bill and discuss its intent, its flaws and its merits.
We already have legislation against race discrimination so why does religion need its own laws? Who is being protected by this bill? What sort of attacks on religion will no longer be tolerated and what implications will that have for freedom of speech?
In the light of this new bill, Night Waves examines the intellectual and legal history of free speech; enquiring after its greatest advocates and the reasons for their beliefs. Finally, when it boils to it, how free actually are we when we talk? On the psychological, biological and linguistic level is free speech either possible or desirable?
Philip Dodd is joined by the psychotherapist Adam Phillips, the writer Lisa Appignanesi, the Jewish historian David Cesarani, theologian Philip Blond and Inayat Bunglawala from the Muslim Council of Great Britain.
