Are the UK and US living up to or betraying their founding ideals?
In association with:
This invitation-only event is part of Debating Matters Transatlantic.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, which set out the terms of a nation separated from British rule. Despite the founding fathers declaring themselves separate to the rule of the British state, American political systems and ideals were heavily indebted to the British political tradition.
The British constitutional monarchy, balancing royal sovereignty against constitutional limitation, was seen as the foundation of America’s democratic system. Winston Churchill argued that the written constitution of the United States was drafted from the democratic, legal and social traditions of Britain as stated in the Magna Carta. He wrote: ‘The Declaration of Independence is not only an American document. It follows the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title-deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking people are founded.’ Regardless, both countries have democratic rights and an aspiration for freedom at their core.
At the heart of the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers outlined their ideals for an America free of external influence. They envisioned a free society aiming to uphold the democratic rights of its citizens through the pursuit of individual liberty, popular sovereignty and limited government. In this new America, freedom of speech, belief and toleration would be fundamental to living in a free society. However, two and a half centuries on, the anniversary of this declaration has left political commentators at home, and internationally, questioning the extent to which America has lived up to the democratic ideals of its ancestors.
For example, the traditional commitment to free speech seems under strain. In an era of tit-for-tat cancel culture and increasing bans and no-platforming of opponents, civil libertarians complain that the Trump administration has sacrificed First Amendment rights in its enthusiasm to clamp down on either ‘woke’ hate or illiberal orthodoxies. Nor is Trump alone: Joe Biden’s administration also clamped down on free-speech rights in other ways. Has America forgone liberties in the name of national security or protecting the vulnerable? Meanwhile, the unresolved tensions in contemporary American politics over immigration, birthright citizenship and democratic accountability show that Americans are still debating who enjoys the promises of freedom made in 1776.
What about the state of freedom in Britain? For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Britain considered itself a world leader in advocating and supporting the importance of free speech and understanding that we can most effectively defeat toxic ideas through debate rather than censorship. Even the Public Order Act of 1936, which was passed to control extremist political movements – particularly the British Union of Fascists led by Oswald Mosley – did not outlaw any form of political speech. However, in February last year, the US vice president, JD Vance, used his speech at the Munich Security Conference to criticise European governments, especially citing the UK, for what he called a retreat from free speech and democratic values.
Vance has a point. A recent report by Big Brother Watch, Britain’s Free Speech Problem: How growing restrictions are stifling speech online and offline, has revealed that at least 62,199 people in the UK were arrested for communications offences over five years. Meanwhile, barrister Jon Holbrook, author of the Prosperity Institute paper Reversing Britain’s Free Speech Recession, traces the way that in recent decades successive British governments have allowed the criminal law in this area to expand massively. Public order and communications laws have been used to effectively criminalise the expression of certain political beliefs or ‘wrong-think’.
More broadly, on both sides of the Atlantic, democratic ideals are being tested by everything from the security threats of terrorism, the rise of malign foreign disinformation, populist revolts, and social tensions about immigration and international wars. In this context, have both countries lost sight of their democratic foundations? And have their contemporary political leaders and priorities pushed them away from their shared vision for liberal democratic values? And what lessons do they need to take from their pasts to do so? Were these ideals ever meant to fully come to fruition or were they merely aspirational? Can the UK and US revive their pro-freedom and democratic traditions?
