Starmer’s message seems clear: there is no dialogue to be had with the working-class rioters, and topics like immigration are off the table. As a descendant of refugees who escaped bloody sectarian conflict, I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t be here today if England had not accepted my family. I know this because I am fortunate enough to hold diary fragments of a Jean-Elie Giraud, who wrote in the late 1600s of waking up to the dismembered head of a friend (‘poor Eustace’) that had being placed on his gate—a clear signal that it was time to seek a new life elsewhere.
That said, immigration is a policy, and when any policy faces opposition, it’s not enough for a leader (or in the UK’s case, successive leaders) to dismiss concerns outright. As part of the Free Speech Union, I saw something similar in Aotearoa when a gender-critical group was banned from using public venues to discuss the impact of the ‘Births, Deaths, and Marriages’ Bill. This was fundamentally undemocratic, and our courts agreed.
However, New Zealand is not the UK. Starmer’s reaction to the riots, and our own rejection of hate speech laws and other attempts at censorship is instructive.
Why do British leaders feel so empowered to crush dissent, and why would a New Zealand public simply not tolerate it if a leader tried the same thing here?
The answer lies in the connection between censorship and the rigid class hierarchies that have long defined British society. Censorship is primarily a tool for suppressing the underclasses regardless of how its champions package it. The pronounced class system in the UK has been maintained, to varying degrees, by censorship and other exclusionary practices. Even film censorship in the UK—much stricter than in other Western countries—was driven by class divides. The arrival of VHS triggered a similar hysteria to what we’re seeing now with social media, with chief censor James Ferman claiming that the pause and rewind buttons posed a new threat, likely to corrupt those watching in a “bedsit in Bedford”. In contrast, art films often received more lenient ratings because their audience was considered more sophisticated—wealthier, in other words.
In developing our identity as New Zealanders—and this also goes for the Americans, who are closer to us culturally than we might first imagine—the process involved distancing ourselves from the prejudices of the nation we hoped to leave behind. We took pride in limiting the trappings of class as much as possible. The U.S. Constitution could be seen as a direct refutation of the British, with the First Amendment a reaction King George’s tyranny. We too understood intuitively that state censorship was the glue that held class divisions in place, and likewise rejected it.
Are we better off for it?
I believe the events of the past week in the UK answer that emphatically: we are. Though we have social scientists who warn of divisions, we remain a global model for societal cohesion. While the U.S. faces significant ideological divides, we can expect them to mend with time, due to their systems guaranteeing speech rights which will prevent any one side from achieving total dominance. Not so in the UK, where their leader is currently imprisoning rioters and even those who stayed home and reshared provocative posts.
But will this approach work for him? Plenty of states suppress dissenters, and anti-social behaviour can be reduced as a result, but the trade-off is that it becomes harder to call such a place a democracy anymore. And is censorship ever a durable solution? In fact, is it a solution at all? If the UK example teaches us anything, it is that censorship is often the root cause of the problem. Immigration could be seen as a secondary issue to a constituency that feels unheard.
We made the right choice in New Zealand by rejecting state censorship, though battles continue. Suppression will always be a hard sell in a country with little appetite for separating and controlling its underclass. To any New Zealand public servants who still seek a goal of more censorship a worthy one, perhaps they should consider a return to the motherland. We’ve done OK up until now and the absence of such draconian laws is the reason why.
Dane Giraud is a comedy writer and a member of the NZ Jewish community. This article was first published HERE
That said, immigration is a policy, and when any policy faces opposition, it’s not enough for a leader (or in the UK’s case, successive leaders) to dismiss concerns outright. As part of the Free Speech Union, I saw something similar in Aotearoa when a gender-critical group was banned from using public venues to discuss the impact of the ‘Births, Deaths, and Marriages’ Bill. This was fundamentally undemocratic, and our courts agreed.
However, New Zealand is not the UK. Starmer’s reaction to the riots, and our own rejection of hate speech laws and other attempts at censorship is instructive.
Why do British leaders feel so empowered to crush dissent, and why would a New Zealand public simply not tolerate it if a leader tried the same thing here?
The answer lies in the connection between censorship and the rigid class hierarchies that have long defined British society. Censorship is primarily a tool for suppressing the underclasses regardless of how its champions package it. The pronounced class system in the UK has been maintained, to varying degrees, by censorship and other exclusionary practices. Even film censorship in the UK—much stricter than in other Western countries—was driven by class divides. The arrival of VHS triggered a similar hysteria to what we’re seeing now with social media, with chief censor James Ferman claiming that the pause and rewind buttons posed a new threat, likely to corrupt those watching in a “bedsit in Bedford”. In contrast, art films often received more lenient ratings because their audience was considered more sophisticated—wealthier, in other words.
In developing our identity as New Zealanders—and this also goes for the Americans, who are closer to us culturally than we might first imagine—the process involved distancing ourselves from the prejudices of the nation we hoped to leave behind. We took pride in limiting the trappings of class as much as possible. The U.S. Constitution could be seen as a direct refutation of the British, with the First Amendment a reaction King George’s tyranny. We too understood intuitively that state censorship was the glue that held class divisions in place, and likewise rejected it.
Are we better off for it?
I believe the events of the past week in the UK answer that emphatically: we are. Though we have social scientists who warn of divisions, we remain a global model for societal cohesion. While the U.S. faces significant ideological divides, we can expect them to mend with time, due to their systems guaranteeing speech rights which will prevent any one side from achieving total dominance. Not so in the UK, where their leader is currently imprisoning rioters and even those who stayed home and reshared provocative posts.
But will this approach work for him? Plenty of states suppress dissenters, and anti-social behaviour can be reduced as a result, but the trade-off is that it becomes harder to call such a place a democracy anymore. And is censorship ever a durable solution? In fact, is it a solution at all? If the UK example teaches us anything, it is that censorship is often the root cause of the problem. Immigration could be seen as a secondary issue to a constituency that feels unheard.
We made the right choice in New Zealand by rejecting state censorship, though battles continue. Suppression will always be a hard sell in a country with little appetite for separating and controlling its underclass. To any New Zealand public servants who still seek a goal of more censorship a worthy one, perhaps they should consider a return to the motherland. We’ve done OK up until now and the absence of such draconian laws is the reason why.
Dane Giraud is a comedy writer and a member of the NZ Jewish community. This article was first published HERE
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