Speaker's Corner: The bastion of free speech

Everyone has a say at Speaker's Corner

In the nippy afternoon of a November Sunday, a strapping young man standing on a  chair close to the centre of Speaker’s Corner looks amused and happy. 

“My words are reaching  across continents from Bangladesh to Buenos Aires through this multi-lingual, multi-ethnic audience,”  he exclaims. 

The young man, wearing a round white cap and a black overcoat, has his audience nodding in agreement. The people listening to him in a corner of Hyde Park, London,  belong to different cultures and races.  As they move from one speaker to the other -  standing on stools or chairs they have brought themselves - words flow, ideas cross and smiles abound.

Hyde Park, close to the spot where public executions were held in London till 1783, emerged as a venue for protest meetings in the middle of nineteenth century. In 1872, the right to free assembly was recognised in the north-east corner of the park, now known as Speaker’s Corner. Since then, people have been able to say almost anything they like. The rules demand that speeches do not break laws against blasphemy or obscenity or constitute an incitement to the breach of peace.

Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell have been among the visitors to Speaker’s Corner which has come to be regarded as the bastion of values of free speech and free assembly. The speeches made here may have an element of theatre, but the issues they touch have a global appeal. Listeners engage and provoke the speakers but rarely get provoked themselves. They enjoy the panorama of views from people of different faiths and persuasions. 

Visitors from different parts of the world discover the beauty of human bonding and commonality of interests as they stand next to each other listening to the same speeches.  The sheer sweep of issues and the passion of the speakers grips them. As people listen to speeches, they get a feel of London’s immense multi-ethnicity, its cultural diversity and its intellectual warmth.

While most of the visitors are tourists, there are a few regulars at Speaker’s Corner. 
An old man from Jamaica, who seems a regular,  usually stands blissfully quiet for anyone to click him in his native dress with a flag fluttering from his chair. Ask him a question and he unleashes a  harangue against those who frequent Hyde Park the most. “White people have brought misery to the world.

The black people are the master race as human existence started with them,” he says. As a  “white man” questions his theory, the speaker shouts back: ”I will reply to the question only if you accept that I am your master.”  There are sniggers from people in the gathering but they just wave their hand in disagreement and move to the next speaker.

A short, pugnacious English woman, her wrinkled face covered with scarf , has the question of migration uppermost in her mind. Wearing ankle-length skirt and a thin formal coat on a slightly bent frame, she looks like a school teacher.  “When you turn your back on your own people, you go against the will of God, “she declares. 

As a Sikh man from the gathering asks reasons for her seeming bitterness, she shouts back, “Why can’t you mind your own business. Why aren’t you among your own people. You are a parasite. You are a global nobody at the mercy of anybody who wants to use you…..Why, there’s no Speaker’s Corner in India.” 

Another voice from the audience chides the woman for her views but she is unrepentant. “You will meet God on the Day of Judgement. The politicians are working to a Godless order,” she says gesticulating with a finger of her right hand.

Some steps away,  two persons standing on chairs are engaged in an animated discussion about the relevance of Islam in the 21st century.  Belonging to separate faiths, having different accents and a distinct colour of skin, they speak in turn for five minutes. 

A bespectacled man, who seems to be an evangelist, raises questions about some practices during the times of Prophet. The gathering listens with rapt attention as the other man, with a central Asian accent, launches a riposte. The discussion gets intense and heated but the two speakers continue to call each other friend. 

The haggard man with a Socialist party banner seems a permanent presence at the Speaker’s Corner.  He springs to his feet as a group of people accost him. What follows is a bashing of multi-national corporations and of the governments who  “succumb” to them.

“The Americans have a lot to answer for,”  thunders a well-built man from another corner.  His prognosis of the US role in different parts of the world, which is punctuated by expletives, leads to heated arguments with a person in the audience who seems to have come from the other side of  the Atlantic. The speaker - his thick,straight hair pointing to the sky - does not wait for questions from his listeners but indulgently involves them. 

“Was Hitler good or bad? What do you think ,Sir?”  he asks a man in the audience. “Bad” comes the answer. “But why?”  Because he killed the Jews, says the man. “And what has George Bush done in Iraq. Is he not responsible for killing of innocent man and women?” asks the speaker.

A middle-aged man in a corner is going gaga over London and its night life. “London has something for everybody. If you need money, there are banks. If you need counselling, there are social workers. If you need women, there is Soho,” he says to his predominantly male gathering which begins to jeer and laugh.  As a voice from the audience refers to gays, the man nods his head in disapproval . “All you men turn gays so that I have all the women in the world,” he says, provoking another peal of laughter. 

No one seems to be in a hurry to leave Speaker’s Corner, and then not without a sigh of fulfilment.