Talking Liberty - the future of free speech

Saturday 12th November
1.00 pm - 3.30 pm
Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN

Free entry but donations welcome

Please book via EventBrite

Please join us from 1.00 pm for social time and informal discussion. From 1.45 pm we will introduce and discuss the essay The Future of Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama. You can purchase the essay in booklet format or download a PDF version. You are strongly encouraged to read it to contribute more fully to the discussion, but if you don't we will give a short summary to introduce the key arguments.

Mchangama is the author of Free Speech:a history from Socrates to Social Media, and he argues in this essay that we are in a free speech recession. 

"Free speech is one of the most powerful and transformative ideas ever conceived. It is held as the 'first freedom, the bedrock of democracy, the enemy of tyranny, the midwife of enlightenment and the source of truth...But free speech is far from assured; it has not been the default position in the long arc of history. Thus, after decades of global gains, it has now suffered more than a decade of setbacks."

How far do you agree with these assertions? Does Mchangama set out a convincing case for the importance of free speech? Is it helpful to those who want to defend free speech, or are there significant omissions? 

Following our discussion, we will agree which of the Letters on Liberty to discuss in 2023.

Free speech in the news:

National Secular Society defends free speech at 'Stand with Salman' event

Arrest of protestors prompts free speech concerns

Joanne Harris faces member vote on Society of Authors role amid call for free speech review

John Cleese set to join GB News in a push for 'free speech'

Most students think UK universities protect free speech, survey finds

Aspects of the omnicrisis

Saturday 8th October

Law and Justice

Saturday 7th May, 1.00 pm - 5.00 pm
The Arthur Sullivan Room, Birmingham Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham B3 3BU

Law-making and Freedom with Claire Fox (Baroness Fox of Buckley)
1.15 pm - 2.45 pm

Refreshment break: 2.45 pm - 3.15 pm

What Are Prisons For?
3.15 pm - 4.45 pm

Return of Birmingham Salon Saturdays

The Unbearable Lightness of Citizenship

Our next event will be on Saturday 7th May on the theme of law and justice.

THURSDAY 7TH OCTOBER 

7.00 PM - 9.00 PM
UPSTAIRS AT THE WOODMAN, NEW CANAL STREET, BIRMINGHAM. B5 5LG

Welcome back!

This is a free event for Birmingham Salon regulars to catch up after the pandemic paused our live debates, and for anyone new to Birmingham Salon to come and experience and contribute to a Salon discussion. 

Inside the incelosphere

Incels, or involuntary celibates, are an online subculture community of mostly men, who forge their sense of identity around a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. The incel community operates almost exclusively online, providing an outlet for a significant minority of incels to express misogynistic-hostility, frustration and blame toward society for a perceived failure to include them.

Rare individual cases have seen incels lash out in violent murderous rage. Most notable is the notorious case of Elliot Rodger, who in 2014 killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself, referring in his manifesto to a “day of retribution” when he would kill those he was envious of – Chads (men who sleep with lots of women) and Stacey’s (the attractive women who reject him). 

Is the incelosphere a phenomena triggered by or reflecting other trends in society? Recent reports suggest that in the US, the number of men going to universities is falling significantly.  Morgan Stanley forecast that 45 percent of working women between the ages of 25 and 44 will be single and childless by 2030 in what they call the rise of the SHEconomy. The rise of identity politics has encouraged a pattern of group formation around grievance and oppression. Is this at all justified in the case of the incel?

Speaker: William Costello

William is a Birmingham Salon regular with an MSc in Psychology: Evolution & Culture from Brunel University London. His Masters dissertation is on the psychology of incels. William also writes about cultural issues such as polyamory, sexual violence, identity politics, Birthstrike and racism through an evolutionary psychology lens and has contributed opinion pieces to outlets such as Quillette and Areo.

Twitter: @WilliamCostello

Chair: Rosie Cuckston

Recommended reading

Step your dick up - why incels deserve better advice  William Costello, Medium, 2020

What the media gets wrong about incels Naama Kates, Unherd 2021

Why incels are the losers in the age of Tinder James Bloodworth, Unherd 2020

Takes place on Saturday 12th October 2019.

11.00 am - 5.00 pm

Upstairs, Old Joint Stock, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham B2 5NY

Admission fee is £10.
Advance Tickets Available via EventBrite (subject to booking charge)

Please join us for a day of debate and reflection looking at the effects of migration within Europe, what rootedness and belonging look and feel like, and on how we understand the boundary between private and public life. This Salon is a satellite event of the Battle of Ideas 2019.

Migration and depopulation in 21st century Europe

11.15 am - 12.45 pm

Speakers:

Dr Vanessa Pupavac, lecturer in International Relations - University of Nottingham

Dr Ceren Ozgen, Dept of Economics Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellow - University of Birmingham

Chair: Dr Helene Guldberg

Since Poland joined the EU, around 3.5 million Polish people have migrated to other EU countries. In Romania, as much as 20 per cent of its working age population now lives abroad. Around a million Bulgarians work elsewhere in the EU – out of a population of seven million. These huge migration flows are usually discussed in terms of their impact on richer EU countries like Britain or Germany, but today there is a growing discussion about its impact on the country of origin as well.

On the one hand, this immigration has kept down unemployment and provided an important source of income for relatives through remittances. But on the other hand, commentators increasingly speak of ‘ghost towns’, ageing populations, and brain-drain. With dwindling working-age populations, one often overlooked feature has been the need for greater immigration into countries like Poland. For example, over two million Ukrainians have migrated since Poland joined the EU.

Another factor is that internal migration coincides with the ‘Fortress Europe’ approach to migration from outside the EU. Countries like Croatia, that are in the EU but not in the Schengen free movement area, are tasked with keeping out non-EU migrants, while at the same time losing hundreds of thousands of its citizens who’ve emigrated to other countries. Likewise, in Italy it is now illegal to rescue migrants attempting to enter the country via the Mediterranean. But this attitude exists alongside appeals from villages with tiny populations for people to come and live there.

Some expect these migration flows to stabilise or even reverse because migrants will return to their home countries once they have made a good living abroad. Others suggest that European economies will continue to demand large immigration to balance low birth rates and meet the demand for low-skilled jobs.

How does free movement within the EU affect attitudes to migration and citizenship? Should countries actively seek to reduce migration or should they accept it as a fact of the modern, globalised world? If they accept it, should they encourage immigration from elsewhere, and how? If they don’t accept it, what is needed to hold on to those attracted by opportunities abroad? And who should have the final say over this, when migration is an issue connecting so many countries and populations?

Reading material

Eastern Europe’s Emigration Crisis, Josh Adams, Quillette, 29 June 2019

The crime of aiding the wrong kind of human, Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium,16 June 2019

Migration can support economic development if we let it. Here's how, Mahmoud Mohieldin & Dilip Ratha, World Economic Forum,1 Mar 2019

EU migration policy, European Council, 7 March 2019

A Romanian village feels the country’s emigration pain, Carmen Paun, Politico, 8 June 2018

Origins and destinations of European Union migrants within the EU, Pew Research Centre, 19 June 2017

Central Europe: running out of steam, James Shotter, Financial Times, 27 August 2018

'A whole generation has gone': Ukrainians seek a better life in Poland, Shaun Walker, The Guardian, 18 April 2019

Produced by Rosie Cuckston

Lunch 12.45 - 1.30

Rootedness - more than belonging?

1.30 pm - 3.00 pm

Speakers:

Tereza Buskova - UK based Czech artist 

Niall Crowley - writer

Dr Greg Scorzo - philosopher, public intellectual, publisher and editor of Culture on the Offensive

Chair: Rosie Cuckston

‘It isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re going that counts.’

Attributed to Ella Fitzgerald

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the idea of rootedness came to be viewed as old-fashioned, undynamic and restrictive. ‘A community is something you grow up in and then get the hell out of’, said Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead. For many people, the time had come to throw off restrictions, whether of race, class, or religion, to which rootedness seemed inexorably linked. More recently the critic, writer, and TV presenter Jonathan Meades asserted that ‘roots are for vegetables’.

But one explanation advanced for the result of the 2016 EU referendum is that the embrace of liberal cosmopolitanism values has resulted in a backlash. For some critics, the importance of beloning and rootedness to people’s lives and to human flourishing has been underestimated. In David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere, ‘anywhere’ cosmopolitans are contrasted to ‘somewheres’ with a strong attachment to place. In the eyes of some, cosmopolitanism is superficial and an indulgence of the flighty well-off, although that might appear a troubling and excluding explanation to those newly arrived in the UK from other countries, hoping to establish a life for themselves and their families.

Giles Fraser, an Anglican priest and UnHerd columnist, founded and briefly ran a party called Home, focused not only on a pro-Brexit policy of taking back control nationally, but also linked to the housing crisis and people being literally unable to afford a home. There is also renewed interest in the philosopher and writer Simone Weil, who believed that a sense of rootedness was of huge importance in facing up to the human condition.

Who are the rootless anywheres? Are there still places where communities of the truly rooted can be found? This discussion will look what we mean when we talk about rootedness, and at its social, psychological, cultural and political aspects. 

Reading material

A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt & Simone Weil on the Need for Roots, Scott Remer, Philosophy Now, 2018

Why I left my liberal London tribe, David Goodhart, Financial Times, 17 March 2017

Clinging to our roots, Christy Wampole, New York Times, 30 May 30 2016

Liberalism has broken us – we need a new party to call Home, Giles Fraser, UnHerd, 7 June 2018

I Watched the Neighbourhood I Grew Up in Get Gentrified, Malakai Sargeant, Vice, 12 July 2019

In defence of gentrification, Niall Crowley, Spiked, 16 March 2016

If You Believe You are a Citizen of the World, You are a Citizen of Nowhere, Intelligence Squared, (recording of panel discussion)

Clacton versus Cambridge: Why England’s political future is cosmopolitan, not communitarian, J.C. The Economist, 6 September 2014

Produced by Rosie Cuckston

Whose home is it anyway?

3.15 pm - 4.45 pm

Speakers:
David Vincent, Emeritus Professor of History - The Open University, and author of Privacy: A Short History (Polity Press, 2016)
Dr James Panton, Associate Professor of Philosophy - The Open University, and co-editor of From Self to Selfie: a critique of contemporary forms of alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Chair: Chrissie Daz

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it. The rain may enter. The storms may enter. But the king of England may not enter. All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." – Pitt the Elder

The foundational principle of liberal democracies, that a strict line be maintained between the private and the public, largely revolves around the sanctity of the home. But is it that straight forward?  John Locke applied the principle of domestic privacy as a defence of private property in general, even when such property is more social than personal in character.  And in the nineteenth century it was argued that only householders could be trusted with the vote.

Feminists have argued that the sacred character of a man’s home causes women’s oppression. But the translation of domestic violence as an issue into the mantra that the ‘personal is political’ has been used to attack privacy in many ways.  The Labour Government’s ‘Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act’ of 2004, for instance, gave to the authorities the power to enter your home in connection with unpaid fines.

From the right to smoke in prison cells and psychiatric wards to the erosion of tenant’s rights, the autonomy of the home has been eroding for some time. But when cohabiting adults and children are involved, how should we decide how much state interference is acceptable? How free should we be to interfere in the private affairs of our neighbours? And what are the implications when it is not our neighbours or the authorities but we ourselves who freely expose our domestic shenanigans to the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Alexa?

Reading material

Glass Houses: How much privacy can city-dwellers expect, Leo Benedictus, The Guardian, February 2019
We must barricade our homes against the state, Josie Appleton, Notes on Freedom blog, September 2017

Apple sends home workers who listened to intimate Siri recordings and apologises for privacy breach, Anthony Cuthbertson, The Independent, August 2019

Produced by Chrissie Daz

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Saturday 29th September

11.15 am - 5.00 pm

The Old Joint Stock, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham, B2 5NY

Diversity and Social Class in 21st Century Britain

11.30 am - 1.00 pm