The Enigma of Free Speech: Speakers’ Corner, The Geography of Governance and a Crisis of Rationality
| Published date | 01 June 2000 |
| Author | John Michael Roberts |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390000900205 |
| Date | 01 June 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
THE ENIGMA OF FREE SPEECH:
SPEAKERS’ CORNER,
THE GEOGRAPHY OF
GOVERNANCE AND A CRISIS
OF RATIONALITY
JOHN MICHAEL ROBERTS
Cardiff University, Wales, UK
ABSTRACT
Officially sanctioned in 1872 by the Royal Parks and Gardens Regulation Act,
Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London is often seen as a potent symbol for free
speech in Britain. Yet this image is highly problematic. Nowhere in the original 1872
Act does the term ‘free speech’ appear. In this article it is argued that this enigma is in
fact perfectly understandable for two reasons. First, the sign ‘speech’ had carved out
a distinct geographical and moral space in Hyde Park over a century before 1872.
Constituted through the ‘last dying speeches’ of the criminal class of 18th-century
London, this subaltern rationality rendered visible the class character of law by dis-
rupting the distancing of legal discourse from governance. Secondly, by undertaking
a genealogical investigation of the sign ‘speech’ at Hyde Park, the traces left by scaf-
fold culture were re-combined to slowly translate ‘last dying speeches’ into a more
overtly political proletarian public sphere. The political mediation of the sign ‘speech’
meant that the state had to respond to this sign by overcoming the failures of Tyburn
and impose a successful mode of governance at Hyde Park. The 1872 Royal Parks and
Gardens Regulation Act was an attempt by the state to accomplish this task.
INTRODUCTION
FREE SPEECH IS RECOGNISED as one of the most basic right
claims in the western hemisphere. T. H. Marshall, the founder of 20th-
century citizenship theory, placed free speech within the general
milieu of civil rights: ‘Rights necessary for individual freedom – liberty of
the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200006) 9:2 Copyright © 2000
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and to conclude valid contracts, and the right to justice’ (Marshall, 1950: 8).
According to Marshall, civil rights are the most basic set of rights to safe-
guard the workings of a market economy.
Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, is often seen as a potent symbol
for civil rights in Britain. Officially sanctioned in 1872 by the Royal Parks
and Gardens Regulation Act, Speakers’ Corner is a site for people to exercise
their right of free speech. You can turn up, stand on a makeshift platform (the
simplest being a milk crate), and speak about any topic you like, provided
that your utterances do not contravene the Regulations. Such is the power of
this symbol that the very name, ‘Speakers’ Corner’, resonates a populist,
democratic image which today goes beyond any immediate physical loca-
tion.1Hundreds still turn up every Sunday to practise their right of free
speech. Yet this image is highly problematic. Nowhere in the original 1872
Act does the term ‘free speech’ appear. Free speech is both absent and invis-
ible.
In this article, I claim that this enigma is in fact perfectly understandable
for two reasons. First, I suggest that governance is always a reaction to dis-
tinct ideological places where geographical forms of resistance can ensue.
Such places frequently have deep symbolic meaning for groups and are often
transformed into shrine-like locations for the articulation of an alternative
and expressive social ordering (cf. Hetherington, 1997, 1998). By re-combin-
ing ‘traces’ left from a previous social ordering, individuals and groups can
invest the place in question with new ideological meaning and a novel mode
of rationality. In order to regulate this alternative social ordering, legal dis-
course must attempt to install a set of governance mechanisms which respond
to the specific form of an alternative rationality. Modes of governance are
therefore crucial regulatory tools in modern society because they enable the
state and law to govern from a distance (Rose, 1999).
In the case of Speakers’ Corner I argue that the state wished to forget the
sign ‘free speech’ at Hyde Park because of the significatory impact which the
sign ‘speech’ presented when situated within this particular royal park.
Specifically, the sign ‘speech’ had carved out a distinct moral space in Hyde
Park over a century before 1872. This moral space, constituted through the
‘last dying speeches’ of the criminal class of 18th-century London, subverted
the rationality of an emerging capitalist state and laid the basis for a nascent
proletarian public sphere. The state subsequently perceived last dying
speeches as part of a rationality crisis because last dying speeches translated
the space around the hanging tree into a distinct place which transgressed the
bourgeois public sphere. I suggest that a principle reason why this transgres-
sion could occur was due to a failure by the state to distance legal discourse
from governance. By failing to distance law from governance, the state had
inadvertently rendered visible the class character of law.
Second, by undertaking a genealogical investigation of the sign ‘speech’ at
Hyde Park, I demonstrate how the traces left by scaffold culture slowly
translated ‘last dying speeches’ into a more overtly political proletarian public
sphere. In 1872 the sign ‘speech’ was once more a visible albeit illegal sign at
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