ONE of the enduring pleasures in life is that on a daily basis that I can wake up any morning, switch on the radio and listen to a wide variety of views on politics, morality or lifestyle from an unseen cast of chatterers.

I know I don’t have to agree with any of them – in fact, I often find it all the more stimulating when I take issue with what they’re saying. I also know I can then pop into any local newsagent or bookstore, select what I want to read and browse what other people write without reasonable fear of interference.

At my time of life and experience, my choice is admittedly pretty predictable, but there it all is, displayed for anyone to choose or ignore. On sunny Sunday mornings in London, I used to stroll across Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park past the cacophony of home-fired orators addressing little circles of the committed or inquisitive, to the amusement of foreign tourists.

The soap-boxes may have been swapped for aluminium step-ladders, but the tradition of harmless free speech was definitely flourishing. So why do we tolerate the plethora of contrasting, often conflicting views traded in public and the media? You could say, it is an indication of a confident pluralistic society.

Allowing folk to criticise proselytise and generally let off steam, is a useful safety-net, while exposure to a broad interpretation of events is educational, thought-provoking and palliative.

But you may be forgiven for wondering sometimes whether this overwhelmingly liberal, predominantly Christian outlook, tempts us to proceed along a morally self-satisfying path, oblivious that good intentions can have a nasty habit of biting the hand.

Our cherished freedom of speech, can occasionally deliver a challenging dilemma. What happens when we’re confronted with outbursts like the ragged demonstration in Luton which disrupted the parade of British troops returning from Basra? The following day’s newspapers were united in their condemnation of the protesters; some berated the police for allowing it to take place. Their reactions struck a popular chord. But however outrageous and offensive the demonstration, in the cold light of day we might think twice about abandoning the maxim: ‘I don’t like what you say, but I’d defend to the death your right to say it’.

I suppose it’s only right to introduce the question of time and place. In a debating context, there is an overriding virtue in allowing people to speak who have opposing views which some might even consider abhorrent, particularly if there’s every confidence of countering them in open argument.

Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that freedom of expression, albeit outspoken, doesn’t extend to inciting hatred or harm against an individual or group.

However, preventing them from speaking at all on grounds of religious or racial objections smacks of an mirror-image prejudice and is a betrayal of the personal and institutional freedoms we’ve fought to preserve – and frankly, indicates immaturity, bigotry and cowardice. In the street, the privilege is all too often misdirected. The cloaked rabble, who shouted aggressive insults at the soldiers, did their cause no favours. By targeting a group of individuals whose military discipline prevents them from expressing their own views about the duties they are under orders to perform, rather than directing their ire at the disgraced political puppeteers, they misjudged occasion, message and emotion and found themselves attracting overwhelming derision and a measure of physical retaliation.

Though ‘sounding off’ may be satisfying to the orator, it has its limitations. To be honest, there’s all too often a huge disconnect between publicly expounded arguments – however convincing – and the likelihood of their achieving any influence. The same goes for demonstrations or petitions – even those containing 19,000 signatures.

That doesn’t prevent our being solicited by every newspaper and broadcasting outlet to ‘have your shout’ and post our views on n’importe quoi on their websites.

It may represent an opportunity to enhance the general debate; more likely, it provides an ego boost and camaraderie for net-surfers. Those of us not imbued with the independence of a high court judge will normally respond to the things we want to hear and interpret them to our own way of thinking. You wouldn’t read the Daily Express for liberal editorials on asylum seekers!

But there are challenging times ahead. There’s a new kid on the block which has the power to offer boundless opportunity for expression.

Perversely it can also deliver offence with unregulated venom. The poisonous few who skulk behind the anonymity of the internet to spread and exchange defamatory material against individuals and institutions have brought about a serious reconsideration of what should be permitted and how expression should be regulated.

So are we really as free as we think we are? I recall when visiting South Korea some thirty years ago, in the days of the authoritarian President Park Chung Hee, I questioned my journalist guide about the touchy issue of censorship. ‘Of course we don’t have official censorship here’, she confided, ‘we rely on self-restraint.’

And so it is for us. We know it’s not right to trade accusations of ‘fraudster’ in the States Chamber, whatever privileges that particular forum allows.

We’ve invented elaborate social conventions to say what we mean without offence – and sometimes we’ve constructed linguistic artifice to do just the opposite. But we generally abide by rules which prevent us falling out of the envelope and being stamped on. And that’s what self-regulates our freedom of expression.

Now, of all independent actions, freedom of thought far outweighs freedom of speech: it’s individual, secret and unassailable.

Better then to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.