Soapboxes & Sedition: The Long, Uneasy History of Free Speech

On October 14, 1855, a carpenter stood atop a soapbox in Hyde Park and complained about the price of bread. His speech was unremarkable but his setting revolutionary. That makeshift pulpit became the first act of what would later be known as Speakers’ Corner, the one spot in London where a man could rail against anything — the Crown, the clergy, or the price of mutton — and not be immediately dragged off by a constable.

George Orwell, who had a knack for noticing human absurdities, later called Speakers’ Corner “one of the minor wonders of the world.” There he listened to “Indian nationalists, temperance reformers, Communists, Trotskyists, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Catholic Evidence Society, freethinkers, vegetarians, Mormons, the Salvation Army, the Church Army, and a large variety of plain lunatics.” The British had done what they do best — turn public dissent into an orderly ritual.

The roots of Speakers’ Corner, however, are darker. Hyde Park once housed the infamous Tyburn gallows, where criminals were hanged before cheering crowds. Before dying, the condemned were granted the “right” to address the public, often cursing the state, the Church, or both. It was gruesome theater, but it set a precedent: In Britain, you could speak freely — provided you were about to die.

When the Chartists and the Reform League demanded true freedom of assembly in the 19th century, the government eventually relented, not out of love for liberty but out of fear of mobs. Thus, Speakers’ Corner was born, an officially sanctioned area where citizens could shout safely into the void. The British approach to free speech was always paternal: The people could talk so long as the Crown chose not to listen.