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In one episode, he said, he played a police station commander tasked with reprimanding “Constable Savage,” a “manifestly racist” cop given to arresting black men on ludicrous, trumped-up charges.
“The charges for which Constable Savage arrested Winston Kudogo of 55 Mercer Rd. were walking on the cracks in the pavement, walking in a loud shirt through a built-up area during the hours of darkness and, one of my favourites, walking around all over the place,” Mr. Atkinson deadpanned, amid a chorus of guffaws.

“He was also arrested for urinating in a public [washroom] and looking at me in a funny way. Who would have thought then that we would end up with a law that would allow life to imitate art so exactly?”

Mr. Atkinson, on that last note, wasn’t joking, but addressing Section 5 of the Public Order Act, an absurd and yet-not-always-funny British law that was adopted in 1986 to combat soccer hooliganism. It makes it an offence to use “threatening, abusive or insulting words” or display “any writing, sign or visible representation … which is insulting” within the hearing or sight of a person “likely to be caused harassment, alarm or stress thereby.”

The punchline? A victim does not actually need to be alarmed or distressed for an offence to have occurred.

Moreover, a victim, in some instances, does not actually need to be a human being for an offence to have occurred, as was the case of Simon Brown, an Oxford University student out celebrating post-exams who was arrested for saying to a mounted policeman, “Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?” (Police claimed a passerby could have found Mr. Brown’s equine-aimed wisecrack offensive.)

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such

Or young Kyle Little, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who barked at Princess and Ruby, a pair of Labrador Retrievers within earshot of their owner, who wasn’t offended — although two policemen apparently were offended by the thought the owner might have been offended. A court fined young Kyle $320, a penalty that was later tossed out on appeal.
“The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such,” Mr. Atkinson said during the Westminster speech in support of a campaign to repeal Section 5.
“Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as an insult.”

Insults, in the United Kingdom, a country where taking the piss out of your pals is a national sport, are viewed as a refined art. Now the act of hurling them is under siege, a gag on public discourse that has united disparate groups in opposition to the law. Gay rights activists, Christian street preachers, comedians, conservative think-tanks, Conservative politicians, Lords, Labour Party members, Labrador Retriever owners, you name it, all stand in defence of the right to offend.

The best way to increase a society’s resistance to insulting or offensive speech is to allow more of it

Alongside the obvious tabloid-fodder stories are other more chillingly ludicrous examples of the law’s application.

Peter Tatchell, a champion of gay rights, was arrested under Section 5 for protesting, peacefully, with five other people outside a gathering of 6,000 Islamist-fundamentalists.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, called for Jews, homosexuals and women who have sex outside marriage to be killed. No members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were arrested for their views. But two members of Mr. Tatchell’s party were arrested for their placards.

“We simply displayed placards denouncing their prejudice and incitement to murder,” Mr. Tatchell said from London.

“The police determined that our presence and placards might cause alarm and distress to the assembled fundamentalists and the passing members of the public.”

I defend the right of others to be insulting and offensive, providing they are not aggressive, menacing and threatening

The charges were later withdrawn, but a message was sent, one that has been used to silence a multiplicity of voices, including that of Dale McAlpine, a Christian street preacher arrested for sermonizing same-sex relationships were a “sin.”

“I’d rather not hear a street preacher say that but I defend his right to say it,” Mr. Tatchell said.
“I defend the right of others to be insulting and offensive, providing they are not aggressive, menacing and threatening.”

The “insulting” clause of the insulting law was applied over 18,000 times in 2009, a jolting statistic attached to a Draconian notion that words, mere words, said aloud, and not even necessarily shouted could, in some way, be criminal because they could strike someone, somewhere nearby, as “insulting.”

Bark at a dog: busted. Street-preach that homosexuality is a sin: busted. Protest against nut-job imams peddling a poisonous message: busted. Most criminal of all, perhaps, has been the reaction of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government to a push for change that, at present, has no group pushing back against it.

Almost exactly a year ago, the government initiated a public consultation to consider the “value of the word insulting” in Section 5. A published response was expected in May. It is now October and Parliament is still waiting, as is Mr. Atkinson.

In his speech the funnyman with the big ears, sloped shoulders and pinched expression, decried Britain’s descent into a “censorious culture,” where sticks and stones may or may not hurt you — but calling a horse queer will get you arrested.

“‘I am not intolerant,’ so many softly spoken, highly educated liberal-minded people say, ‘I am only intolerant of intolerance,’ and people tend to nod, sagely, and say, ‘Yes. Wise words,’” Mr. Atkinson said.

“But if you think about this inarguable statement for more than five seconds, you realize that all it is advocating for is the replacement of one kind of intolerance with another, which doesn’t represent any kind of progress at all.

“Underlying prejudices, injustices or resentments are not addressed by arresting people, they are addressed by the issues being aired, argued and dealt with, preferably outside the legal process.
“For me, the best way to increase a society’s resistance to insulting or offensive speech is to allow more of it.”

Hear, hear.
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