We can't beat terror without free speech

It sounded good at the time: the trouble was, much of it was policy on the hoof and had to be abandoned. This time, it seems, Gordon Brown wants to do things differently. But yesterday came a sharp reminder of the pressure he'll face to move in the opposite direction, curbing freedom in the name of combating terrorism.

First, the positive signs. They were there in the new Prime Minister's immediate response to the attempted car bombs in Haymarket and the thwarted suicide attack on Glasgow airport. He spoke coolly about vigilance and security, allowing himself no Blair-style rhetorical flourishes. He spoke as if this was a criminal problem that would require a policing solution with no need to change our fundamental freedoms.

As if to confirm the new approach, Brown moved on Tuesday to undo one of the Blair era's most notorious erosions of liberty. His announcement was delayed by the terror scares, but not derailed by it. Instead he came to the House of Commons and declared he thought "it right & to change the laws that now restrict the right to demonstrate in Parliament Square". In other words, the 2005 law passed in part to banish Brian Haw's permanent anti-war protest now a London landmark in its own right would be thrown onto the scrapheap.

It was a small gesture, but an important one. It suggested that, even in the heat of a full-blown manhunt for a lethal terror cell, Brown was committed to restoring freedom of speech, not shutting it down. But it may prove a hard line to hold.

At his first Prime Minister's questions yesterday, Brown's only serious stumble came when David Cameron asked him what had happened to the Blair promise part of that 12-step programme to ban the radical Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Tory leader quoted one of the group's most repulsive pronouncements, an exhortation to kill the Jews "wherever you find them". Brown was left floundering, uncertain of the facts, until former Home Secretary John Reid got to his feet and explained that the Home Office had not found sufficient evidence to ban the group.

There will doubtless be more such demands when the final verdict is reached in the case of the Danish cartoon protests. Few Londoners will forget the lurid counter-demonstrations in February 2006 that followed the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

Outside the Danish embassy in London, protesters held placards with slogans that ranged from "Slay those who insult Islam" to "3/11 is on its way".

Several of those involved have been convicted of either soliciting murder or inciting hatred and on Tuesday the jury went out to decide on the last man accused in the case.

Few would sympathise with them or indeed with the activists of Hizb ut- Tahrir: I certainly would bow to no one in my loathing of their message.

And yet, I would still urge Brown to keep a cool head and not to reach for the gag.

To take the easiest case first, the PM should stick with his plan to restore the right to spontaneous protest in and around Parliament and Downing Street.

Brian Haw's peace camp may be an eyesore and a nuisance, but it poses no threat to anyone's security. The same goes for Milan Rai and Maya Evans, the duo who were barred simply from standing at the Cenotaph and reading out the names of those killed in the Iraq war.

Again, that may be awkward and embarrassing, but it threatens no one. Last month, the pair took their case to the European Court of Human Rights. They shouldn't need to: we should be able to declare right here that they have every right to make their peaceful, even serene, protest.

What of Hizb ut-Tahrir? Banning them seems tempting enough, as it surely was to Blair in the heat of the summer of 2005. But it makes little sense. The principled objection is that the only organisations that should be outlawed in a democracy are those guilty of violence, not those that have vile ideas: that's why the IRA was banned, but why the BNP is legal. Pragmatically, too, a ban would simply make free speech martyrs of a group that deserve neither the status nor the publicity such a move would bring. (Security experts also warn that it's better to have such organisations out in the open, where you can see what they're up to, than to drive them underground.) That doesn't mean we have to sit back and do nothing. For even those who believe in an absolute right of free speech draw the line somewhere, usually at that moment when a speaker incites violence or murder. Here it's useful to remember the famous American standard, which denies the right to cry "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. That's the line those protesters outside the Danish embassy crossed.

The good news is that we already have laws aplenty to cover that situation, as the convictions in the Danish case illustrate. There's no need to ban organisations, or restrict freedom of speech, when we can simply enforce the ample laws Britain already has in place to protect public order, prevent incitement to violence or incitement to racial hatred. If the Hizb ut-Tahrir statement Cameron quoted in the Commons yesterday falls foul of one of those laws, then the answer is surely to prosecute them for it not to ban the group outright.

All this matters because freedom of speech is about the most basic freedom we have: without it, all other liberties unravel. Yes, we want to stop people plotting murder and mayhem on the internet or inciting it on the streets of London and we can do that. But we can do it without changing who we are, without altering our society simply because a few fanatics have put petrol and gas canisters in the back of a car. We are bigger than they are and we must deny them even the smallest victory.