| Summary: | Freedom of expression in Britain can be traced back to the Bill of Rights of 1689, even if the term applied to parliamentarians in that constitutional document. More recently, in 1998, the Human Rights Act became law in Britain, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. However, alongside this longstanding liberal tradition of freedom, there is also one which puts blocks on this freedom, blocks which may be on words or deeds. At the beginning of the 1990s in Britain, during John Major’s period in power, a burgeoning movement based on radical environmentalism and alternative culture found itself in just such a situation when confronted with restrictions to its discourse and cultural practices. This paper will analyse the ways in which this movement was subjected to judicial and political censorship; in the first instance, by examining how Britain’s libel laws were used to censor radical environmentalist discourse during the longest civil law case in British history (the “McLibel” trial) and, in the second, by analysing the Conservative government’s attempts to censor alternative culture with the passing of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994.
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