The Big Issue – Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, London, England

A Speakers’ Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate and discussion are allowed. The original and most noted is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park in London, UK. Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers’ Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police tend to be tolerant and therefore intervene only when they receive a complaint.

There are some who contend that the tradition has a connection with the nearby Tyburn gallows, where the condemned man was allowed to speak before being hanged. Be that as it may, public riots broke out in the park in 1855, in protest over the Sunday Trading Bill, which forbade buying and selling on a Sunday, the only day working people had off. The riots were described by Karl Marx as the beginning of the English revolution. The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for workers’ protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men.

The riots and agitation for democratic reform encouraged some to force the issue of the "right to speak" in Hyde Park. The Parks Regulation Act 1872 delegated the issue of permitting public meetings to the park authorities (rather than central government). Contrary to popular belief, it does not confer a statutory basis for the right to speak at Speakers’ Corner. Parliamentary debates on the Act illustrate that a general principle of being able to meet and speak was not the intention, but that some areas would be permitted to be used for that purpose. Since that time, it has become a traditional site for public speeches and debate, as well as the main site of protest and assembly in Britain.

In the late 19th century, for instance, a combination of park by-laws, use of the Highways Acts and use of venue licensing powers of the London County Council made it one of the few places where socialist speakers could meet and debate. Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers’ Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. The day that I visited many of the speakers were proselytizing Islam.