Freedom of speech dies in a South London pub.

You're barred...

I should have known better. Little rainbow flags fluttered from every table like it was a children’s party rather than a pub that was emptier than it should be so close to Christmas. I chose to not allow them to annoy me A comedy night chuckled in the back room and the waters were calm, but not for long. The publican, a slightly pompous for his young-ish age (whatever that is these days), served us one of the multitude of smug artisan beers on tap, claiming it was a good one, as if he’d claim anything else. It was a companionable enough moment. I even considered putting some coins in the giant ceramic pig on the bar asking for tips. I’m rather pleased I didn’t.

Pubs represent a bastion of free speech. It’s a space where people express themselves, oiled by the mainstay lubricant of beer, unguardedly and in the name of discussion. During those barbaric lockdowns it was the closed pubs and churches that looked the most forlorn and wrong in a way that disturbed some deeply held truths. It felt uncertain if they would ever reopen, and many did not, instead they burned on the giant pyres of sacrifice in the name of saving granny.

So, there we were. Two men and two women at a table, chatting away, chewing over the usual pub subjects, music, politics and Michael Aspel. One of the women argued elegantly about the current perverse obsession with men objectifying a slutty caricature of women in drag while reading stories to children, we also all agreed that there are far more important leading-characteristics of a person than their sexual persuasion, and the desirability of fleeing to Hungary while there is still room. The pub remained empty and I had bought a fresh round of drinks. Things were swaying along in the jolly manner brought about by consensual agreement when the young publican came up to say, ‘I’ve heard what you’re saying, and you’re going to have to leave.’ The wind dropped, although the plastic rainbow flags around us remained taut.

Once we regained the power of speech I asked why we had to leave. ‘You just have to’, he replied. ‘Because you don’t like our conversation?’ I asked, to which he insisted we had to leave. We robustly informed him that we weren't going anywhere, to which he threatened to call the police. I assured him he was welcome to, and he minced off through the empty tables of diversity flags to call the old bill. Here was a man who opposed free speech, whom if allowed would like an A-board outside his pub listing accepted topics that might be discussed.

Our entitled authoritarian returned and repeated we had to leave. I asked him since when were landlords the arbitrators of subjects customers discussed privately in their establishment? I made clear that his intolerance of differing opinions confirmed him as a facist. I also added that in light of his abundant enthusiasm for diversity (or at least for buying mini rainbow table flags), he was a fraud if he was unable to accommodate diversity of world views in his pub. He looked out of the window for incoming police attendance with an increasing impotence.

His wife chimed in with the insistence that they didn’t have to provide a reason for throwing us out. I wish I’d suggested that it might be because we were straight and that it was therefore discrimination. Whatever had upset him about our conversation he was unwilling to reveal it. All he had was emotion and no logic, only more threats of punishing us for holding apparently intolerable views. I’m unsure he took my suggestion that he was fake, and didn’t know himself, in the magnanimous spirit with which it was given. With no counter argument, it can only be assumed that his opinions were inherited rather than personally concluded; he could play only the man. In a moment of unintended comedy genius, he marched off, announcing ‘You’re barred.’ I laughed. ‘You can’t bar me from a pub I have no intention of ever returning to anyway.’

It was clear that the only pig in his establishment was the empty tip jar, so we calmly finished our drinks. As the other two remaining customers left they threw their own generation Z thoughts into the ring. ‘Read a book,’ said one, to which my friend responded that I’d written one. Their insightful farewell was ‘Sh’u up.’ This is a generation so entitled, and certain of opinion they’ve been programmed to hold, that they consider alternative views as punishable.

The woke want a segregated society; they simply banish rather than engage opposing opinions. They are so desperate for a safe space that they will enlist the police to enforce it on their behalf. I’d have had more respect for him if he’d turned to his own violence rather than delegate it. I’m loath to follow Godwin’s theory of the inevitable mention of Nazis in internet discourse, but make no mistake, rainbow flags are the new Swastika. And he might want to rename his pub The Echo Chamber.