The fear of tyrants: why free speech is for the marginalised, oppressed and poor

"Most important thinking I've written", this is how Prof. Grimes describes his recent research on who benefits from free speech. Spoiler alert- it's not who you might think. 

We're often told that the marginalised, oppressed and poor need protection from free speech, probably provided by the State, to ensure that free speech doesn't oppress them. But in reality, free speech enables the powerless to undermine the powerful by insisting that ideas and speech should be challenged with dialogue and reason, not force. 

Jonathan Ayling and Adam Young from the Free Speech Union sit down with Prof. Arther Grimes to consider this important research, and look at why it is the poorer in society, the uneducated, and the vulnerable who benefit from the radical idea that even they should be free to speak.