Here is the video of Professor Simon Heffer delivering the Third Jillian Becker Annual Lecture on February 3, 2020. (For written extracts from the speech, see our post of a few days ago, The most important liberty.)

The subject of each lecture has to be concerned with the importance of individual freedom and/or the importance of the nation state as the only reliable protector of  individual freedom.

Professor Heffer’s subject is freedom of speech.

The opening remarks are addressed to Simon Richards, CEO of The Freedom Association, under whose auspices the lectures are given. He is now retiring from the job which he has done superlatively well. Under his direction, The Freedom Association contributed substantially to the historic achievement of Brexit.

 From an email sent to us from Britain by Simon Richards, Director of The Freedom Association: 

We have come to take for granted the overwhelmingly benevolent power of the United States, which replaced the equally benevolent dominance Britain exerted throughout the 19th Century. Now, 200 years of leadership by these once great liberal, free market nations is drawing to a close and there will be no such benevolent overseer in future. Of course, even in these past two centuries, when the free world has shown feebleness, as in the 1930s, it has come close to destruction at the hands of evil. People have convinced themselves that the good guys always come out on top. There is no such guarantee. In my view, the will of one man, Winston Churchill, saved us from the triumph of evil in the Second World War. There is no guarantee we will be saved again next time.

We agree, sadly, with these pessimistic thoughts.