IS the cost of policing last summer’s demonstrations by the English Defence League, revealed now to have totalled £100,000, money well spent?

Or could the money have been saved by simply not allowing the marches to take place in the first place?

There will be a lot of people who will say ‘yes’ to the second question, and quite reasonably so; why should scarce public money be spent on a protest march by a group whose views are considered obnoxious by a large section of the populace?

This money, surely, could have been better spent on improving community policing and protecting the people of Worcester and the surrounding areas from the threat of crime that seems all too prevalent.

But what about the argument regarding the freedom of speech, about the freedom of protest, the freedom to dissent.

One of the anti-EDL protesters, seen in the picture above, puts his position plainly with the slogan: “Racism and abuse are not freedom of speech”.

But is that correct? According to Wikipedia, “Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” and “everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”

The great philosopher John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, said that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.

That leaves us with the question: Does hearing views you dislike, or even outright detest, constitute harm?

If it does, then that overturns the old proverb “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”, and the way is open for the legislative suppression of free speech.

But if you think that way, you may want to be careful about what you wish for.

Once the principle of censorship is established, it could well fall into the hand of those who have a completely different idea of what ideas should be suppressed.