Declarations on Freedom

With the news that Joe Biden has won the US election and Trump has been consigned to the trashcan of history, this anthology celebrating the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath is exceptionally timely. It is a celebration of freedom of expression – an assertion of our fundamental right to speak and to write, to read and to listen, to call power to account in the face of injustice.

People have died getting the word out and my own contribution to this book is dedicated to the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was assassinated in Malta on the 16th October 2017. She was murdered in a massive car bomb close to her home. Since her brutal assassination, civil society activists, media freedom NGOs (including ScottishPEN who conceived and realised this book project), the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and, most significantly, Daphne’s own family have campaigned tirelessly to expose those responsible and to ensure justice for her killing.

Democracy is not a settled state. It’s something we have to work for, fight for, but we should not have to die for. Yet people do. We owe it to them to ensure their deaths are not in vain. In fighting for their right to live, we’re fighting for our own.

‘Though we may never get a chance to see
the change we inspire, still we must write,
challenging limitations to freedoms and rights.’ [Lawrence Schimel]