“In the 1960s, when I began to practise law, there was no positive right to free speech in English law. Free speech was a strong British political value, but as a matter of English law it was merely the space left by the criminal and civil law — official secrecy, fair trials, contract, confidentiality, copyright, defamation and the rest.”
The Times, 30th May 2010
Source: www.timesonline.co.uk