Your Rights: Right of free expression: Criminal law restrictions on freedom of expression: Blasphemy

At common law, blasphemy and blasphemous libel are indictable offences. These offences are rarely prosecuted, although in 1977 Mary Whitehouse brought a successful private prosecution against Gay News magazine for the publication of a poem on the homoerotic musings of the centurion guarding the body of Christ. The intentions of the publisher are irrelevant and there is no defence of public good, namely that the material was published in the interests of science, literature or art.

The offences apply only to attacks on the Church of England and by extension to attacks on Christianity. Consequently, opponents of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses were unable to bring a blasphemy prosecution as the courts declined to extend the offence to protect Islam.

Under the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888, a prosecution cannot be brought against the proprietor, publisher, editor or any person responsible for the publication of a newspaper - this does not include a journalist - in respect of any libel published without the order of a High Court judge. The accused must be given notice of the application and be given an opportunity to be heard.

In 1996 the European Court of Human Rights considered that blasphemy laws must be a matter for individual countries to decide. The British Board of Film Classification had refused to classify a video film entitled Visions of Ecstasy on the grounds that it would infringe the criminal law of blasphemy. The video concerned the erotic fantasies of a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun who experienced powerful ecstatic visions of Jesus Christ. The European Court of Human Rights considered that the refusal to classify the video did not infringe the Article 10 right to freedom of expression.