Speakers Corner London Any Listeners?

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Speakers Corner Hyde Park, London open on Sundays. Have something to say?
Stand on a kitchen step ladder and speak. No audience? Try the following Sunday.

Do tourists still visit Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park on Sunday? It’s a relevant question because this computer is a digital speakers’ corner thanks to Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok and all social media.

I don’t need to apply for a visa for England and to book into a bed and breakfast establishment since I can’t afford a 5-Star hotel. The London Speakers’ Corner is an open space where you plant a box, get on it and say what you like about teabags, soccer, taxes, Labour Party, Tories, capitalism, socialism, the European Union, the royal family, anything.

It is a British legacy for free speech. Speakers used soapboxes in 1855 when it started but they use kitchen step ladders now. It is fun for the crowd, but not for speakers because they want it to stay longer around their podium and not defect to the next speaker. What I used to enjoy were lone speakers. Nobody around them but they soldiered on, talking to air.

Time passed and Speakers’ Corner became a battleground for religion, sometimes from the same country but different religious attachments. Speakers were visibly emotional and the police had to step in, something they rarely did in the twentieth century.

Most of those religious tensions have moved online like everything else. Now we worship, love and fight online. That’s why I’m wondering if crowds still go to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park on Sunday. Maybe what remains are speakers who love their own voices, because there’s not a single listener in sight.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

 

 

 

 

 

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