From Karl Marx to TikTok: What Speakers' Corner says about free speech today

A visit to London's historic Speakers' Corner explores whether face-to-face debate still has a place in the digital age

A man holds a heated debate with a member of his audience at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London. File Picture: Leon Neal/Getty 

Karl Marx didn’t have social media to disseminate his ideas, but he had Speakers' Corner. George Orwell, in the days when he couldn’t get published, used to go to Speakers' Corner to read his work. Vladimir Lenin, in the years before the Russian revolution, was known to show up at Speakers' Corner of a Sunday to inform the world that change was on the way.

The little patch of Hyde Park, London, dedicated to free speech has a storied history. In the time long ago, when social media was confined to science fiction, it was to here that men and women of ideas and strong opinions came to disseminate.