It is a sign of a secure and robust leadership to be open to critique and feedback, to allow dissenting voices to be heard and to have ideas and institutions open to challenge. Anyway, a group of people were arrested last weekend because they were about to protest the coronation, but I digress.

Freedom of speech is one of the most complex, nuanced and misunderstood topics out there. We seem to hear a great deal about public figures being "cancelled". We hear about it in the headlines of various national newspapers, then on the news and in podcasts, and blogs, and interviews and… let’s just say silence has never seemed so loud.

There are two major misconceptions about freedom of speech: one, that freedom to voice an opinion absolves you of any social consequence that opinion might incur, and two, that freedom of speech entitles you to a platform from which to voice your opinion, or an audience to receive that opinion.

Social consequences have never been more impactful than right now, social media is an incredible facilitator of criticism and feedback, and for many people it represents a more accessible form of protest. Freedom of speech is most certainly under attack, not - it seems - through the "cancellation" of public figures but through the potential eradication and criminalisation of peaceful protest.

A number of arrests were made in connection to last week's events, including volunteers working for the group Night Stars which provides support to women and vulnerable people. It sounds like something out of a dystopian novel: an overly sensitive elite revealing the soft underbelly of institutional insecurity by forcibly removing any voice which dares acknowledge the yawning maw of inequity threatening to swallow us whole.

Articles 19 and 20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights make for interesting reading in light of recent events as they state: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers," and “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association."

People are angry, they feel ignored, shut down and pushed aside, no more so than when they are literally being pushed into the back of police vans so people don’t have to bear witness to the discontent bred by systemic societal inequality.

Peaceful protest is a fundamental cornerstone of any democracy. Behind every radical societal change, every movement for civil and human rights, there is protest. Stonewall marches, the miners’ strikes, earth day: all people assembling and using the combined power of their voices to effect positive change in the world. One voice may be easy for those in power to ignore, a drop of rain easily brushed off, but when combined, organised and collaborating, the surging torrent of voices in harmony becomes impossible to disregard.

If there's one thing that you don't want to do, it's to prove disenfranchised people right when they feel they are being ignored and silenced, particularly when protest is the most peaceful and productive recourse available to them. The permission and encouragement of peaceful protest represents a government comfortable with the choices they make, and willing to listen to those impacted by their decision making. To shut down protest is to preclude communication between those allegedly in service of the people, and the very people they claim to serve. It's important to remember that this weekend, the person being protested has more power than anyone else in this country. He is immune to the law, to taxation, and now, it seems, to criticism.

Graham Smith, the CEO of the group Republic, who are campaigning to replace the monarchy with a democratically elected head of state, and whose members were among those arrested during the coronation, released a statement saying, "The right to protest peacefully in the UK no longer exists. Instead we have a freedom to protest that is contingent on political decisions made by ministers and senior police officers.

“The right to dissent and protest is one of the most profound and important rights in a democracy. Many people will disagree with what we were protesting about, but that right to protest must be protected. Anyone may find themselves wanting to protest against a government policy, a grave injustice or in solidarity with victims of a visiting world leader. Such protests must always be freely conducted as a matter of right, not on the basis of permission from the state."

We all have causes we care very deeply about, some deeply enough to take to the streets and protest. Whether it's the cost of living crisis, LGBTQ+ rights, racial inequality, wage theft and unfair working conditions, religious freedoms or even anti-monarchist sentiments, people have a right to assemble, and a right to express themselves peacefully. If we saw any other country arresting people simply for seeking to voice their criticism of people in power, we might draw the kind of comparisons that could earn you a temporary hiatus from Match of the Day.

There's a quote that's often wrongly attributed to Voltaire that was actually written by his friend, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, which states, "I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This quote is incredibly overused, but for good reason, it perfectly distils the ways in which freedom of speech should not be constrained or limited based on disagreement with the speech, lest those limitations extend to all speech. Think what you want about the hereditary transference of divinely granted power to an unelected head of state, but to silence criticism by arresting protestors sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

When we cannot criticise those in power, they are in possession of too much of it. You don't have to agree with the protestors, you can hate their views, despise them and everything they stand for, but if your idea of free speech includes only that which you deem acceptable, it is only a matter of time until the views you wish to express are also deemed counterintuitive to the interests of the state.