THE story so far: JK Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, tweeted messages which some people interpreted as anti-trans. Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the Harry Potter films, then issued a message disagreeing with Rowling. Rowling then wrote an article explaining her views in more detail. Now, some staff at her publishers are refusing to work on her book because of her opinions.

There will be some out there who think all of this is A Bad Sign and a Threat To Freedom of Speech. They will say that writers like Rowling should be allowed to express their views on trans rights or anything else without staff at publishing houses trying to silence them. People said something similar when staff at Hachette in New York walked out over the decision to publish Woody Allen’s memoirs.

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You also hear the same kind of arguments being made by (usually right-wing) commentators who fear that a left-wing, pro-trans orthodoxy is suppressing freedom of speech. The only problem with that is the commentators constantly complain about the threat to the right to express their opinions in long articles in which they express their opinions and they fail to see the irony.

What’s more, to say that incidents like the one at Rowling’s publishers are a threat to freedom of speech – as the publisher itself seems to be suggesting – is to misunderstand how it works. The entire basis of freedom of speech is that it includes a freedom of response: you are free to say what you like but I am then free to say, or do, what I like in reply (within the law, obviously).

I’ll tell you a story to illustrate what I mean because, in a very small way, I once did what the staff at Rowling’s publisher are doing. I was working at the Daily Record at the time and you may remember that the paper ran a campaign to retain Section 28, the law which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools.

What happened was that pretty much every day the paper would run stories that presented the case for keeping Section 28 and ignore the arguments for abolishing it and I went to my boss and told him I wasn’t prepared to work on these stories. I was told I didn’t have a choice and was being unprofessional but eventually it was agreed that I would be exempted from being involved in anything to do with the campaign.

The funny thing is that I didn’t realise that I even had this line in the sand until I came across it and I’m not a rebellious type on the whole, but I remember my anger at the time and why I did it. The views being expressed in the paper were so unacceptable to me that I wasn’t prepared to be a part, even in a small way, of promoting them and so – much to my surprise – I made a bit of a stand about it.

The bigger point is that, in the end, I actually supported the right of the editor of the Daily Record to promote his views just as I support the right of JK Rowling to promote hers. But the staff at newspapers or publishers then have the right to express their views and do what they think is right in response. There are different levels of power at work of course, but this is how freedom works: both ways.

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The same applies to Rowling’s publishers. Ms Rowling has the right to tell us her opinions on trans rights, but the staff at her publisher then have the right to take whatever action they think necessary. The publishers Hachette have tried to say there’s a distinction between staff refusing to work on a book because they find the content upsetting and refusing to work on it because they disagree with a writer’s views outside their writing.

But it is not for the publisher to make that kind of distinction and tell its staff how to react – the staff have the freedom to react in their own way. Some of them may feel that merely by working on the book they are appearing to condone her views on trans rights and that is a decision for them. It is their freedom.

What then happens is that, in this world of freedoms, the publisher is able to do what they want in response, but what I hope they will do, as the Daily Record did in my case, is find other work for the staff who have objected to Ms Rowling. The principles of freedom of speech will then have been served. Ms Rowling has expressed her opinion. And the people working on her book have expressed theirs.

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