What number of cops does it take to arrest one middle-aged sitcom author? That may sound like a joke – however there’s nothing humorous in regards to the reply.
When 57-year-old Graham Linehan, co-creator of the elegant Channel 4 comedy Father Ted, arrived at Heathrow from the US on Monday, armed police had been ready for him… 5 of them.
He was arrested ‘on suspicion of inciting violence, in relation to posts on X [the social media platform]’, based on an announcement from the Metropolitan police.
One of many contentious tweets featured an image of a trans rights demonstration in London, which Linehan captioned, ‘a photograph you possibly can scent’. One other denounced the demonstrators: ‘I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.’
The third acknowledged: ‘If a trans-identified male is in a female-only area he’s committing a violent, abusive act.’
It went on to advise: ‘Make a scene, name the cops and if all else fails, punch him within the balls.’
Graham Linehan was met by 5 armed police at Heathrow Airport on Monday and arrested ‘on suspicion of inciting violence’
The arrest is a part of a disturbing sample of heavy-handed harassment by police intent on punishing folks for refusing to evolve to slender Left-wing ideologies. And the Prime Minister has earned his repute as ‘Two-Tier Keir’ for precisely this motive
Linehan contends this final remark was meant as humour. You would possibly effectively really feel it’s not very amusing – however you may additionally really feel that it isn’t an incitement to real violence.
Both approach, it’s unattainable to know what impelled senior cops to ship 5 firearms specialists to make the arrest, as the author’s flight landed from Arizona. He couldn’t have been thought to be a possible worldwide fugitive or a bodily menace, not to mention some sort of terrorist.
But that’s how he was handled… as if he’d posted a bomb warning or tried to smuggle a gun by Customs.
His arrest over a sequence of facetious posts on social media proves past doubt {that a} vital proportion of the police pressure within the UK has change into radicalised.
What was once our primary technique of making certain legislation and order has now change into a subdivision of the LGBT rights charity Stonewall. They’ve made the trans subject their very own institutional campaign.
The gender-critical activist Maya Forstater, who co-founded an organisation known as Intercourse Issues, discovered police on her doorstep in July 2023, following a grievance of alleged ‘transphobia’
The Free Speech Union submit on social media after Linehan’s arrest, which was retweeted by JK Rowling. He claims he needed to go to a hospital (pictured) as a result of he was so careworn
The Irish comedy author is the co-creator of the elegant Channel 4 comedy Father Ted
If this arrest was a novel aberration, we would shake our heads in disbelief and transfer on. However it’s a part of a disturbing sample of heavy-handed harassment by police intent on punishing folks for refusing to evolve to slender Left-wing ideologies.
The Prime Minister has earned his repute as ‘Two-Tier Keir’ for precisely this motive. The Authorities is unashamedly utilizing the police to silence opposition to its social insurance policies, on immigration, on taxes and far else.
The hounding of ladies’s rights campaigners who oppose trans dogma is essentially the most egregious instance. The gender-critical activist Maya Forstater, who co-based an organisation known as Intercourse Issues, discovered police on her doorstep in July 2023, following a grievance of alleged ‘transphobia’. The inquiry remained open for 15 months.
At first police refused to disclose why they had been investigating her, although Forstater was warned that, if she refused to co-function, she might be marked as a ‘needed’ lady and face eventual arrest. Later, she was knowledgeable {that a} grievance had been made about one among her social media posts relating to a transgender GP.
‘It could be that individuals who’ve seen my tweets are offended or upset, or would favor that I didn’t utter them,’ Forstater mentioned. ‘There is no such thing as a proper to not be offended in a democratic society, nor to make use of the powers of the state to destroy different folks’s rights in pursuit of your personal political objectives.’
The author Julie Bindel was additionally visited by police after a grievance about one among her tweets was lodged by a transgender man in Holland.
Two officers visited her final November, at a Sunday lunchtime, and requested her to report back to the police station the next day, to clarify herself to a senior officer.
Ms Bindel refused. In the event that they needed her to talk to a senior officer, she mentioned, they need to have introduced one alongside. The police retreated, she mentioned, ‘with me haranguing all of them the way in which to the door in regards to the scandalous failure of the British justice system, and the stunning waste of police assets – with two constables despatched to research a tweet, when complaints of home violence are too usually ignored till ladies are murdered by their companions.’
This can be a double travesty. When disturbing home incidents routinely go unchecked, whereas tweets are policed so aggressively, this nation clearly has its priorities very unsuitable.
As an offended Linehan mentioned yesterday: ‘To me, this proves one factor past doubt: the UK has change into a rustic that’s hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to ladies, and much too accommodating to the calls for of violent, entitled, abusive males who’ve turned the police into their private goon squad.’
However additionally it is a stunning waste of restricted police assets that might be put to way more pressing use in a rustic the place a lot crime is now routinely ignored by the authorities, from shoplifting and housebreaking to drug dealing.
It’s indeniable that the ostentatious refusal of police to research such crimes does lead on to a rise in lawlessness.
Whether or not it’s masked youths on electrical bikes delivering packages of cocaine round our suburbs, or gangs swaggering round supermarkets stealing items by the shelfload, criminals now really feel more and more emboldened by police indifference. In the meantime, convicted criminals – together with probably paedophiles and rapists – are being launched early to alleviate overcrowding in our prisons.
But all of us are made to really feel that we needs to be very cautious about what we are saying on-line, and even in personal, for concern of committing a ‘non-crime hate incident’. That nebulous wording is all of the extra ominous for being a self-contradiction: if it’s not a criminal offense, why is it value investigating?
As books comparable to Franz Kafka’s The Trial and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-4 have chillingly taught us, it’s a brief step from guarding what we are saying out loud, to self-censoring our personal ideas. The overt purpose of the police is to discourage us from free thought, in addition to free speech.
This is applicable way more extensively than to trans points alone. The journalist Allison Pearson was visited early one Sunday morning final November by an officer who claimed to be, ‘investigating an incident or offence of doubtless inciting racial hatred on-line’.
Actually, her provocation had been to tweet a photograph of two cops posing for a photograph subsequent to 2 males with a flag within the colors of the Pakistani political social gathering Tehreek-e-Insaf. Mistakenly believing the image was taken at a pro-Gaza protest, she captioned it: ‘Take a look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.’ Ms Pearson later deleted the submit when her error was identified.
When Ms Pearson refused to attend a voluntary interview, the case was closed, although Sussex Police famous spitefully: ‘We don’t take the view {that a} crime didn’t happen, reasonably that there was no lifelike prospect of conviction primarily based on the proof out there.’
So the place did the crime happen? Inside her thoughts?
Small marvel that final month the US State Division raised considerations in regards to the erosion of free speech in Britain. UK residents, it warned, face ‘critical restrictions on freedom of expression’.
To be schooled within the fundamentals of free speech by Donald Trump’s White Home is deeply embarrassing for this nation, the birthplace of free speech. However because the arrest of Graham Linehan illustrates, embarrassment is the least of our issues.
- Professor Frank Furedi is the Director of the think-tank MCC Brussels
