One day while perusing his grocery list at the local Tesco supermarket back in early 2019, Harry Miller got a message from his boss. The former policeman, now a member of the board of trustees at a bulk materials handling company on the Humber Estuary in northeast England, called back to be told that the police wanted to talk to him. Thinking it was some work-related criminal matter he might be able to assist with, Miller connected with police from the grocery store’s parking lot. That’s when he realized he was stepping through the postmodern looking glass, beginning a nearly three-year ordeal with his country’s increasingly unrecognizable legal system.
Police Constable Gul – his real surname (no first name was ever revealed) – of Humberside Police informed Miller that the force had received anonymous complaints about his social media activity. The police, Constable Gul explained, were calling to warn Miller about “30 Tweets in their possession”, including a re-Tweet of an (admittedly coarse) “feminist lyric”. Someone “down south” had been offended and reported him. The police considered Miller’s views to be transphobic and his Tweets a form of spreading hate. In one of them, Miller had written, “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.” (Miller’s lengthier account of the conversation is by turns comic and tragic.)
The quick-thinking ex-cop demanded to know whether he had actually committed a crime, and Gul replied he had not. But if his activities went on unchecked they might well “escalate into crime,” and Gul suggested Miller simply stop tweeting about politics. Miller then asked why police were even involved if no crime was committed. “I called,” replied Gul, “to check your thinking.” At this point, Miller informed Gul that “1984 is a dystopian novel, not a how-to manual.”
In today’s UK, however, George Orwell’s famous book about a totalitarian state that controls its subjects’ every action, utterance and thought increasingly is a how-to manual. Miller was in fact guilty of what is known in Great Britain today as a “Non-crime Hate Incident” (NCHI) – something that is just as bizarrely Orwellian and menacing as he feared. The concept apparently originates with Britain’s College of Policing in a document called the “Hate Crime Operational Guidance”. (Britain’s Free Speech Union (FSU) provides a good summary of its workings and implications.)
In contrast to an action such as theft, murder or fraud that can be objectively assessed for its criminality, an NCHI is entirely subjective. Any instance of speech can be designated an “incident” based only on the perception of the party who takes offence and complains concerning the purported motivation of the speaker, specifically if they display “hostility or prejudice.” Hostility is defined as “ill-will, ill-feeling and/or dislike.” Astoundingly, complaints can be launched by people with only second-hand knowledge of the “incident”: police officers or staff, family members, a “carer” or other professional who supports the complainant, someone who has knowledge of hate crimes in the area, or a person from the group allegedly targeted by the purported hostility – or, for good measure, “any other person.”
Britain’s College of Policing, in a document called Hate Crime Operational Guidance (left), lays out procedures to handle the Orwellian-sounding “Non-crime Hate Incident” (NCHI), in which any instance of speech can be designated an “incident” if even one person takes offence and claims it’s motivated by “hostility or prejudice”. (Source of right photo: Unsplash)
Scooping up offence-giving hostile fish in this countrywide net is made easier by NCHI protocols that upend many of Britain’s age-old norms of criminal procedure and legal standards – most egregiously the presumption of innocence. The complainant is automatically designated the “victim”, while the person accused of speaking freely is termed the “suspect”, creating the instant presumption that a wrong has been committed – and by whom. It is strongly implied that only members of certain groups can be “victims”, as defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.
Accusations, meanwhile, can be anonymous and police officers are instructed not to scrutinize the reasonableness of the accuser’s feelings. NCHIs, the FSU warns, can be recorded by police without the accused’s knowledge and without even investigating the complaint’s merits. When police do confront the accused, they are not even required to specify which of the person’s words or social media posts caused the offence.
Miller is by no means alone. His sort of ordeal has grown common across Great Britain, the country that did more than any other to transform free speech from a radical fantasy into a bedrock right to be exercised by every citizen. Public discourse in the UK has become increasingly scrutinized, with NCHIs now totalling in the hundreds of thousands and state authorities questioning, arresting and often sentencing people for perceived offensive language or even thoughts. Flashpoints have included gender ideology, Covid-19/vaccine policy and friction surrounding mass immigration and difficulty integrating newcomers. The semi-independent government of Scotland has even proposed policing speech within private homes.
Opponents of these measures face both social/professional cancellation and the full weight of state censure. Many have suffered far worse than Miller, including harsh denunciations by judges in open court, heavy financial penalties or outright imprisonment. All for a wayward comment or two. Similar things are happening in European countries like Germany – where citizens are fined or jailed for criticizing sitting politicians, and government officials actually boast about their thought cops in foreign media like 60 Minutes. The EU’s vast censorship law, the Digital Services Act, recently helped to overturn an election result in Romania.
And Canada narrowly avoided travelling a similar road when its own Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which carried even worse sanctions than in the UK, died with the prorogation of Parliament in January. But newly elected Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney has already mused about attempting similar legislation.
Prevent Genocide: Stamp Out Bad Thoughts!
British life has become so bewildering that famous early 20th century Czech satirist Franz Kafka’s The Trial mirrors actual recent events and is jostling with 1984 as the better descriptor of what is happening. Comedian/journalist Andrew Doyle has expounded on how the grotesque workings Kafka depicted have become realities of life in Britain.
The convoluted and legally self-contradictory concept of the ‘non-crime hate incident’ is believed to have arisen from a 1999 government-ordered inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The young black man was stabbed to death at a London bus stop by a gang of white youths.
The UK College of Policing’s “guidance” regarding the investigation of “non-crimes” is excruciatingly detailed and runs to almost 100 pages of legalese. The sheer length implies state surveillance of citizens’ speech is here to stay – and that, with enough community vigilance, anonymous snitching and policing, hate and hateful behaviour can be extirpated.
The convoluted and legally self-contradictory concept of the “non-crime hate incident” is believed to have arisen from a 1999 government-ordered inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The young black man was stabbed to death at a London bus stop by a gang of white youths in what was judged to be a racially-motivated attack. It was not until 2012 that two of them, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were convicted of the murder after Norris and another gang-member were jailed for attacking an off-duty black policeman.
The inquiry, headed by High Court Judge Sir William Macpherson, found that London’s Metropolitan Police had committed numerous procedural errors in the murder investigation, due at least in part to what Macpherson viewed as institutional racism. He made 70 recommendations for reform. Lawrence’s friend Duwayne Brooks, who witnessed the crime, was ultimately paid £100,000 by the police for what was characterized as “racist stereotyping”.
Macpherson’s inquiry also established concepts and practices that would prove far less positive, one of which became known as the “Macpherson Principle”. It holds that “all complaints about incidents of racism should be investigated as such, when…perceived by the complainant or someone else as acts of racism.” [Emphasis added] This was meant not only to address perceived racism but to help prevent it, and it became the precise usage in the NCHI protocol. As cited by the FSU, police now view NCHI-based enforcement as necessary to “prevent escalation” and even stop people “questioning the identity of various groups.”
Underpinning the College of Policing’s approach – as Harry Miller would learn years later – is something called “Allport’s Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination”. Named after mid-20th-century American psychologist Gordon Allport, the framework postulates a spectrum of hateful behaviour. Beginning with “anti-locution”, which entails stating negative views about “outgroups” – the severest of which is “hate speech” – the scale proceeds through avoidance of people one doesn’t like, to discrimination against them, physical attack and, ultimately, extermination. This implies that offensive Tweets stand atop a slippery slope leading inevitably to violence, mass-murder and genocide.
Allport’s Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination, named for mid-20th century American psychologist Gordon Allport (left), holds that “anti-locution”, or speaking negatively about “outgroups”, leads inevitably to violence and mass-murder; Allport believed prosecuting many small acts would stop broader violence. (Source of left photo: Harvard University Archives, HUP Allport, G. (14), Ricci Bertocci)Allport also made the gigantic assumption that suppressing the former could actually prevent the middle and latter – that by prosecuting many small acts, broader social degradation and violence could be forestalled – thus appearing to anticipate a form of the much later “broken windows” theory of policing. This kind of thinking has certainly been internalized and is now applied as axiomatic in the UK, not just by the police but “civil society” organizations. As handily summarized in material from an “LGBTeaching” website, for example, “making jokes” about an identifiable group leads directly to “World War 2, Rwanda and Bosnia.”
And upon that ludicrously rickety logical scaffolding, the UK’s authorities set about dismantling a centuries-old structure of free expression, legal standards and criminal procedures, one largely designed to prevent miscarriages of justice. Free speech thus comes to be seen as just one of a number of competing “values”, and by no means the most important one, readily to be sacrificed to other social goals such as “social cohesion”, freedom from insult or protection against offence.
What is a Non-crime Hate Incident (NCHI) in the UK, and how does it work?
A Non-crime Hate Incident (NCHI) occurs when someone takes offence at something another person has said, written or posted online, such as on social media, specifically if the complainant feels the speaker displayed “hostility or prejudice”. NCHIs are a creation of the UK’s College of Policing, and weaken or abandon many of Britain’s established rules of criminal procedure, such as the presumption of innocence.
Anyone can launch a complaint, and the complainant — who can remain anonymous — is automatically designated the “victim” while the person accused is termed the “suspect.” As put into practice, members of certain groups are considered “victims”, as defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.
British police officers are instructed not to scrutinize the reasonableness of the accuser’s feelings, and NCHIs can be recorded by police without the accused’s knowledge and without even any investigation of the complaint’s merits. If police do confront the accused, they are not required to specify which of the person’s words or social media posts caused the offence.
A person who commits an NCHI can be publicly denounced and then fined or even imprisoned under other British anti-free-speech and anti-hate laws. An NCHI itself does not even mean a crime has been committed, but it does become part of the accused’s police record. Britain’s Free Speech Union (FSU) notes that this can harm a person years later should a prospective employer request an enhanced criminal records check (even though they’re not actually a criminal).
Visitors for Morning Coffee
Essex-based newspaper columnist Allison Pearson had laid out her clothes, jewelry and new poppy for Remembrance Sunday commemorations last November when her husband shouted, saying there was someone calling for her at the door. It was the police. Apologizing that she was still in her dressing gown, she asked the policemen what was the matter – perhaps their street was being closed for the day’s parade?
“No,” said Constable S (his name was never revealed). “You’ve been accused of a non-crime hate incident.” The matter concerned a year-old Tweet. As Pearson later described in the Telegraph newspaper and was recorded by the FSU, the conversation proceeded as follows. “What did this post I wrote that offended someone say?” she asked. The police claimed they weren’t allowed to disclose that. “What’s the name of the person who made the complaint?” Couldn’t say that either. Pearson pressed: “You can’t give me my accuser’s name?” “It’s not ‘the accuser’,” corrected the constable, “They’re called ‘the victim’.”
And so it began. Essex police soon publicly confirmed that Pearson was being investigated for “alleged criminal racial hatred” (rather than an NCHI). The same report maintains the alleged offence had to do with Pearson re-posting and commenting on pictures of a pro-Palestinian demonstration after the October 7th, 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas terrorists. Her “crime” was to mistakenly lambaste London’s Metropolitan Police for willingly cozying up to supporters of a radical Pakistani Political Party – when it was actually Essex police who’d been photographed doing so. And in any event, Pearson had quickly deleted the photo upon realizing her error.
Columnist Allison Pearson (top) was investigated for “alleged criminal racial hatred” after re-posting and commenting on pictures of a pro-Palestinian demonstration; she became a cause célèbre, with new British Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch (bottom left) and Reform UK MP Nigel Farage (bottom right) denouncing the police’s heavy-handed tactics. (Sources of photos: (top) Free Speech Union; (bottom left) HM Treasury, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; (bottom right) European Parliament, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Any number of regular people might well have crumbled under the threat of criminal prosecution for a mere slip-up in a social media posting, and understandably so. Pearson, however, became something of a cause célèbre, the police’s heavy-handed treatment being denounced by the likes of Elon Musk, new British Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Reform UK MP Nigel Farage, who himself has suffered attempted cancellation for his conservative views. It seems if one intends to speak freely in the British Isles these days, it sure helps to have backing from friends in high places.
Essex police eventually dropped their investigation of Pearson, retreating behind a smokescreen of doublespeak. “[We] investigate crimes reported to us without fear or favour,” the force stated, insisting it works “hard to remain impartial and investigate allegations regardless of where they might lead.” The most Orwellian flourish was left to the city’s police commissioner, who stated with an almost comic lack of self-awareness, “We were not the thought police.”
It is more than merely ironic, it’s tragic, outrageous and utterly avoidable that free speech is being dismantled with the greatest fervour in the very country that did more than any other to make it a cornerstone of Western civilization.
It’s important to recognize that just because someone in a situation like Pearson’s ultimately escapes prosecution doesn’t mean they escape punishment. Even if the person is never charged or ever sees the inside of a courtroom, their NCHI is recorded by the police, often without their being informed, becoming forever part of their police record. As the FSU notes, this can harm them years down the road should a prospective employer request an enhanced criminal records check (even though they’re not a criminal). Career opportunities could evaporate and one’s livelihood be destroyed based on the overwrought emotions, misplaced perceptions or sheer malice of an anonymous complainant, or the poor judgment of a woodenly dogmatic police officer – neither of whom is ever held to account.
The Dismantling of Free Speech in the Land of its Birth
It is more than merely ironic, it’s tragic, outrageous and utterly avoidable that free speech is being dismantled with the greatest fervour in the very country that did more than any other to make it a cornerstone of Western civilization. Great Britain justifiably became known as the cradle of free expression in the modern era.
The tradition dates back at least to England’s 1689 Bill of Rights, which established the right to free speech within Parliament, as well as “the principles of frequent parliaments [and] free elections,” known today as parliamentary privilege. The Bill of Rights began to formalize trends that were already well underway. Earlier in the 17th century, for example, John Milton, who had his own works censored, asserted the importance of “liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience.”
Cradle of free expression: England’s 1689 Bill of Rights established the right to free speech within Parliament; earlier that century, poet John Milton (right) had asserted the importance of the “liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience.” At left, House of Commons, from The Microcosm of London by Rudolf Ackermann, 1808-1811.The parade of remarkable British figures over the past half-millennium who dedicated their careers and in some cases sacrificed their lives for freedom of conscience, thought, belief, opinion – and speech – could populate a boulevard of commemorative statues, their words and ideas filling a library of great books. Sir Edward Coke, the Wentworths, philosopher John Locke and journalists Gordon and Trenchard are just a few examples.
Over these centuries, free speech strengthened from a novelty enjoyed mainly by an elite gathered to discuss the King’s business to something like a birthright of citizenship. Debates in that very Parliament became pointed, raucous, sarcastic, offensive and often personal. The written record of the “Mother of Parliaments” itself could be seen as something of a how-to manual concerning the things British police forces from one end of the country to the other are now trying to stamp out.
It also became recognized that, for speech to be truly free, its legal protections had to extend precisely to those people and forms that nearly everyone else dislikes, fears or is discomfited by. Philosopher John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay On Liberty is still often quoted in debates about the social utility of free speech. In warning of the tyranny of majority opinion, Mill argued that only through open debate could questionable if not incorrect ideas be identified and society advance its knowledge of truth. This made the erroneous ideas themselves not only tolerable but, he believed, valuable. The “free market of ideas”, Mill wrote, provides a “reliable social mechanism for identifying error, for locating truth and…in the aggregate, for advancing social knowledge.”
And while the advancement of free speech was long associated with liberals if not radicals, in the 20th century conservatives became arguably its foremost champions. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher believed that only through freedom of discussion “over a whole society,” avoiding imposed “correct viewpoints, could new ideas be developed.” The “Iron Lady” further maintained that free speech should apply to all, even those with apparently distasteful views. When local Conservatives tried to ban firebrand MP Enoch Powell from speaking, Thatcher asserted that “those who use this country’s great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others.”
In this, Thatcher represented the train of thought going back through Mill to Milton and beyond. Following the Thatcher era, the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act formally enshrined free speech rights, in keeping with the European Convention on Human Rights, which states every individual has “the right to freedom of expression” including the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference.”
But today, the UK’s organs of governance and law enforcement are not only failing to uphold this glorious tradition, they are seemingly dismantling it to satisfy the sensitivities of as few as one aggrieved person. There’s a veritable array of legislation, like the 2023 Online Safety Act (which among other things outlaws causing “needless anxiety”), that severely undermines if not negates the above laws. The FSU notes how low the bar for complaints and investigation is, citing the College of Policing’s Hate Operational Guidance: “The victim (sic) does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of [the] hostility is not required.” In 2023 alone, UK police reported, over 13,000 NCHIs were filed – some against schoolchildren.
Debating in the House of Lords late last year, unaffiliated Peer Ian Austin stated that he himself had been investigated for accurately calling Hamas “Islamists”. (One wonders what might have happened had Austin quoted Hamas’s Charter.) Previously, the country’s sitting Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, was charged with an NCHI over a complaint about her pledge in a speech to a Conservative Party convention that she’d try to ensure foreign workers weren’t “taking jobs British workers could do.” The complainant, Oxford professor Joshua Silver, claimed he believed “politicians have been using hate speech to turn Britons against foreigners.” Silver thus legally weaponized a mere difference of political opinion.
What role do the police play in monitoring online speech in the UK?
Police in the UK respond to complaints about speech and social media posts flagged as offensive, even when no crime has occurred (known as a Non-crime Hate Incident, or NCHI). A document from Britain’s College of Policing called the “Hate Crime Operational Guidance” declares that, “The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.”
Britain’s Free Speech Union reports that about 120,000 NCHIs were recorded in England and Wales between 2014 and 2019 – on average, more than 65 per day. In 2023 alone, UK police reported, over 13,000 NCHIs were filed, some against schoolchildren.
In what became the famous Harry Miller case, a law-abiding ex-policeman was contacted by police over 30 tweets, including the retweet of a feminist poem. Though the tweets were not criminal, the investigating officer told Miller that if his activities went on unchecked they might well “escalate into crime,” that police wanted “to check your thinking,” and that Miller should simply stop writing about politics.
And Now the Rub – Two-Tiered Policing
The FSU reports that about 120,000 NCHIs were recorded in England and Wales between 2014 and 2019 – on average, more than 65 per day. Meanwhile, “conventional” crime has far from abated, with the same authorities who are criminalizing speech and eagerly pursuing malefactors unwilling or unable to clamp down on actual criminals. As Lord Austin noted in the aforementioned speech, “Just 2 percent of rapes and 4 percent of burglaries lead to someone being charged, shoplifting has been virtually decriminalised and there is an epidemic of mobile phone theft on the streets of London.”
The UK’s Free Speech Union notes that between 2015 and 2021 almost 1 million domestic burglary investigations ended without a suspect being identified. One category of wrongdoing is considered unforgivable in today’s UK, however: racism.
Echoing Austin’s thoughts, journalist Allison Pearson describes the “lackadaisical” treatment of a friend who reported domestic violence to the same Essex police investigating Pearson. Police, the friend said, told her, “a) It was a first offence so the abusive person probably wouldn’t get charged so not worth bothering; b) The prisons were full so not worth bothering; and c) It was only my friend’s word against their partner.” One wonders what ever happened to “believe all women”. The UK, Pearson asserts, is suffering “an epidemic of stabbings, burglaries and violent crime.” The FSU notes in corroboration that between 2015 and 2021 almost 1 million domestic burglary investigations ended without a suspect being identified.
One category of wrongdoing is considered unforgivable in today’s UK, however, overriding and influencing the enforcement of all others: racism. And this brings us to the nexus of what otherwise should be unconnected trends: the overall issue of free speech, mass migration and asylum-seeking, the seeming inability or refusal of some immigrant populations to adapt themselves to democratic values, and the UK’s status vis-à-vis Europe.
There’s an odd ideological consensus that these issues underlay Brexit, with one side bluntly asserting that leaving the EU was based on racism. The argument goes that, due to economic hardship, “Leave” voters believed migrants damaged their prospects.
This debate has flared up and, at times, intensified sharply since the 2016 Brexit vote. In the year ended September 30, 2024, Britain accepted about 100,000 asylum seekers – many arriving from France in small boats – and had total net immigration of 728,000. How are they all to be integrated, many Britons wonder; how are jobs and housing to be found?
Things came to a head after 11 children were stabbed at a Taylor Swift dance party at Southport (near Liverpool) last July 29. Bebe King, aged 6, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 9-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed. The authorities’ initial refusal to provide key details about the tragedy sparked confusion and rumours, including that the perpetrator was an Islamist and/or an asylum-seeker. The authorities vociferously denounced such “speculation”, but it was correct in the main. Although 18-year-old suspect Axel Rudakubana was born in Wales, he was the son of migrants and, critically, was in possession of the nerve poison Ricin and an al Qaeda manual. (Rudakubana last fall pled guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to 52 years in prison.)
As the story developed, social media lit up and riotous protests broke out across the country. For UK officials, it must have seemed like Allport’s Scale of Prejudice was playing out in real time. A week after Rudakubana’s murderous rampage, a mob attacked a Holiday Inn Express housing asylum-seekers in Rotherham. The riot injured 64 police officers, as well as four dogs and a horse.
In this instance, British justice was swift and sure – if not necessarily fair. Across the UK, 652 rioters were charged and over 200 convicted by August 23 – i.e., within the space of three weeks. Among these was 61-year-old grandfather Peter Lynch, who pled guilty to violent disorder and was sentenced to two years, eight months in prison. Lynch was described as having screamed “racist and provocative remarks” at police and called asylum seekers “child killers” while holding a handmade sign alleging the corruption of MPs, the WHO and Davos, amongst others.
“You did not yourself attack any police officer, as far as can be detected,” admitted the presiding judge at Lynch’s trial. “But what you did was encourage by your conduct others to behave violently and you were part of this mob.” So unlike 98 percent of British rapists and 96 percent of burglars, Lynch went to the slammer. And in contrast to its typical reticence about the identities or race of violent criminals and terrorists, the BBC in this case helpfully provided detailed descriptions, including a mug shot of Lynch. Less than two months later, he was found hanging dead in his jail cell.
Police also went after uninvolved observers injudicious enough to comment on social media. Cheshire entrepreneur and online “influencer” Bernadette Spofforth was held by police for 36 hours after sending “false communications” in connection with the Southport stabbings. As usual, the police refused to say what Spofforth had actually done. According to the online journal Spiked, she had deleted her post within an hour but gave contradictory accounts of where she got the misinformation or why she spread it. After a long back-and-forth, charges were dropped for “insufficient evidence”. To this day, the Cheshire police website defames Spofforth as “publishing written material to stir up racial hatred” [emphasis added], i.e., convicting her of malicious intent without any such thing being established.
Grandmother Julie Sweeney was not so lucky, relatively speaking. Her admittedly inflammatory comments on social media got her sentenced to 15 months in jail. Judge Steven Everett termed her a “keyboard warrior” and asserted that “even people like you need to go to prison.” Sweeney had already been ritually convicted by the BBC, whose analysis claimed that her “single social media post” falsely stating that the Southport assailant was “a migrant” helped cause the subsequent violence. Again the implication was that if the authorities can just control behaviour and language, they can also prevent or at least diminish anarchy and chaos. Thank you, Dr. Allport.
The contrary view is that the UK has a reality problem surrounding the integration of newcomers (and, often, their children), soaring crime, and incompetent or selective law enforcement – not a language problem concerning the discussion of these issues.
Perhaps the worst example of this is finally becoming clear with the still-emerging details of a two-decade-old wave of sexual and violent crimes: Britain’s euphemistically called “grooming gangs”. The sexual trafficking of possibly as many as 100,000 low-income and working-class girls – nearly all of them white – in cities throughout northern England is an explosive topic with a disturbing timeline. It took almost a decade for authorities to react meaningfully to recurring reports of the crimes beginning in 2001. Critics claim the disinterest of police and most media stemmed from evidence pointing to nearly all the perpetrators being men of South Asian origin, specifically Pakistani Muslims.
In January, Elon Musk lit up social media by highlighting the re-emerged scandal – and was immediately accused of spreading misinformation. Despite a government MP calling for a comprehensive public inquiry – which would seem in order to get at the truth and clear the air of “misinformation” – Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has refused, although local inquiries may be held. Many assert, however, that no further investigation is needed, fearing it would stir up more unrest. One recent report argues that, while institutional failures “were profound and horrifying…we gain nothing from retreading old ground” and that doing so only triggers “assumptions about what abuse looks like and who is likely to be a perpetrator or a victim.”
For many in today’s UK, then, the fear of stirring up racism over a massive wave of rapes, abuse and violence up to and including murder is a larger issue than the crimes themselves.
How have UK immigration law and the infamous Southport stabbing contributed to recent unrest in the country?
Immigration policy in the UK has seen large numbers of asylum-seekers enter the country, with 100,000 accepted in the year ended September 20, 2024, and a net immigration figure of 728,000. This has led to concerns over how so many immigrants can be integrated, and how jobs and housing can be found for everyone.
Things came to a head after 11 young children were stabbed at a Taylor Swift dance party at Southport (near Liverpool) on July 29, 2024, of whom three died. The murderer was a migrants’ son who was in possession of the nerve poison Ricin and an al Qaeda manual. The Southport stabbing led to riots that saw 652 protestors charged in less than three weeks, some for having yelled “racist and provocative remarks” or for “stirring up racial hatred.”
Critics contend that authorities are so fixated on policing speech that they have ignored very real problems of violent crime and immigrant integration, and instead have gone after those protesting police indifference to the UK’s rising criminality.
Destroying Democracy in Order to Save it
How the UK currently approaches social unrest and the surrounding public debate is instructive and shocking, though perhaps no longer completely surprising. Authorities at all levels – under whichever party happens to hold office – seek to either ignore or downplay problems and, when things get heated, censure critics and ban criticism in the name of a higher good. But the tide of justice always seems to run in one direction, driven by who the government likes and who it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, drawing upon the constitutionally protected free speech conferred upon American citizens, Musk dubbed Starmer ‘Two-tier Keir’ for the blatant disparity in law enforcement response between the Southport-related riots and the almost 20 months of pro-‘Palestinian’ demonstrations in Britain.
Knowing the typically plodding pace of government activity, that it remains capable of moving with alacrity in certain cases has not gone unnoticed. Over 1,000 arrests were made after the Southport-related riots, and an astonishing 5,500 serving criminals were released to make room for them. Authorities stated that the released criminals wouldn’t include prisoners “convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offenses.” Presumably, then, other violent offenders were released. Simultaneously, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood cut the proportion of time that inmates must serve behind bars from 50 percent to 40 percent of their original sentence.
Meanwhile, drawing upon the constitutionally protected free speech conferred upon American citizens, Musk dubbed Starmer “Two-tier Keir” for the blatant disparity in law enforcement response between the Southport-related riots and the almost 20 months of pro-“Palestinian” demonstrations in Britain, with their flagrant ongoing illegality plus frequent threats and incitements to violence. Reports estimate there have been at least 24 “major” pro-Palestinian protests in London since the October 7th atrocities.
One was provocatively held on Remembrance Day 2023 and drew an estimated 300,000 marchers. While an incident in which “150 protesters wearing face coverings…[launched] fireworks that struck officers in their faces” led to some arrests, authorities expressed more concern about the “extreme violence from the right-wing [counter] protesters towards the police,” arresting 126 of them. On other protest days, police at times arrested entirely peaceful solitary counter-protesters, including one man walking along peacefully whose only crime was to look “openly Jewish”. Previous UK governments have been credibly accused of similar favouritism towards BLM and Just Stop Oil protests.
Such disparities contrast with the overall threat assessment of MI5, the domestic security and counter-intelligence agency, which states that Islamism represents 75 percent of all identified terrorist threats to the UK. An “extreme interpretation of Islam or perceived grievances against ‘the West’” motivate perpetrators, who seek “to carry out attacks using unsophisticated or low-sophistication methodologies,” MI5 states. About 40,000 such extremists are on MI5’s watchlist.
The cost of policing the continuing pro-Palestinian protests has been prohibitive, with up to 3,000 officers being deployed per month during the first six months after October 7, the cost in London alone reaching about Cdn$75 million. This, as the London Post put it, at a time when Britain’s beleaguered National Health Service “is stretched to breaking point, knife crime is rampant, the cost of living is spiralling out of control…cities and towns are crumbling, and mental health is in freefall.”
Of course, there were plenty of resources to investigate Harry Miller, Allison Pearson, Bernadette Spofforth and thousands of other ordinary Britons. (Many such examples are described in this article.) Nearly three years after posting the feminist poem that apparently offended one still unidentified person, in late 2021 Miller won a challenge to his NCHI in the Court of Appeal, the judge criticizing the “volume of non-crime hate speech” investigations, the inability to exclude “irrational complaints” and the “chilling effect which this may have on the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.”
Meanwhile, charges against Pearson and Spofforth were dropped, while keyboard-granny Sweeney remains in prison. Peter Lynch is dead.
Britain’s asymmetrical justice and campaign to cripple free speech were called out by U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance in his recent speech at the Munich Security Conference. Besides famously making the German conference chair cry, Vance zeroed in on the UK’s increasingly oppressive treatment of those who express the wrong ideas, including multiple arrests of individuals praying silently in public – i.e., merely thinking incorrectly. One woman, Isobel Vaughan-Spruce, was arrested near an abortion clinic despite, as Vance put it, “not holding a sign, or leaflets, or religious objects.” Police conducted a body search and “asked if she had been praying.”
In contrast to the widespread, often heavy-handed censorship practised by the Joe Biden Administration, Vance and his colleagues appear committed to fighting censorship and may even undertake a “free speech foreign policy.” The U.S. government is actively monitoring the case of another peaceful protester, 64-year-old Livia Tossici-Bolt, who faces criminal charges for holding a sign reading “Here to talk” at a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio buttonholed Starmer on the topic during his recent visit to the White House, and it was recently reported that Vance and other American officials have sought to tie improvements in free speech to the UK snagging its sought-after trade deal with the U.S.
No Second Thoughts – Just Doubling-Down
Britons yearning to regain the liberty to express themselves without fear of losing their jobs or going to prison may well need to pin their hopes on Vance & Co., because they’re getting little help from inside the UK. Conservative leader Badenoch, who rose to prominence at least partly on her reputation as a warrior for free speech, recently rebuked the Americans, stating that her country’s abortion clinic “buffer zones” and the related criminalization of opposition to them had been duly passed by Parliament, and that the U.S.’s concerns about them were “more commentary rather than reality.” And while Farage regularly speaks up on free speech issues – recently blasting Scotland’s new hate speech legislation as a “very dangerous, slippery slope” – his influence is limited.
Meanwhile, Starmer’s Labour government is only intensifying the British state’s war against fundamental freedoms, while the police apparently ignore the Harry Miller ruling. The Times of London and the FSU report that Labour’s proposed Employment Rights Bill which, amongst other things, seeks to protect workers from harassment, could further quash free expression. As absurd as this sounds, tipplers in a pub could be charged if their conversation on, say, gender ideology offends a server who happens to overhear it. And saying one was expressing one’s religious convictions may not be an adequate defence.
The think-tank Policy Exchange UK advocates widening the UK’s already-fearsome war on free expression, and casting aside restraints upon the police or other authorities to go after those they deem impediments to progressivism, victimology and identity politics.
The Starmer government last year actually cancelled legislation passed by the previous Conservative government to formally protect free speech at British universities. Instead it initiated a sweeping plan to combat “extremism”, whose details were leaked in January. The “rapid analytical sprint” was announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as a response to “extremist ideology online” and the growing street unrest. Besides Islamism and “far-right” extremism, the initiative means to deal with issues like “extreme misogyny or beliefs [fitting] into broader categories like fixation on violence.”
The “non-partisan” think tank Policy Exchange UK notes approvingly that this “sprint” defines a spectrum of “behaviours” to be targeted, including “spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories,” misogyny or involvement in “an online subculture called the manosphere.” It asserts that accusations of two-tiered policing are a “right-wing extremist narrative” and recommends reversing moves to cut policing of NCHIs. It also proposes a new crime called “making ‘harmful communications’ online.” In other words, it advocates widening the UK’s already-fearsome war on free expression, and casting aside restraints upon the police or other authorities to go after those they deem impediments to progressivism, victimology and identity politics.
All this suggests fundamental freedoms in the UK will continue to be sacrificed to the sensitivities of the tiniest number of citizens and the ideology du jour of governing elites. The power of the state will be used to prosecute speech and thought crimes, rather than prosecuting, well, criminals. In future, like the archetypal Josef K in Kafka’s timeless novel – the true victim of an unjust justice system – authorities may find you guilty of something, even if they can’t say just what. And this could well be the shape of things to come in Carney-run Canada as well.
John Weissenberger is a Calgary-based geologist, freelance writer and amateur historian.
Source of main image: tj.blackwell, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
