"We need to check your thinking...": the slow sad death of English free speech

Plenty of you will have seen the ridiculous tale of Humberside Police investigating a "transphobic hate incident" that involved a bloke retweeting a limerick. There was no crime (Humberside cops are clear about this) but the police officer still felt that:

“We need to check your thinking”.

Take a second to absorb what this means. What exactly is the police officer doing here? The message seems to be 'you didn't break the law but you thinking is wrong and we have to correct you'. Here's officer's words:

“Although none of the tweets were criminal, I said to Mr Miller that the limerick is the kind of thing that upsets the transgender community. I warned him that if it escalates we will have to take further action. If someone comes forward and says: ‘I’m the victim of a hate incident and it’s really upsetting me’, then we have to investigate”

We have reached something of a tipping point over the transgender issue. It's not that one or other side in the debate is right or wrong but rather that one side - the side saying that a bloke in a dress doesn't become a woman just because he says he's a woman - is being threatened by the police and excluded by public authorities simply for expressing that opinion.

The hardest part about defending free speech has always been supporting people's right to say things that you find unpleasant or offensive. But this is necessary if we are to have a free society - without liberty in speech all other liberties become compromised. Here's Richard Sambrook, director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University:

...it’s a basic liberty. Intellectual restriction is as serious as physical incarceration. Freedom to think and to speak is a basic human right. Anyone seeking to restrict it only does so in the name of seeking further power over individuals against their will

Yet hardly a day passes without another example of our rights to speak being curtailed - from the new blasphemy laws of "hate incidents" through advertising bans to the use of obscure laws to curtail comedy. The police, local councils and self-appointed 'hate crime' organisations conspire to promote the myth that our society is peculiarly hateful and getting more hateful by the day. Politicians pour their souls out about trolls to their pals in the media, calling for bans on anonymity, regulation of social media and a host of other limits on the public's right to challenge those who hold power.

I raised this issue - slightly clumsily - at a Bradford Council scrutiny committee, pointing out that the police seemed far more concerned about hate "incidents" than actual crimes like burglary. Bradford Council employs a 'lead' on hate crime but not on burglary or robbery or indeed any other crime. We run adverts encouraging people to report hate incidents providing special hotlines, hundreds of places and spaces where reporting can be done. People are encouraged to see hate in clumsy language, to mark particular political opinions - not being a fan of mass immigration or thinking blokes in dresses shouldn't be allowed in ladies loos, for example - as uniquely hateful and requiring investigation and for the police to 'check your thinking'.

Here's my words from that meeting - I still think I'm right:

“There is a complete disconnect in respect to these priorities and the priorities of the communities I represent, and I think police lose credibility when they they focus on things that aren’t the concerns of the public.

“According to this report there has been 6,000 burglaries in the past 12 months. There is one reference to that in the report. I know from speaking to people that burglary is the single biggest concern of the people I represent.

“However, there is more focus in the report on hate crime, which I call ‘the new blasphemy.’ It seems you are putting effort and money trying to get more people to report someone writing something mean on Twitter rather than choosing to prioritise burglary.

“The only reason there is a rise in hate crime is because you are fishing for more people to report it.”

Free speech matters. It is time we started to challenge how public authorities - those who hold power over us - are curtailing free speech and using these controls to prevent people raising genuine and legitimate concerns about the policy choices of government and the actions of public servants.

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