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The British state is crushing free speech

 

Rather than instructing police officers to act as glorified social media moderators, we should free their time to work on serious crimes

 

When US vice-president JD Vance criticised the “infringements on free speech” that are rapidly coming to define the UK’s international reputation, few were more offended than Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister – who in his previous role as Director of Public Prosecutions oversaw the unsuccessful prosecution of the Twitter joke trial – insisted that Britain was “very proud” of its “free speech”.

He would have done better to caveat his statement with “politically approved”. A string of cases have shown that free speech in Britain is under severe threat from an overbearing state, with little apparent appetite in Westminster to rein it in. The most recent entry in a long and dispiriting series has seen a retired special constable wrongly arrested and jailed for a social media post condemning anti-Semitism.

Shocking body-worn footage shows officers searching the home of Julian Foulkes, 71, pointing to “Brexity” material on his shelves, prior to his being held in a police cell for eight hours then released with a caution.

This latest incident – as with the hounding of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, the investigation of Labour MP Ian Austin for calling Hamas “Islamist” and the police visiting writer Julie Bindel without explaining which tweet had triggered their visit – follows a familiar and worrying pattern. In each case, the initial legal wrong has to date been redressed; the chilling effect of the investigations remains.

The thought that a loosely worded comment could result in massive legal bills, the shame of arrest, a stint in jail and potentially a criminal sentence is understandably exerting an unwelcome force on public discourse, limiting necessary criticism and discussion.

Some in Westminster may see this as a feature rather than a bug. Over time, the meaning of “policing by consent” has shifted from the support of a singular British community, to the buy-in of multiple communities with conflicting interests and opinions. And as the set of overlapping interests has narrowed, so too the model of policing has shifted to managing and suppressing “community tensions” rather than protecting and upholding the rights and liberties of the individual.

This is a poor model. Rather than instructing police officers to act as glorified social media moderators, we should free their time to work on serious crimes, and free the public to engage in frank conversation without the creeping fear of an early morning knock on the door. As things stand, Britain’s dismal record on free speech deserves every criticism Mr Vance had to offer. If we dislike this, we should work to fix our laws rather than object to being shown a mirror.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/2835ca32bd2c9b7d

 

 

Retired police officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet

 

Pensioner held after Palestinian march post on social media, with ‘Brexity’ books in his home scrutinised

 

A retired special constable was arrested and detained over a social media post warning about the threat of anti-Semitism in Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.

 

Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the force he had served for a decade – after challenging a supporter of pro-Palestinian marches on X.

 

Police body-worn camera footage captured officers scrutinising the 71-year-old’s collection of books by authors such as Douglas Murray, a Telegraph contributor, and issues of The Spectator, pointing to what they described as “very Brexity things”.

 

They were also shown raising concerns about a shopping list containing bleach, tin foil and gloves drawn up by Mr Foulkes’s wife, a hairdresser.

“Free speech is clearly under attack,” said Mr Foulkes. “Nobody is really safe… the public needs to see what’s happening, and be shocked.”

His case is the latest in a string of heavy-handed police responses to lawful expression. Last year, The Telegraph revealed that its columnist Allison Pearson was questioned at home by two officers over an X post following pro-Palestinian protests.

 

Mr Foulkes’s house was searched, with officers seizing his electronic devices and removing them to a waiting police van. Officers also rifled through his most personal belongings. Fifteen years ago, his daughter Francesca was killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run while on holiday in Ibiza.

On the footage, one officer can be heard saying, “Ah. That’s sad,” as she examined newspaper clippings Mr Foulkes had kept about the police investigation and the funeral.

After his home was searched, the retired special constable was locked in a police cell for eight hours and interrogated on suspicion of malicious communications. Fearing that further escalation could impact his ability to visit his surviving daughter, who lives in Australia, he accepted a caution despite having committed no offence.

The incident took place in November 2023. This week, Kent Police admitted the caution was a mistake and deleted it from Mr Foulkes’s record.

 

In March, officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary arrested and detained the parents of a nine-year-old girl after they had complained about her school in a WhatsApp group, before concluding that no further action was required.

 

Ian Austin, a Labour MP, has also been investigated for calling Hamas “Islamist”, while Julie Bindel, the feminist writer, was visited by police after a transgender man reported her gender-critical tweets as an alleged “hate crime”.

 

On Saturday, a Kent Police spokesman told The Telegraph the force had “concluded that the caution against Mr Foulkes was not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued”.

The spokesman said “Kent Police expunged the caution from the man’s record and was pleased to facilitate this correction”, adding that a further review of the matter would now be carried out “to identify any learning opportunities”.

Mr Foulkes warned about what he sees as an escalating attack on freedom of expression, saying: “I saw Starmer in the White House telling Trump we’ve had it in the UK for a very long time, and I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’ We can see what’s really going on.

“I never saw anything like this when I was in the force. But this woke mind virus infecting everything has definitely infected the police.”

His ordeal began in October 2023, the month in which Hamas terrorists carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

In London, pro-Palestinian marches swept the capital, with cases of anti-Semitic chants and placards.

They were described as “hate marches” by Suella Braverman, then the home secretary, and Mr Foulkes was told by Jewish friends that they no longer felt safe travelling into London.

 

On Oct 30, he was concerned to see reports of an anti-Semitic mob storming an airport in Dagestan, Russia, hunting for Jewish arrivals.

 

The next morning, he logged on to X and saw a post from an account called Mr Ethical, which featured a Palestinian flag. It read: “Dear @SuellaBraverman – as someone who was on one of the ‘hate marches’, if you call me an antisemite I will sue you.”

He said he had never interacted with the account before, but replied to warn that pro-Palestinian protests could escalate and to support Mrs Braverman’s stance.

At 8.44am, he responded: “One step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals…”

In hindsight, he said, the tweet would have been clearer had it begun with the words: “What next? You are…”

But he said that even without the extra wording, it should have been clear to anyone reading it in context that his post was a warning about where anti-Semitic hate could lead.

However, on Nov 1, without Mr Foulkes’s knowledge, the Metropolitan Police Intelligence Command referred his post to Kent Police, citing “concerns around online content”.

On Sunday night, Mrs Braverman said: “We live in dangerous times when the police investigate speaking the truth.

“This outrageous and sorry episode shows not only that freedom of speech is under attack in the UK, but that it’s in crisis. Law-abiding people should not be investigated for non-existent thought crimes.

“The Met and Kent Police must investigate how this took place and formally apologise to Mr Foulkes. Both forces must be held accountable for their actions which were a shameful waste of time, money and resources.”

The X post had not been reported by the public, and why a specialist Met unit – usually focused on terrorism and extremism – flagged such an innocuous tweet remains unclear. At the time, it had been viewed just 26 times.

The next day, police arrived at Mr Foulkes’s home. He opened the door to find six uniformed officers, equipped with batons and pepper spray.

He said: “One at the front said, ‘are you Julian Foulkes?’ I said yes and she replied, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of an offence under the Malicious Communications Act.’ I was totally shocked – flabbergasted.

“Ten years, I gave them. Every year we were drilled on officer safety, told any use of force had to be justified. And they put me in cuffs on my own doorstep.”

One officer recognised Mr Foulkes from his time at Medway police station and told colleagues the handcuffs were not necessary. They were removed, but his ordeal had just begun.

For over an hour, he watched as former colleagues carried out a Section 32 search of his home, combing through the loft, the garage, and even his wife’s underwear drawer.

Officers showed particular interest in his bookshelves. One called for backup to help her inspect several titles. “Very Brexity things,” she can be heard saying on the body-worn camera footage.

Picking up a Eurosceptic book on Britain’s entry to the Common Market in the 1970s, she asked, “What the hell is this?” and passed it over to another officer, adding: “Very odd.”

One leafed through an edition of The War on the West, by Murray, while another looked through The Demise of the Free State by David Green, another Telegraph contributor.

“That’s about the level of extremist I am… a few Douglas Murray books and some on Brexit,” said Mr Foulkes.

In the kitchen, officers pored over cookbooks and scrutinised his wife’s shopping list. One remarks on the footage: “Bleach, foil, gloves… Bit of an odd list, isn’t it?” It takes several minutes before they realise that she is a hairdresser, and not stockpiling bomb-making materials.

Mr Foulkes was then driven to Medway police station, booked in, fingerprinted, photographed and had his DNA taken. “I asked what I’d done,” he said. “The officer said it was for a post of ‘an extremism nature’ – that’s all I was told.”

He was held in a cell for eight hours before he was interviewed at 9pm. He said it was only in the interview, when he was finally shown a screenshot of the allegedly offensive X post from Oct 31 that he grasped how surreal the situation had become.

“Kent Police decided to interpret my post as anti-Jewish,” he said. “But it was the exact opposite. If they’d looked at the full thread, they’d have understood. It would have taken two minutes. I told them there was more to it, but they didn’t pause the interview to check.”

He denied five times that he intended to cause distress or alarm, “but that was just ignored”. He was bailed and told to return on Feb 1 last year.

He had feared neighbours would see officers seizing his computers, iPad and phones and assume the worst, saying: “I was terrified they’d think I was a paedophile.”

Above all, he feared anything that might stop him from visiting his daughter in Australia. “My life wouldn’t be worth living if I couldn’t see her,” he said. “At the time, I believed a caution wouldn’t affect travel, but a conviction definitely would.”

At his lowest point, on Nov 7 – just days after being bailed – Mr Foulkes was told to return to Medway police station on Nov 10 so a caution could be issued.

“I didn’t agree, but I felt I had no choice,” he said. “In hindsight, it would never have gone to court. The CPS wouldn’t touch it with no evidence. But I wasn’t thinking logically at the time.”

By early last year, the injustice was weighing heavily. “It was always on my mind. I knew it was wrong on every level,” he said. “I knew if I didn’t act, I’d forever wonder – what if you’d challenged this?”

By last summer, he had found a new solicitor, Matthew Elkins of Legisia Legal Services, and began to challenge the caution, with news of its deletion confirmed on Tuesday last week.

While this was a relief, he said the fallout has been devastating. “It’s cost me money I can’t afford. I’m a pensioner – not one of these millionaire retirees you read about,” he said. “This was a disaster.”

The emotional damage, however, weighs the heaviest. “It’s like PTSD,” he said. “You push it to the back of your mind, but it comes back and you relive it.

“It was just so wrong – and especially painful because I’d spent 10 years working with these people for no remuneration. I did it because I believed in it and enjoyed it. I left with a certificate from the chief constable, thanking me for my service. Now, all those memories feel trashed.”

Mr Elkins, said: “Julian’s case highlights a need for the police to take stock, and to make freedom of expression their starting point – our freedoms won’t be taken from us suddenly, but by the quiet and gradual criminalisation of our conscience.

 

“The police face an almost impossible task monitoring social media, and they won’t enjoy being labelled the thought police, but when someone like Julian is dragged from his home the cap appears to fit.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “This incident occurred under the previous government.

“The Home Secretary has made clear that she believes all police forces should be focused on the central priorities of the Government’s Safer Streets Mission, including rebuilding neighbourhood policing, reducing anti-social behaviour, and making progress towards the unprecedented ambition to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls within a decade.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5bd827cff16c92dd