Harry Miller, the ex-copper who refused to take it lying down when he was told by Humberside Police that retweeting a comic verse about transgendered people would be recorded against his name on the police database as a ‘non-crime hate incident’, has won a tremendous victory today in the Court of Appeal today. (Full judgment here.) The Free Speech Union, which has been supporting Harry, has just issued a press release about the judgment.
The Free Speech Union welcomes today’s landmark judgement from the Court of Appeal that the recording of non-crime hate incidents is an unlawful interference with freedom of expression. As the Court says, the knowledge that such matters are being recorded and stored in a police database is likely to have had a serious “chilling effect” on public debate.
Not only does the recording of non-crime hate incidents violate Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as the Court said, but it is a huge waste of the police’s time.
Between 2014 and 2019, 34 police forces in England and Wales recorded a total of 119,134 non-crime hate incidents, an average of 65 a day. What possible justification can there be for the investigation and recording of ‘non-crimes’ when so many actual crimes go unsolved? Between 2015 and 2021, 964,197 domestic burglary investigations ended without a suspect being identified.
Toby Young, the Free Speech Union’s General Secretary, said: “The Free Speech Union is proud to have played a part in winning this landmark victory, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to Harry Miller. Thanks to his courage and tenacity, we can all rest a little easier in our beds tonight, knowing the police are not about to knock on our doors because we’ve made an inappropriate joke on Twitter. They should be policing our streets, not our tweets.”
A welcome bit of good news in an otherwise bleak pre-Christmas period. If you haven’t already joined the Free Speech Union, you can do so here. And if you want to see Harry talking about why the police have been so eager to follow guidance which, thanks to him, has been declared unlawful, see this clip from a panel discussion hosted by the FSU at this year’s Battle of Ideas.
Stop Press: I further explain the significance of this ruling in a piece for Mail Plus.
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I imagine most police officers are only too happy to have their ‘time wasted’ pursuing such easy targets as it saves them displaying their inadequacies confronting violent criminals, some of them the very same ‘downtrodden’ minorities that TY was speaking of.
£5 says the woke police ignore the ruling.
We have political policing these days.
PC PC is the default churned out desk-flyer (been on beat/response for no time) DI.
Exactly my thought. The ruling is on the books, but who will enforce it?
There’s plenty of that about, the police have less respect for law than most criminals.
The article didn’t seem to make clear if the court ruling applied only to Harry Miller or to non crime hate incidents in general. Does this ruling mean that every such incident has to be erased from police data bases? If the latter is the case will it lead a further legal challenge to ensure that it happens? Although this is a fantastic victory for free speech, it’s only the opening salvo in what will be a very long running battle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOippjLY_1A
IN THE NAME OF THE NHS, LET THERE BE LOCKDOWN
Andrew Lawrence
Not since Blair have the police been allowed to exercise Common Sense – didn’t he ban Common Sense as being non- politically correct, probably ‘racist’, and definitely ‘conservative’.
Were not those Police Officers who showed any ‘Common Sense’ – expelled from the Force ( sorry “service”)?
Not Common Sense just Common Purpose
Common Purpose indeed.. charity my arse.. its a damn 5th column..
I’d prefer they didn’t use common sense, take a look at the world the common folk have gleefully embraced these last 2 years. The law, nothing more nothing less, equal, fair and applied uniformly across all people is all I wish of the police. Unfortunately hardly any of them know the law and the courts seem to do as they are told.
None of this would be a problem if there wasn’t disclosure of recorded incidents to employers and third parties.
If the recording by the police was simply to give the police information when an issue was bubbling under the surface, and to provide an outlet for those who want to rant and whine to authority, then little would be said.
Nobody should be interviewed, warned or otherwise interfered with unless an actual crime has been committed.
At most, perception based recording should be for statistical and operational control purposes within the Police only, and should never be revealed to anybody else.
Your first and third paragraphs seem contradictory.
Non-crime hate incidents are recorded and disclosed to employers who require an extended disclosure check.
Recording it should be the limit of what happens, if we are to have such things. It should never go beyond that – either disclosed to anybody else, or the subject of a policy visit as Keith Miller had to endure.
For that it has to be a crime incident.
Liking a tweet should go no where near a police database.
Round of applause, well done all.
I’ve just watched the Harry Miller clip, and just have to say thank God that there are still people in this country that actually do use COMMON-SENSE..
It may be a long haul but we have to get back to living our lives sans ridiculous diktat and political correctness. Its stifling and killing the nation, just as it was planned to..
Well done Harry Miller and Toby and the FSU
Congratulations Harry. You’re a legend.
Excellent stuff. Well done to Mr Miller and to the FSU for backing him.
And as others have pointed out, what a great clip from Harry Miller. If anyone ever decides to implement Peter HItchens’ idea of restarting the police from scratch going back the original principles – Miller would be my choice to be the man at the top.
If there was a poll on Miller or Dick…
Congratulations Harry Miller, Toby and the whole FSU team.
Brilliant response in the video by Harry Miller. Policing used to be all about common sense. My English uncle – a detective in Leicester – was an exemplar of common sense.
Good job!