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Huge Victory For Free Speech

by Toby Young
17 March 2023 12:42 PM

In my Spectator column this week I’ve written about a significant free speech victory that has gone largely unremarked in the mainstream media: the publication of a new draft Code of Practice about ‘non-crime hate incidents’ by the Home Secretary. It begins:

On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to ‘migrant workers’ in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn’t committed a crime.

The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by 34 police forces in England and Wales, according to FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph. Nine police forces didn’t respond, but if we assume they were logging NCHIs on the same scale, it’s likely that more than a quarter of a million have been recorded to date. Little wonder the police won’t send anyone round to your house if you report a burglary. They’re too busy investigating people accused of wrongthink.

So this new guidance – in reality, a statutory code of practice that requires the approval of both houses of parliament – is long overdue. Free-speech campaigners like me have been lobbying Conservative home secretaries about NCHIs for years, not least because they’re used as a weapon by political activists and religious zealots to silence their critics. A carefully worded complaint accusing your antagonist of being motivated by ‘hostility’ towards you on the basis of a ‘protected’ characteristic, e.g. your race, religion or sexual orientation, will result in a summons to the local police station. But Suella, God bless her, is the first one to sit up and listen. She recognises that meting out this punishment to anyone who challenges woke dogma is having a chilling effect. “We need a common sense approach that better protects freedom of speech,” she wrote in the Times.

The Free Speech Union has been working hard on this behind the scenes and we’re delighted by the new guidance. Elsewhere, on the FSU’s website, I’ve singled out others who deserve praise for this victory.

First, the ex-copper Harry Miller, who had an NCHI recorded against his name in 2019 when a trans activist complained about him tweeting a comic verse about transwomen. Harry took Humberside Police and the College of Policing to court – first to the High Court, then to the Court of Appeal, backed by the Free Speech Union – and his courageous battle against this unlawful interference in his free speech has helped to win this victory. (You can watch Harry Miller being interviewed by our General Secretary at a Speakeasy here.)

Second, the Conservative peer Lord Moylan. We worked closely with him – as well as Lord Pannick, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven – to secure an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 which gave the Home Secretary the option of bringing forward a Statutory Instrument containing a Code of Practice putting the recording and retention of NCHIs on a statutory footing. That is the option that Suella Braverman is availing herself of – without that amendment, she wouldn’t be able to issue this new guidance.

But this win is no reason for complacency, as I point out in my Spectator column:

Harry Miller is worried some woke police officers will try to get round the new Code of Practice by treating politically incorrect remarks as actual crimes, rather than NCHIs, and petitioning the CPS to prosecute.

That’s not all that fanciful. Last week, I was due to appear as an expert witness for a Christian street preacher called David McConnell who was appealing a conviction for causing harassment, alarm or distress. His crime? ‘Misgendering’ a trans woman. A judge at Leeds Crown Court overturned the conviction without needing to hear my evidence, but we can expect more such prosecutions in future once the use of NCHIs to shut people up has been curtailed. The Home Secretary should be congratulated for striking a blow in defence of free speech this week, but there’s more work to be done.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Free Speech UnionHarry MillerNon-Crime Hate IncidentsSuella Braverman

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18 Comments
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rms
rms
2 years ago

Typo: Is the Twitter Event “Saturday, Jan 8th” (as stated above, or on Saturday Jan 7th or Sunday Jan 8th”?

The Twitter link says “tomorrow” which as of this writing is Sunday Jan 8th.

Last edited 2 years ago by rms
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Castorp
Castorp
2 years ago

Very well articulated, thank you.

Please correct typo – ‘Noble prize winners’

31
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TJN
TJN
2 years ago

It is perfectly clear that we need a Nuremberg II set of trials of those accused of these horrendous Crimes Against Humanity – worse crimes outside of actual wartime atrocities are hard to imagine.

But there’s a limit to what any such investigations and trials can achieve. The fact is, the vast majority of people willingly and even enthusiastically went along with this narrative, even though it was patently absurd from the outset. Are they to be put on trial too?

The Great Barrington Declaration actually came comparatively late in the late as regards suppression of arguments. In the early days (e.g. March 2020) anyone questioning the narrative was accused of being callously selfish, of ‘just wanting people to die’, and even of being a murderer.

When so many people are just so gullible – led like dumb asses, their stupidity being their rings through the nose – what hope is there for our society?

Sorry, much as I detest the perpetrators of this shitshow, what hope is there when so many people in our society have actively abandoned the ideas and principles which a minority of the rest of us regard as fundamental to life itself?

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-1
Lancer
Lancer
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

That is the mass formation I guess. Until established wrongdoings have been widely admitted and accepted, that point where a critical mass changes the perception that crimes have been committed, we can’t move on with any principles. That limit of where do we draw that line even within the ‘only following orders’ precedent? Who can we fault for being under the propagandised mass formation psychosis? I haven’t the answers and I’m neither equipped intellectually nor qualified to make those decisions but I would’ve thought in a general consensus those who were given responsibility and didn’t act in good faith when they knew of obvious inconsistencies within their profession and said nothing, they need to at least argue their case and then potentially be held accountable in some respect. Others that might miss that threshold are only to live with their decisions once the dust settles for us all to be able to move on and never make the same mistakes again.

17
-1
TJN
TJN
2 years ago
Reply to  Lancer

Interesting where the line should be drawn between the culpable and merely stupid. My feeling is it has to be pretty high up the food chain, or otherwise we couldn’t afford the jails.

Most of the minions – the useful idiots – should be left to live their lives quietly, with the more reflective among them aware that they’d been put to a test and failed.

I’m clear on one thing though: lessons have to be irrevocably learned, and that means facing up to what we’ve done and going through the concomitant pain.

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rocky44
rocky44
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

The scariest thing for me in this whole debacle was seeing so many people I knew to be intelligent and open-minded swallowing the propaganda whole, without the slightest attempt at critical analysis. Glib parallels with the 1930s easily come to mind, and we are now seeing this same scenario played out over the climate ‘crisis’ and the war in Ukraine.

In the quote variously attributed to Hitler and Goebbels “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” it seems the word ‘eventually’ may be redundant. This strategy worked for the powers that be from day 1 of the pandemic.

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7941MHKB
7941MHKB
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

I don’t think most people would accept that the burden of guilt and appropriate punishment between Hermann Göring on one hand and some German youth put into a uniform and given a rifle in 1945, were quite equivalent.

Those who headed up this disaster with relish (for example Professor Pantsdown Ferguson of “reaised we could get away with it” fame. But also whoever appointed him despite the fact that he had a long record of absolute incompetence. Or Fauci. Those people must go on trial.

25
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

To the author:

I believe the twitter account of ‘TCW – Defending Freedom’ is still closed, could you perhaps exert some pressure to have the account unlocked?

36
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Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago

I frequently test the waters by asking friends, family, other doctors, if they have heard of the Great Barrington Declaration, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, etc.
I am yet to meet anyone who has heard of these, other than my few red-pilled friends.
Despite Twitter opening up, most social media and all MSM merrily continue the censorship leaving the vast majority of the populace blissfully ignorant of what’s really happening in the world.

27
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7941MHKB
7941MHKB
2 years ago
Reply to  Dr G

That’s perfectly true.
Many, quite intelligent people are quite prepared themselves to accept that things here in 2023 are obviously seriously amiss. Some have crackpot theories about what should be done ( often involving slime like Kneel Starmer), but very few are willing, or perhaps able, to look deeply into what is going on.

Obviously, not a new phenomenon. How many extremely intelligent Jews in early 1938 could see which way the wind was blowing and get the Hell out? Dreadful. Should you just blame them for being unable to control their hope that basic humanity would in the end, save them?

11
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Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  Dr G

Absolutely true… The times I’ve mentioned some of the above have seen me being called a conspiracy theorist, a fantasist and willing to believe anything I read on the internet. It would seem that, as a reasonably intelligent person, I’ve lost the plot. The conversation is swiftly moved on to something else.

Sadly I seem to have no red-pilled friends but my husband now knows who Klaus Schwab is… He doesn’t believe that the WEF could expect their plans to come to fruition. It’s one of a few elephants that we live with.

11
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ELH
ELH
2 years ago
Reply to  Gefion

My husband says I believe everything I read – my silent response to him is at least I read… Hs is very well educated and believes and trusts the establishment and doesn’t want to think that anything is amiss, however one of his friends has told him that he believes everyone who has been vaccinated will be dead in 5 years. I said I hoped that wouldn’t be the case…(husband 3 x jabs, terrible headaches with the AZ) so we live with elephants too.

14
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Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  ELH

I didn’t think I would be alone. My husband is well educated too but reads the MSM and watches BBC News. However, he has also taken to watching GB News recently and has learned a few things from it. We never discuss the vaccinations – he’s had 2 – and he must have heard about the unwanted side-effects of them. His own health has been compromised but it’s explained away by the fact that heart issues are A Thing in his family, The fact that in his case his issues didn’t appear until after his second vaccination is never mentioned.

I have told him about the concern about the vaccines’ effect on fertility and the spike protein appearing to concentrate in ovaries. This is something I find worrying as one of my sons and his wife are planning to have a baby in the near future and the possibility of infertility is something I’m very aware of. However, said son and his wife are vaccinated up to hilt and I’m not an interfering mother-in-law so there’s nothing I can do and certainly nothing that I will say. Another elephant to ignore!

5
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Corky Ringspot
Corky Ringspot
2 years ago

And now they’re turning their attention to climate change…

10
0
D J
D J
2 years ago

Government used fear and the tool was MINDSPACE practised by psychologists from the benign sounding Nudge Unit.

7
0
varmint
varmint
2 years ago

“Truth”————–A judgement or proposition that is true. A statement in accord with reality. ————-Now who could possibly disagree with “Truth”? —Apparently this happened on a regular basis in places like Twitter to such an extent that statements in accord with reality were often not permitted. ——Are we to assume this state of affairs no longer exists?

0
0
Smudger
Smudger
2 years ago

Well argued article, short and hard hitting. Thanks.

2
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VAX FREE IanC
VAX FREE IanC
2 years ago

A “Hallelujah!” Feature. Thankyou. I have saved this with all the other features and articles that I have gathered over the last 3 years. A historical record of one of the most infamous periods in human history. And yet it continues. 3 years down the clown road and many STILL believing the propaganda machine. The cork is slowly coming out now….Surely!

When youre dead.jpeg
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