The shocking police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson last week has rightly sparked grave concern about the parlous state of freedom of speech in Britain. For a tweet she posted last year, Pearson is under investigation for “stirring up racial hatred” under the Public Order Act 1986, which regular readers will know can carry penalties of years behind bars. In a period when pro-Gaza marches were flooding the capital every Saturday, Pearson reposted a video showing two south Asian-looking men holding a green and red flag on a British street next to a group of police officers. “How dare they,” she wrote. “Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.”
It has struck me that many of the free speech advocates to criticise the authoritarian investigation into Pearson this week have done so on what one might call empirically minded lines. Where is the evidence, for instance, that any disorder did actually result from Pearson’s post? One prominent human rights lawyer, arguing in the Telegraph that Pearson did not deserve a visit from the police, has said that an investigation should only have proceeded “if damage has demonstrably been done during the time [the tweet] was up”. Assessing whether or not the tweet ought to have merited such a heavy-handed response, Pearson and her lawyers have looked carefully at the wording and concluded that it does not meet the “threshold” for criminality.
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