Yesterday, the news came that Graham Linehan was arrested by five police officers the moment he stepped off a plane at Heathrow. Though he’s less well-known in America, Linehan is an Irish comic genius who created two of the most beloved U.K. sitcoms of the last 30 years — Father Ted and The I.T. Crowd. Linehan’s supposed crime is that he has been a persistent online critic of the transgender movement, and his arrest was over three tweets, which you can read here. Nothing about his tweets are debatable as a matter of free speech or incitement. In a sane society, they would all be protected.
For a while now, people have been screaming that the U.K. has transformed itself into an Orwellian police state. The U.K. now arrests as many as 30 people a day for online speech, and like what happened to Linehan, much of what is punished is benign by First Amendment standards.
Yet, the punishments handed down are quite severe, and there are numerous examples of how political U.K. courts operate according two a two-tiered system of justice. One woman got a 31-month sentence for an offensive tweet that was deleted after four hours; the same judge gave a 21-month sentence to someone who participated in a violent mob that tried to kick down the door of a pub looking to possibly attack the people inside.
Still, arresting someone as high profile as Linehan marks a significant escalation. Not because Linehan’s rights deserve more deference than any normal U.K. citizen that’s been arrested for speech, but because the U.K. government is openly inviting the enormous amount of criticism that will come with such a high profile arrest. Just last year, persistent transgender critic J.K. Rowling dared the Scottish police to arrest her under the country’s new and laughably expansive hate crime law. Scottish authorities demurred, not because they couldn’t punish her under the law, but because presumably they realized the blowback that came with arresting one of the most beloved authors of the last century would be too great.
Still, I hope the Linehan arrest shines a harsh spotlight on the U.K.’s increasingly draconian speech laws and leads to much needed reforms — here is a good primer on where the U.K. should start. But for now, the incident should lead those of us in America to act on some inescapable conclusions to help restore freedom of speech in the U.K. and elsewhere.
Hellbound and Down 