Tag: united kingdom

Founder of British Flag Flying ‘Raise the Colours’ Campaign Charged with 14 Offences

The creator of the campaign to raise British and English flags across the country to protest against illegal migrants being housed in hotels at taxpayer expense has been charged with 14 criminal offences, including using “threatening, abusive or insulting words”.

Thames Valley Police said on Sunday evening that Ryan Bridge, 45, of Blackwell has been charged with 14 offences relating to alleged incidents between January 31 and March 31 of this year in Oxfordshire.

According to GB News, Bridge was the founder of the Operation Raise the Colours campaign, which began last year in opposition to the government policy of taking alleged asylum seekers and placing them in hotels across the country at taxpayer expense.

The police force said that Bridge was charged with seven counts of using threatening words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress and three counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear of, or provoke, unlawful violence.

He was also charged with two counts of racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress, one count of racially aggravated fear of violence, and one count of common assault.

Thames Valley Police said that they had decided to submit the case to the Crown Prosecution Service following a review of the evidence, witness statements, and video footage.

It comes as the left-wing-run Birmingham city council that they plan on spending around £2.6 million to remove British and English flags from the streets of the UK’s second city.

According to the Daily Telegraph, around 20,000 flags were raised by members of the public on street infrastructure as a part of the Raise the Colours campaign.

The decision to spend millions removing the national flags comes despite the Birmingham currently being in around £3.5 billion in debt, the most of any local government in Britain.

Meanwhile, in Oxfordshire — where the campaign begun — secured an injunction in July to bar anyone from attaching flags to lampposts or to pain the flag on the road.

Those who breach the injunction against raising the flag face potential prison sentences, fines, or even having assets seized, the BBC reported.

The Liberal Democrat leader of the Oxfordshire City Council, Tim Bearder, said at the time: “This is a welcome judgement. We’re very pleased with the result… This sets a legal precedent and will hopefully deter people in not just Oxfordshire but around the country from partaking in this criminal activity.”

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More than 60,000 arrested in ‘chilling curb of free speech’ as damning report exposes zealous policing of social media as ‘Orwellian mess’

A major free speech row erupted last night after it was revealed that more than 60,000 people have been arrested over the past five years for ‘communications offences’ – some as trivial as viewing disparaging TikTok videos.

The astonishing figure has been described as ‘Orwellian’, and having a ‘chilling effect’ in stifling opinions online.

The statistics – to be published in a hard-hitting report this week – also highlight the chaotic implementation of rules on ‘malicious’ messaging, with some police forces making 14 times more arrests under the powers than others. 

The report, by campaign group Big Brother Watch, discloses that at least 62,199 people in the UK have been arrested for such offences over the past half-decade, with 18,510 being charged and 12,292 convicted.

Campaigners say that although a proportion of the arrests will be justifiable – such as intervention to stop threatening messages from abusive partners in domestic violence cases – the scope of the laws has spawned a rash of over-zealous policing of everyday communications.

The report cites the case of West Midlands Police visiting the home of a vulnerable teenage girl to accuse her over a TikTok post containing a teacher’s image with negative comments. 

They demanded that the girl hand over all her devices and either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest – even though she had not created, shared or commented on the video.

The investigation later concluded with the child formally told that no further action was taken. The force defended their actions on the grounds that they were ‘investigating alleged malicious communications offences’.

Writing in today’s Mail On Sunday, Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘Why are the authorities spending so much time policing our tweets when they could be policing our streets?

‘Shoplifting, mobile phone theft and sexual offences are all on the rise, yet the police seem increasingly obsessed with catching thought criminals.

‘The sheer number of people being arrested for online offences, even though only one in five end up being convicted, cannot help but have a chilling effect on free speech. 

‘People up and down the country daren’t say what they think about a whole range of issues for fear they’ll get a knock on their door at four in the morning by a couple of plainclothes officers wearing rainbow lanyards.’

Last year, a Hertfordshire couple were arrested after they made complaints about their daughter’s primary school on a WhatsApp group chat.

Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen were held for 11 hours on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications. 

They later received £20,000 in damages following a public outcry. 

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Israel Orders UK Jerusalem Consulate Closed And Expels British Diplomats Over West Bank Sanctions

Israel began to take action against Britain on Tuesday after twelve Western countries including Britain imposed trade restrictions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel ordered the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem within 30 days and expelled British representatives from two international coordination centers in the country, including the International Support Center for Gaza in Kiryat Gat.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the retaliatory package after UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed that Britain — joined by France, Canada, and nine other countries — would ban imports of all goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, along with certain services including financing, construction, infrastructure, and real estate related to those settlements.

Sa’ar said the UK representatives at the Gaza coordination centers would be expelled within a month, British training operations for Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and more than a dozen British politicians would be barred from entering Israel.

The UK had briefed the Trump administration before the announcement. U.S. officials confirmed Trump was briefed but that the White House did not ask London to hold off — signaling Washington’s ambivalence. American Ambassador Mike Huckabee said the U.S. “takes a different approach to the settlements” but expressed concern and said the intent could be achieved by other means.

Israel’s government called the sanctions “a political attempt to impair our sovereignty and prevent us from defending our citizens and interests.” A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office added: “These measures will not succeed in deterring us.”

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How Britain Tried To Rig the Trial of a Genocide Opponent – and Lost

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offense to invite support for a proscribed organization. Greenstein’s reference to a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, it argued, amounted to support for Hamas. Three social media posts and a blog article. The bill the State was demanding for those words – fourteen years.

Judge Sarah Plaschkes repeatedly objected when Greenstein brought the wider historical-political context of Palestine/Israel into the courtroom – warning him against treating the proceedings as a political forum. When the closing speech came, Greenstein was by now so concerned about what might happen to his barrister that he decided to address the jury himself (no doubt considering what had happened to Barrister Rajiv Menon KC – more of whom later). For thirty minutes he examined the prosecution case and the context in which his posts had been written. The jury wasn’t asked to lay aside the offending words; instead, he guided the jurors in an articulate reading (see his address to the jury, here) in which the world in which they’d been written was made clear (full trial coverage at the Canary, here).

But this court was rigged and thus determined to keep all context out of the courtroom. Nevertheless, despite Judge Plaschkes’ hostile interruptions, Greenstein’s speech laid bare the realities the prosecution had no interest in facing: his opposition to Hamas evident in dozens of articles he’d penned and published on his platform over the years; and Israel’s genocide in Gaza after October 2023. He spelled out the difference between supporting Hamas and defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli oppression, and the obvious point that the posts in contention clearly did not express support for Hamas.

Greenstein recounted to the jury how his grandparents fled Poland before the War, and most of those left behind perished in Treblinka. To him, Greenstein told the jury, the Holocaust was not history, but inheritance. He invoked the story of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a parallel of Gaza: young Jewish men and women rising up against the SS with smuggled pistols against tanks, knowing it was hopeless yet choosing resistance anyway. October 7th was Gaza’s uprising. The judge objected.

Once Greenstein had finished speaking (to a round of applause from the public gallery), Judge Plaschkes addressed the court to say that she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. She then dismissed his address as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. An extraordinary turn of phrase in a criminal trial in which Greenstein was about to find out whether he was to be sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added Palestine Action to the UK’s list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. But proscription criminalizes more than membership. Up to fourteen years in prison can follow under section 12, which makes it an offence to “invite support for a proscribed organization” or to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization…” That was the provision the Crown used to prosecute Tony Greenstein, and it applies right now to public expressions of support for Palestine Action. Serious concerns over freedom of expression and peaceful assembly were raised by a group of five UN Special Rapporteurs over proscribing a group for property destruction.

On 6 August 2024 activists from Palestine Action staged a break-in at Elbit Systems, in Filton, near Bristol.  It’s an Israeli defense company with British operations supplying equipment to the IDF. They entered facilities, sabotaged machinery and hindered production they regarded as part of Israel’s war-making infrastructure. During the parliamentary debate on the proscription order, it was argued that Palestine Action had targeted only industrial facilities, and not civilians. The government went ahead with proscription anyway.

Rajiv Menon KC represented one of the six defendants in the February 2026 Filton Trial. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but the jury failed to agree on criminal damage. At the May retrial, four were convicted. Menon’s closing speech was a masterclass and invoked the 1670 Bushell case – a landmark ruling on jury independence from judicial interference, arguing that the judge could not direct a conviction. Judge Jeremy Johnson then referred Menon for contempt, a referral the Court of Appeal overturned on procedural grounds in May before Johnson referred to it correctly in June.

The Filton defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge – the barrister who defended them is now facing contempt proceedings for the way he did it.

So what lies behind all this courtroom drama is a routine machinery. Proscription – the government’s designation of an organization as terrorist – takes effect by order of the Home Secretary. It falls to the barrister to gauge how far a closing speech can go before crossing the line into contempt, while the judge cautions against political argument. Indeed, the evidence shows that judges are increasingly directing what juries are allowed to hear before threatening barristers with contempt. To an outside observer there is little sign of a conflict – yet behind these routine procedures is something damning: what the jury doesn’t get to hear – could mean years in prison.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that Britain is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In September 2024, as the government suspended thirty arms export licenses to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that “there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Thirty licenses suspended out of three hundred and fifty. Britain would also continue to supply F-35 components through the global parts pool serving Israel, with the government arguing that withdrawal would undermine allied security. British weapons armed a state committing a genocide despite their supposed withdrawal.

The state that arms Israel prosecutes those who oppose it.

The Crown had brought three posts, a blog article and an accusation of terrorism before the jury. But Greenstein stood on that essential context – despite the hostile judge’s interjections. And a mere two hours after retiring – the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

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Over 100 Girls Under 12 Identified as Likely Forced Marriage Victims in Britain

British government data has revealed that at least 100 children under the age of twelve have been identified over five years as likely to have been subjected to a forced marriage, which opponents have tied to mass migration.

A Freedom of Information request for Home Office figures made by the Press Association has disclosed that between 2021 and 2025, the Forced Marriage Unit received tips from family, friends, police, teachers, and social services of at least 100 girls 11-years-old or younger who were believed to be forced into getting married.

Of those identified, 27 of the girls were said to have been under the age of five when they were being set up for a forced marriage, The Telegraph reported.

While the data is obviously limited to cases in which tips were placed to the Forced Marriage Unit — which in and of themselves do not constitute definitive proof — it is also the case that the government does not always disclose data surrounding child marriage for fear of leading to the public identification of victims.

Indeed, according to the report, during one of the years between 2021 and 2025, there were fewer than five potential victims within each defined age bracket, and therefore the Home Office declined to disclose the data for the entire year, given that the limited number of entries would potentially make it easier to identify specific victims.

Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf attributed to the apparent rise in the number of forced child marriages to PM Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit migration reforms, which saw record waves of migrants flood into the country.

“This sudden rise in forced marriages tracks almost perfectly with the Boriswave, which saw the Tories import four million new people into the UK. The Conservatives will never be forgiven for this complete and utter betrayal,” he said.

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UK Child Rape Grooming Gangs Tied to Organised Crime Groups, Research Project Finds

An independent research project has tied members of infamous child rape grooming gangs in Britain to criminal networks operating throughout the country, suggesting a link between the sexual exploitation of often young white working-class girls by predominantly Pakistani Muslim men and organised crime groups operating in the United Kingdom.

Launched online this week, the “Network Map” has identified at least 150 criminals or organised crime groups to groom child rapists after compiling publicly available police and court records, in conjunction with interviews from survivors and information from campaigners and journalists.

In an attempt to provide the public with a fuller picture than previously provided by police and previous reports on the nature of grooming gangs, the project has published links between over a thousand grooming gang child predators and drug networks, family members of various organised crime groups, and even “notable individuals” such as councillors and police officers with alleged mob ties.

The project claimed to have demonstrated that such connections were critical in the effort to traffic grooming gang victims across the country. While some ties were bound to exist, given that grooming gangs often coerced their underage victims by plying them with alcohol and getting them addicted to drugs, the scale of the connections has not been laid out.

Hence, the researchers involved in the Network Map have requested that their identities remain anonymous, for fear of retribution for exposing criminality up and down Britain.

In addition to tying grooming gang members to specific criminals or their associates, the project also identified specific routes by which organised crime groups trafficked young girls throughout the country, notably including multiple routes in and out of London.

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An Illegal Migrant Tried To Saw Off A Man’s Head; You Won’t Believe What The BBC Did Next…

A leaked internal email shows a senior BBC executive reaching for the language of “solidarity” after a Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with trying to brutally murder a Northern Irish man in the street. The corporation’s instinct was not to dwell on the victim, but instead to soothe colleagues “who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries.”

A local man is carved up on a Belfast pavement, unrest follows, and the state broadcaster act as if the real emergency is that imported staff might feel “particularly vulnerable.”

Investigative journalist Steven Edginton published the leak on Friday. Jack Whyte, the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer, wrote to staff after the backlash that followed the attack on Stephen Ogilvie. Whyte said he wanted to “express our solidarity with colleagues who may feel particularly vulnerable or fearful at this time, including those who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries.”

He condemned “hatred, intimidation, and violence in all its forms” and added that the BBC is “committed to fostering an environment where every colleague feels supported, included, and able to bring their whole self to work.”

Whyte’s wording is a tell. “Including those who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries” is the only group specified. Native staff who watched a man carved up on a Belfast street are left to infer that their fear does not count as vulnerability. Their anxiety is “hatred” adjacent, while the imported colleague’s anxiety is a welfare priority.

A source inside the corporation put the omission in plainer English: “The BBC offered solidarity to foreign staff but not to native Brits who might be worried about illegal migrants beheading them.”

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Britain’s Biggest Council Pushes Two-Year Jail Term For Flying National Flags

Britain’s largest local authority has gone to the High Court to stop people hanging the Union Flag and the St George’s Cross from lampposts, with campaigners warning that a breach could mean up to two years behind bars.

Birmingham City Council filed the application this week as the latest move in a year-long war on “unauthorised attachments.” The attachments in question are the flags of the country. The penalties being threatened include prison, unlimited fines, and seized assets.

Protesters who fly the Union Jack from lampposts could criminal proceedings if the injunction is granted.

Former Metropolitan Police detective Peter Bleksley called it what it is. “It’s absolutely scandalous!”

The Free Speech Union described the move as “truly mental.”

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US Threatens the UK: Increase Defense Spending, or Lose Support for Sovereignty Over the Falkland Islands

European territories in the Western Hemisphere are not safe anymore.

Today, The Telegraph has issued a bombshell report (picked up by several other outlets by now) that reveals that the US is threatening to oppose Britain’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands unless Andy Burnham increases the UK defense spending.

The proposal is reportedly among measures being prepared at the Pentagon to force NATO nations to fulfill their 5 percent of the GDP defense spending pledge.

The Telegraph reported:

“A senior US official told The Telegraph that Britain was likely to receive ‘special attention’ in Washington’s review of its allies’ commitment to Nato, which will examine whether member nations have credible paths toward the target.

Officials in Washington believe that while Britain has the potential to be a leading defense partner, the defense investment plan, announced by Sir Keir Starmer in June, was not enough of a ‘step in the right direction’.

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Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

From the very start of the Ukraine war, the United Kingdom has consistently been among Kiev’s most open and ardent military supporters, time and again transferring heavy weaponry, including cutting edge long-range missiles like the Storm Shadow.

At the start of this week, Britain announced it plans to provide Ukraine with classified technology to allow for the country’s own manufacturing of the British/French-designed SCALP air-launched cruise missile (which in the UK is known as the Storm Shadow). The allies expect to set up a production line in Ukraine as soon as year’s end.

Already, Ukraine has used its domestic-made and designed Neptune cruise missile to strike oil refineries and military sites deep inside Russian territory. A domestic-made SCALP would present the likelihood of Ukraine then using this Western-designed missile to directly attack Russia, which only increases the chances of an eventual Moscow-NATO clash. Ukrainian forces already appeared to have used the missile on Donetsk and other locations closer to front lines in the Donbass.

On Thursday the Kremlin has issued one of its strongest warnings and threats aimed at London to date, accusing the UK of “fully taking part in the war on Kiev’s side” – and thus thwarting any chance of peace talks while adding fuel to the fire.

Moscow is now saying that the UK’s own military facilities could become fair game for direct attacks.

Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Thursday press briefing, “We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond.”

Zakharova urged “all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities.” She also laid out:

“We propose that the British leadership once again carefully analyze the situation and immediately, in the most resolute and unequivocal manner, abandon the hostile, aggressive line, which can only… create the risk of the conflict escalating to an entirely new level.”

Ironically this comes just on the heels of a rare visit of the CIA Director to Moscow. US officials claim the Tuesday meeting between John Ratcliffe and top Kremlin intelligence officials was to convey a warning to President Putin to not attack any NATO member. However, many analysts are skeptical that this was the official reason.

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