By Max Thompson, Free Speech Union.
It is clear that the UK is in the midst of a free-speech crisis. A few weeks ago, a poll by the group Liberty revealed that more than half of Britons feel their free speech rights have become more restricted since Labour came to power in July 2024.
Now, there is yet more evidence of a serious problem with free speech in the UK. Big Brother Watch is to publish a new report this week that is enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who values their right to speak freely.
Thanks to a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Big Brother Watch has found that, over the last five years, 62,199 people have been arrested for ‘speech offences’, with 18,510 charged and 12,292 convicted.
This is not the sort of thing that should be happening in the UK — a purportedly proud, free, liberal, western democracy. It is a national embarrassment. Writing in the Daily Mail on Sunday, the Free Speech Union’s General Secretary, Lord Young of Acton, asked why the authorities were spending so much time policing our tweets when they could be policing our streets.
Rather than addressing the rise in shoplifting, mobile phone theft, and sexual assault, the police are obsessing over ‘offensive’ comments posted online. How can the police feasibly continue to complain that they are underfunded and under-resourced when they are focusing on vexatious complaints and hurty words online? In 2023, ninety per cent of all crimes went unsolved, yet over the same five-year period more than 62,000 people were arrested for ‘offensive’ comments and messages online.