Britain’s arbitrary authoritarianism
by Laurie Wastell, Artillery Row:
Recent prosecutions over speech should concern us all.
The problem with cancel culture, it has long been clear, is how it lets the most sensitive people in society dictate what can and cannot be said in the public square. Today, Britain’s hate-speech laws, pursued zealously by the justice system, are criminalising even what is said in private — and even if no one is there to be offended.
Last week at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, six former Met officers were sentenced for improper use of a public electronic communications network, having been convicted earlier this year under the Communications Act 2003. Michael Chadwell, Peter Booth, Anthony Elsom, Trevor Lewton, Alan Hall and Robert Lewis, all retired officers in their 60s, had sent messages deemed “grossly offensive”, to a private WhatsApp groupchat, “Old Boys Beer Meet”, between 2020-2022.
They were not let off lightly. The officers each received a suspended sentence of between eight and 14 weeks’ imprisonment, and were ordered to undertake community service lasting between 40 and 140 hours. For good measure, Robert Lewis was also fined £500 for possessing two friction batons in a private place.
The messages were allegedly “racist, sexist and homophobic” and deemed too offensive to reproduce by the BBC, with posts about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Rishi Sunak, the government’s Rwanda plan and flooding in Pakistan. District judge Tan Ikram ruled the messages were “offensive to many good people in this country and not only people who might be directly offended”.
Now, if this statement appears puzzling — how could something be “offensive” to someone who is not “directly offended”? — that’s because as a ruling, and a legal precedent, it is completely extraordinary.
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