Are Britons losing their right to free speech? That is what the Tories are trying to claim, it seems.

The new Shadow Home Secretary is claiming that current laws need to be re-written to stop the state from “policing thought” or attacking “free speech”.

Needless to say, he was referring to guidance that was brought in by a former – Tory – Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, as recently as 2023. Philp himself was policing minister at the time.

Already this is looking like legislation for convenience; the Tories wanted to stamp on free speech at the time – most likely because they were in office and didn’t want to be criticised – and now they’re out of power, they don’t want people expressing views they support to fall foul of their law.

We can find corroboration of this in the fact that it is right-wing news-hack Allison Pearson [pictured] that Philp is speaking up to support.

Ms Pearson had her collar felt by Essex police on the morning of Remembrance Sunday (November 10, 2024), in relation to a social media post she had sent in late 2023 which, it was claimed, amount to a potential allegation of incitement to racial hatred online.

At the time, she was writing posts attacking demonstrations in support of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who were (and still are) being murdered by Israeli occupation troops in what many now consider to be a genocide.

She said the officers interviewing her said they were investigating a non-crime hate incident, which is defined as one where no criminal offence has been committed, but the person reporting it believes it was motivated by hostility.

But Braverman’s guidance on this says that only the personal details of a person accused of hate speech should be recorded – and only “when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate and not simply because someone is offended”.

Downing Street has said it is “important” for police to capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents “to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur”.

“This must be balanced with the fundamental right to free speech and also ensuring that the police can spend their time dealing with the issues that matter most to our communities.”

Now, Philp has said non-crime hate incidents should only be investigated when the alleged perpetrators risk “imminently breaking the law”, to create “quite a high bar” and to avoid “wasting” police time and resources.

His words started a spat with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, whose chairman, Gavin Stephens, said non-crime hate incidents needed to be investigated so that “precursors to violence” were not missed.

Philp’s reply – that police should “concentrate on investigating and preventing crime”, is nonsense in that context because Mr Stephens was clearly indicating that the current measures are about preventing crime.

And in any case, it seems that Philp is barking up the wrong tree because Essex Police has denied that its investigation of Ms Pearson refers to a non-crime hate incident. The organisation said it was about a potential incitement to racial hatred – which is a breach of the Public Order Act 1986, and an actual crime – and reported The Daily Telegraph (where Ms Pearson made the claim) to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, saying that it had body camera footage proving that officers had never said it was a non-crime hate incident.

But what about our right to free speech? Does Philp have a point?

It’s debatable.

In his latest blog post, the economist Simon Wren-Lewis discussed freedom of speech for media organisations (and remember that Ms Pearson is a member of a media organisation – The Daily Telegraph – and derives any popularity from working there).

Professor Wren-Lewis points out that most people agree that we should be free to do what we like, as long as our actions (and words) do not involve, affect, or indeed harm another person. The example he uses is that “I don’t have a right to demand money through threats”.

There is also a question of accuracy, and whether a media outlet that knowingly distorts the facts is misleading – and therefore harming – those who take their information from it. We have a right not to be misled or fed lies as well, you see.

According to Wikipedia Ms Pearson’s offence was posting “a photo of Greater Manchester Police officers standing besides supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party waving the party’s flag. Despite the flag including the word “Pakistan”, she called the flagbearers “Jew haters” and misidentified the officers as Metropolitan Police officers, citing an incident where that service had not met with an Israeli-advocacy group. These errors were corrected by a Community Note and Pearson deleted the tweet”.

As The Guardian stated, the implication was “that the Muslims pictured are antisemitic and supporting Hamas” – and this was not true. So Ms Pearson was misleading the public with that claim, and with the apparent claim that the police in the picture were Met officers (she doesn’t actually say they were, so in that respect she could get off on a technicality).

She did take the post down, which suggests that she was not aware of the errors in her claim when she published it.

But do we believe that? The people in the image are clearly identifiable as Pakistani supporters of Imran Khan’s party and not Palestinian supporters of Hamas. So it is possible that she could be accused of misleading us over her reasons for deleting it.

In any case, the stated claim that the Pakistanis in the image were “Jew-haters” was not substantiated and, as “Jew-haters” is a highly-emotive phrase in the current political atmosphere, causing many people to have knee-jerk reactions against anybody who is accused of it (as a former victim of such accusations, I state this from my own experience), it does seem likely that the post may have incited others to racial hatred.

But – again – this post was published, and deleted, a long time ago, and it seems unlikely that it will generate any racial hatred now. The person who complained about it was interviewed by The Guardian and said that, as a person of colour, they had experienced an “uptick in racist abuse” after it was published. Correlation is not causation, though; is there proof that the two events are connected?

Put it all together and I would agree with Prof Wren-Lewis’s conclusion: “Some of those that shout loudest about the need to preserve free speech are also those that spread the most lies and disinformation.”

He also states that “It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that they can also be those most likely to curtail free speech when that involves telling truths they don’t like.”

Besides Ms Pearson’s police interview, This Site has also recently reported on a police raid on pro-Palestine social media reporter Asa Winstanley’s home under a little-known counter-terrorism initiative called ‘Operation Incessantness’, along with the detention at Heathrow Airport of Richard Medhurst and the arrest of Sarah Wilkinson in August 2024, both of them independent journalists who have been reporting Israel’s war on Palestinians. Declassified UK‘s Matt Kennard was reported to the Metropolitan Police for saying fascists are not welcome on UK streets, and most recently Natalie Strecker was arrested under anti-terror legislation, despite being a vocal advocate for peace.

Why has Ms Pearson not reported on these, as other incidents in which the police have been used to crack down on free speech? Is it because the people involved take a different view from hers on hostilities between Israel and Palestine?

The omission may not be a crime – but it is misleading. And people like Ms Pearson do not have a right to mislead us, especially on such an important – and emotive – subject.

Perhaps a Telegraph article examining all the known incidents in which police interfered with journalists’ free speech rights will be forthcoming? If that is too much to expect, what conclusions should we draw?

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