The political Right throughout the Western world is baying to lock up all opponents of genocide. The very notion of free speech is under fundamental attack. We need to take a long hard look at the question of imprisoning people for saying things.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother of a 12-year-old, was imprisoned for 31 months on 17 October 2024 under the Public Order Act 1986 for publishing material intended or likely to cause racial hatred. There is no doubt that she did this. In an immediate reaction to the stabbing to death of three young girls in Southport, she published a tweet calling for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, specifically with the inhabitants still inside. This is a textbook example of hate speech directed at a vulnerable group.
Connolly’s remarks were part of an emotionally charged social media storm in the immediate aftermath of the murders, which included false allegations about the killer’s status and religion. There is no doubt that Connolly crossed a line of incitement to violence. She is an avowed racist – she has a history of racist tweets – but I do not think she should be in jail.
PRISON DOES NO GOOD
My first argument is that prison does no good whatsoever, and it will likely reinforce Connolly’s racism.
When imprisoned for four months for publication myself, I learnt that our overcrowded prisons are chock full of the left-behind members of the working class – 80% of them addicts by official reckoning, and still higher in my experience – born into poverty and addiction, and ill educated.
Many were there for domestic violence yet they were now locked into a community which supported and reinforced their violence. I personally witnessed inmates recounting their crimes against women to other prisoners, who sympathised and told them the world was crazy when you could be locked up for keeping women in their place or punishing them for infidelity. The general consensus was that women needed to be kept down more so they would not go to the authorities.
We punish people by locking them into the one community which is guaranteed to support and encourage their wrongdoing: then we are alarmed at re-offending rates. Over 50% of prisoners who serve sentences of less than three years, are caught re-offending within six months. I have no doubt that Lucy Connolly has found the company of those who are fuelling her racism and hate. What good is this doing to anybody?
Our system of criminal justice, with massively overcrowded jails and the highest proportion of our population in prison in all of Europe, is a Victorian abomination, a senseless retributive regime. Anything that you have ever heard about education or rehabilitation in jails is a lie. In practice no such functioning schemes exist.
The authorities are concentrated entirely on ever-greater movement and living-condition restrictions for prisoners, to keep a lid on the overcrowding powder keg and try to staunch the flow of drugs into jails. To give one example, books were forbidden to criminal prisoners in my jail lest their pages be soaked in drugs.
Prisons are themselves a form of institutionalised violence. The beds made from solid iron sheet and two-inch-thick non-resistant foam mattresses are a deliberate corporal punishment – I am left with permanent back pain.
This is an inappropriate, worthless and brutal regime. In Lucy Connolly’s case, I make no apologies for saying that when you separate a mother from her child, you are also punishing the child, and imposing an anguish upon the woman which men can only partially comprehend.
Imprisonment should be a last resort to protect society from those who otherwise pose a definite risk of physical violence to others.
A rational society would find far more useful means to punish Lucy Connolly.
Community service would let her still be with her child and provide an element of restorative justice. She should also be made to spend a substantive amount of working time – as in several months – in the company of immigrants and learning about their lives, perhaps in some of the Mosques that play a large part in our communities. She should meet asylum seekers and hear their stories.
Education and restoration should be central to any form of justice. The irony is, of course, that Lucy Connolly’s supporters are, by and large, the last people who would support such reform in general. That should not deter us.
THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH – IMMEDIATE HARM
The classic position in western jurisprudence is that free speech should be limited where it is liable to cause immediate harm, which cannot be countered in reasoned debate by other arguments because there is no time. That is the basis of the famous judgment by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919 that
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic
Here it is not stating a falsehood which is the problem. It is doing so (assuming knowingly) in circumstances which may cause immediate physical harm through the effects of panicking a crowd. This judgment established the “clear and present danger” test.
Which is the same principle as set out by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty:
No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.
Here it is plain that immediacy and context are important. Saying something in one circumstance may be acceptable but the same words may not be acceptable in another circumstance. It separates debate from direct incitement to violence.
This nuance is completely lost, for example, in the UK’s Terrorism Act. The proscription which is in train will make it illegal to argue, even in calm debate, that Palestine Action is engaged in legitimate protest and ought not be banned. Just expressing that opinion, even in an academic setting, might get you imprisoned. Mill would be appalled.
Superficially, Mill’s example may seem to indicate that Lucy Connolly is indeed highly culpable. She was urging people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, and right-wing rioters did in fact attempt to do just that. But it is not quite that simple. Lucy Connolly tweeted on the day of the murders. No mobs had yet gathered and the attacks on hotels were still several days away.
Hindsight is wonderful. It is not plain that there was a “clear and present danger” that this would come to pass, at the time she wrote – and she deleted her tweet after a few hours. She actually put out tweets against the violence once it started some days later.
Furthermore, to compare Mill’s 19th-century circumstance with a 21st-century social media post requires care. Mill was imagining someone in the position of a leader – able to access the platform as an orator to the mob, or alternatively to get an article or letter published in a newspaper. In the melee of social media, Lucy Connolly is perhaps more akin to a member of Mill’s mob than the person urging it on to action.
Connolly probably did not envision at the time of her tweet that mobs actually attacking hotels was likely to arise some days later. She deleted her tweet after three and a half hours, once she calmed down, and did not repeat it when actual mobs existed. Once they did, she put out other tweets including “I know people are angry, but violence is not the answer” and “Protest yes, violence no”. She also apologised for having spread disinformation.
Connolly’s initial tweet was an incitement to violence, and goes beyond contribution to public debate on the role of immigration in events like the Stockport media. It is culpable and I think on balance does rightly fall foul of the law on those grounds. But I think it is rather marginal on the clear and present danger test. The evidence is non-existent that any member of the mobs who went out a few days later were in fact critically motivated by Connolly’s tweet. This lack of clear causality should be given more weight (which is not a necessary step in the legislation).
My conclusion: the conviction is correct as it was incitement to violence, but the sentence is disproportionate to the seriousness of the offence.
Let us then compare this to the statements by the group Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, which are under investigation by the Police and which the entire British Establishment has rushed to condemn.
This is entirely clear: “Death, death to the IDF” chanted to a live crowd at Glastonbury clearly does not pose an imminent threat. There is no clear and present danger. Nobody in the Glastonbury audience was in a position immediately to attack the IDF, and I can see no serious argument that anybody in the TV or online audience would immediately attack the IDF, who was no already in a position and of a mind to do so.
The argument that attacking the IDF is a legitimate aim I cover below.
There is simply no case to prosecute the members of Bob Vylan on the basis of imminent threat or “clear and present danger” from their speech.
HATE SPEECH
The classic liberal defence of all speech which does not pose imminent danger has been replaced in much of the Western world in recent years by a tendency to ban “hate speech”, generally defined as speech expressing hate towards a protected group defined by gender, race, sexuality or other qualifications.
That intellectual shift against free speech has been broadly driven by the “Left”, particularly by anti-racist and feminist groups. However the incorporation of this principle into the Public Order Act of 1986 was enacted by the Thatcher government. Thatcher had a thorough understanding of the dynamics of hard political power.
I am generally not in favour of the banning of “hate speech”. I agree with Mill that the answer to an incorrect opinion is to engage with it and refute it, not to ban it. Banning it is often counter-productive as it both glamourises the opinion and prevents its proper deconstruction.
This is where I shall part ways with much of the Left, which will believe that Lucy Connolly should be locked up for hate speech. But here we encounter the problem of who defines what is hate speech?
The Right is screaming that “Death to the IDF” is hate speech that indicates a generalised hatred of Jews. There are several answers to that, including that the IDF is a military force committing Genocide and is by no means supported by all Jews.
But in a real sense, once you have got into the argument of why Lucy Connolly’s hate speech is wrong and Bob Vylan’s speech – characterised by the political Establishment as hate speech – is right, you have already lost. You are making distinctions of geopolitical analysis. Essentially you are arguing as to whether the political value judgments of the left or the right are correct.
With the state as, literally, the judge, that argument will only be resolved one way in the real world.
It was in fact the push from the left for hate speech laws which destroyed the western consensus in favour of freedom of speech which does not initiate immediate physical harm. Which was extremely stupid of the left, because it should be blindingly obvious that once you hand the state the power to imprison for speech, it is the left who will be the primary target.
Most foreseeable of all was the use by the Zionist lobby of its power in the state to seize upon the criminalisation of “hate speech” to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and attack pro-Palestinian sentiment. The Left made this rod for their own back when they led the charge against freedom of speech
In my view, political opinions, even ones I find hateful like racialist attacks on asylum seekers, ought not be criminalised but ought to be tackled in Mill’s field of debate. An opinion with which we disagree should be countered by argument and refutation, not by banning its expression.
At present, the toxic mix of culture war and criminalisation of speech is giving far too much power to a state which I in no way trust.
PRACTICAL EFFECTS
We are currently facing a unified neoliberal political Establishment which is introducing more and more restrictions on protest and speech and which delights in locking up its opponents.
This same Establishment has used, throughout the world, the tools of state control of economies to massively increase the wealth gap between the billionaires who are actually in control, and the 99.5% of society who are reduced to helots.
As a result of the social tensions thus unleashed, there has been a fracturing of support for the traditional political parties, which have all been captured by this neoliberal agenda. However the Establishment has managed to defend itself by the use of media and social media to channel popular discontent at popular poverty and loss of status into hatred for immigrants. Scapegoating has been simple but deadly effective.
The factors of social alienation which drive support for right-wing movements like Reform are the same factors which, more properly understood, motivate the Left to campaign for greater social equality. Excessively punitive actions against the misled foot soldiers of the right simply feed in to the right-wing narrative of dispossession and unfair treatment.
In short, the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has been the best recruiting tool that alt-right leaders like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson have been given.
We should not fall into this trap.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
Click HERE TO DONATE if you do not see the Donate button above
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
PayPal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
Spot on. Every word.
Stockport? Southport, surely.
Thank you.
As usual you make some excellent points.
I wonder what the cost in terms of supervision etc would be of the “several months in the community being re-educated” vs the time she will spend in prison. I also wonder to what extent the Mosques or other community organisations where she could usefully spend time would be accepting of her presence. But obviously it would be worth doing to the extent possible.
“I wonder what the cost in terms of supervision etc would be of the “several months in the community being re-educated” ”
Probably considerably less than the cost of keeping her in prison at £39,500 pa.
This is thoughtful and well-argued. I have been saying similar things for ages but without much of an audience. Those who think they are on the left should never be asking the state to silence their opponents.
There shouldn’t be free speech for those who call for torching asylum hostels. Are you confusing left with “liberal”?
Good luck with making debating points against those who want race war. Maybe go to Palestine and try debating with the IDF.
I am laughing here. You or you mods recently removed links to a Candace Owen interview with Ian Carroll discussing a suppressed documentary on Bibi the Babykiller… so with respect you would not know free speech if it kicked you in the happysack. This is just one long virtue signalling pile of shite. Practice what you preach (before preaching).
—
[ Mod: On the contrary, Mac, your link was promoted to its own thread on the forum – where you are welcome to debate and digress with anyone else who is equally interested in that podcast.
Your comment was removed for being off-topic in the thread where you originally posted it. Furthermore, it didn’t summarise the contents of the podcast (which lasts for an hour and a quarter), so we generated a summary for you. You also failed to provide any original commentary about whichever points you found particularly relevant. Please acquaint yourself the moderation rules for commenters. ]
Maybe the Prison Reform Trust (https://prisonreformtrust.org.uk/) could use you, if you’re not involved with them already?
Craig makes a compelling moral and political critique of prison as a response to hate speech, and intelligently explores the philosophical risks of criminalising opinion. However, he perhaps underestimates:
– the social harm of virally broadcast hate speech,
– the broader justification for incitement laws, and
– the state’s duty to protect vulnerable groups from rhetorical violence that can escalate into real violence.
His most defensible stance is that Connolly’s conviction was right, but her 31-month prison sentence may be disproportionate, particularly in a system currently so ill-suited to rehabilitation. We should urgently review alternative justice models, but perhaps without abandoning the need for public accountability in dangerous speech.
One, small, factual correction would be to the claim that we have “the highest proportion of our population in prison in all of Europe”. We don’t – Eurostat data shows that within the EU Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have higher rates than Scotland (or the UK). We do, however, have the highest rates of incarceration in Western Europe.
Reads like a LLM summary. Did you use Grok or ChatGPT?
I’m curious Mr. Murray, based on the arguments you’ve made in this blog post, what you think about the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defining just a couple of those necessarily preventable and punishable acts as
“(b) Causing serious bodily OR [emphasis mine] mental harm to members of the group” – because even if there is not immediate physical threat, the persistent and prominent mainstream airing of racist narratives can absolutely cause mental harm to members of an ethnic group
and
“(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide” – because such incitements might be routine and from people not in positions of power without any immediate physical threat to members of a potential victim group, yet are what help enable a culture to be fostered whereby too many members of the population and its rulers have become groomed to accept physical acts of genocide
Is it any wonder that, with constant gaslighting and manipulating by the likes of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Telegraph, The Sun, the BBC and Cambridge Analytica/Facebook’s algos, amongst others, that far too many citizens and leaders of England have become so complicit? Is this really the chicken and egg problem you portray as the Left making a rod for its own back? Or do you have to hold the genocidal financiers, editors and other enablers to account? Albanese’s report today would rather suggest the latter…
“– the state’s duty to protect vulnerable groups from rhetorical violence that can escalate into real violence.”
What is ‘rhetorical violence’, how do we know when it can escalate into real violence and why does the state have a duty to protect vulnerable groups? Is it OK to use rhetorical violence on non-vulnerable groups?
Good questions!
Yeah, the “state’s duty” bit. The only duty the state has got is to the ruling scum. It doesn’t have any other duty. This doesn’t mean if there’s a mob outside about to burn my house down I’m a hypocrite if I call the police. Nor does it mean I shouldn’t criticise corruption or ever support nationalisation. This is student deb soc territory. Similarly I’m for the abolition of money and I understand its function in the cycle of capital very well. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use it, in these stinking conditions in which we live.
A very good article, but I am afraid that the highly “tribalized” political spectrum–leftist versus rightist–of Western countries (particularly English-speaking ones) will make this plea for sanity from Craig fall on deaf ears. British leftists, particular those who love Corbyn, will probably disagree with this sane assessment. They would split hairs arguing the difference between accusations of “hate speech” levelled against anti-zionists and “hate speech” levelled against Lucy Connolly. Like most Africans, my own political ideology is called Pragmatism, which allows me to see things clearly and not through some distorted political lens.
On the contrary, the most glaring hypocrisy on the issue of free speech is evidenced by the Right and by self-described “pragmatic” establishment centrists. Those are the elements who have bored on and on for years about Cancel Culture, about their lack of freedom to use racist and demeaning words etc.
You obviously haven’t noticed but it is they who in the past year and a half have tried to shut down any and all criticism of the west’s genocide in Gaza as “antisemitism”. They could not be showing you more plainly that they do not like free speech if it is protesting racist barbarism.
There are no “pragmatists” in Western political circles. They are all heavily ideological. They lean rightwards or leftwards. Even those so-called “centrists” are biased towards the political left or the political right. If pragmatic politicians existed in any West European country, they would realize that they are destroying their own domestic economy by placing sanctions on Russia, which hurt them and their people not the Kremlin or Russians. Nope, what you have in the West are politicians who are corrupt and yet politically dogmatic, monomaniacally focussed on their political agenda. They oppose free speech on any grounds (not just because of racism as you say).
Where did Jo Cox’s murderer learn the phrase “Britain First”?
How had it become acceptable for Johnson to threaten (in vanishingly thinly veiled manner) other MPs in the House of Commons with meeting the same end if they didn’t vote through his Brexit legislation?
If your ideology were Jesuitism rather than the Oxford and Cambridge (and Dutch narco-state) favourite of “pragmatism”, you’d probably understand the arguments of your opponents better. Here they aren’t based on loving Jeremy Corbyn, being wilfully deaf, or splitting hairs.
This is not government failing to remember the writings of people like John Stuart Mill and accidentally getting trapped in poorly thought out legislation. It is active, determined suppression of speech that does not fit the narrative of the elite.
BINGO
I’m not sure I understand your premise. You think the violent hard right isn’t backed by the state? If so, I would urge a look at how last year’s violence developed in England, and how when it started in Leeds it was all ethnicities versus a police and social worker kidnapping of Roma children. Media, police, Musk’s micromessaging network, UKIP, GBNews, and BBC etc. all pushed it with glee into ethnic conflict. This tells you what they fear most.
Palestine Action we re told is a terrorist group.
So who did they terrorise. Were the people working on near the aircrafts they sprayed with paint terrorised. Military personnel are not normally snowflakes .
When Just Stop Oil interrupted a snooker match putting yellow powder on the snooker table. Was this not an equivalent action. No one was terrorised and we were not told they are a terrorist group. The fact that this was against the military being the difference. The claims of costs of many millions seems absurd. If you started the engines up when they got to temperature they would burn off any paint. If you wanted to strip the engines and check every blade and part and them reassemble then this would take no more than one day per engine at most. Aircraft engineers don’t get paid that much. No doubt if you were to go into many pubs you could hear things just as bad as what Lucy said after a few beers and a heated debate. I knew someone who would regularly say “they should be hanged” about different individuals or groups . But he did not mean it and would be horrified if he were to attend such a hanging, I doubt if when Bob Geldof named his band the Boomtown Rats he was referencing the Nazi’s . Gary Lineker made the mistake of apologising; he should have stuck to his guns (when I said guns this was not meant to mean use guns to kill people I hope that was not hate speech are the 77 brigade going to come after me)
Yes. Not to mention the “seven million quid” it supposedly costs to remove a bit of excess paint from a couple of the Imperial war machines.
As Craig mentioned in an interview the other day, the hedge fund which owns those spray painted planes won’t be able to claim on the insurance if PA are proscribed, because an act of vandalism will become an act of terrorism. Btw, £7m is a drop in the ocean compared to what the RAF are paying in rent for those things.
The proscription won’t be retrospective. The drafters of the legislation won’t have forgotten to take impact on rich c***s’ assets and liabilities into account. Same with Covid legislation and indeed all legislation.
(Historical note: allegedly it was for insurance reasons that the conflict in Malaya was called an “emergency” rather than a war, although it was certainly a war.)
The purpose of the current European push for “re-armament” is to spend more public money on armaments. All the guff about the “Russian threat” is just an excuse to do that. You would have thought that the chance to spend an extra £7M and blame a bunch of activists would be welcomed with open arms, but, I suppose, the show must go on.
All good points, and correct, except this bit.
……..I make no apologies for saying that when you separate a mother from her child, you are also punishing the child, and imposing an anguish upon the woman which men can only partially comprehend……
Fathers can only partially comprehend the anguish of being separated from their children?
If you’re to go down that route of inequality, why stop there? Perhaps Palestinians can only “partially comprehend” Zionist’s anguish at being separated from their biblical homeland too?
Obviously nonsense Craig and you should consider editing that section, for all the fathers and children separated by the state in its myriad guises, whether that be by genocide, inhumane law or the family courts. Who also operate on the disposable dads level you allude to there.
See how many fatherless children there are in the UK? That’s due to the system and malicious mothers who weaponise their children post-separation, because the same class war law encourages them to.
You had a good point until your last paragraph.
Certainly some mothers act like crap and the system is also crap, but in the large majority of cases this is not the explanation of why children are raised without fathers.
APAN: “Perhaps Palestinians can only “partially comprehend” Zionist’s anguish at being separated from their biblical homeland too? ”
You’ve got to be having a laugh.
You really think a bunch of white supremacist, Muslim-hating murderous racists from Ukraine, Russia, New York or whatever genuinely found a massive yearning and anguish for their lost biblical homeland – all of a sudden – when they realised they could cash in on someone else’s property and land, get massive state subsidies, while killing and terrorising a bunch of Muslims – with impunity and state protection – into the bargain too?
Give me a freaking break.
That tweet doesn’t look like direct incitement to me; I’d call it just an opinion, albeit a provocative one. It took me a while to track down what she ACTUALLY said, not recaps in the papers. Assuming she IS a racist (and I’m unaware of her “avowing” racism; perhaps you could point me to it) should racist beliefs themselves be grounds for criminal action in the courts?
Lucy Connolly’s tweet doesn’t look like direct incitement, Athanasius, because it wasn’t incitement – and, whatever the judge or our host says, it wasn’t stirring up racial hatred either as she didn’t mention anyone’s race. Here’s the key line:
‘set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’
The ‘for all I care’ qualifier is important, and makes her statement merely an expression of indifference to the crime of arson. In my view, her solicitor was wrong to advise her to plead guilty, though I’m guessing that he or she may have thought that the time she’d serve for a guilty plea would be less than that she’d spend on remand waiting for trial.
In related news, the CPS have decided not to charge Kneecap for telling impressionable audience members at a recent concert to ‘Kill your local MP’ (that’s direct incitement to murder). This comes after a member of the band was charged under the Terrorism Act for holding up a Hezbollah flag for about 10 seconds at another gig. So I guess the take-home point from all this is that the UK authorities are more worried about ‘anonymous hackers’ (i.e. Mossad) revealing what’s on their phones than they are of being murdered.
“so I guess the take-home point from all this is that the UK authorities are more worried about ‘anonymous hackers’ (i.e. Mossad) revealing what’s on their phones than they are of being murdered.”
That’s some choice, between having a life that’s not worth living and no life at all. Also it’s quite possible that you could end up so depressed as a result of the revelations that you end up shooting yourself, twice.
Well, there are still life sentences on offer for some thought crimes in the British Empire, and worse in jurisdictions it may have have close ties with.
IMO this article displays a bit of left wing bias, but it’s not all bad.
Just another example of two tier Britain. Who defines these ‘protected groups’, the same people who define free speech and who proscribe organisations.
Uncontrolled immigration is a problem, a problem no government will tackle, and this is what pisses a lot of people off – not immigration but the fact that a huge problem is being allowed to develop. The Lucy Connelly’s are not the problem they’re just a symptom of the corrupt establishment who don’t work for us, or even like us.
You might like to ask then why it was necessary to tear apart membership of the EU to achieve “controlled immigration”? Did you not know about the Dublin Convention? Or the way that Spain and Austria, for example, manage their immigration systems? You might even like to revisit Mr. Murray’s highly insightful blog post about how “safe routes” used to function when he was an Ambassador and then ask why successive governments decided it was necessary to dismantle them? You might also like to ask what level of responsibility we should take as a country when our elected reprentatives decide to bomb and illegally invade others’ countries, thus creating refugee crises (although the overwhelming majorirty of refugees seek asylum in neighbouring countries and we take significantly fewer than comparable European countries do). Or why so many racists in the UK fail to accept that there is no legal requirement on a refugee to seek asylum in the first safe country.
Otherwise almost all refugees would only be taken by Italy and Greece. Of course, the fascists are literally in charge in Italy so calling that a safe country now is debatable…
Or why so many racists have a problem with immigration generally when it is actually a net positive benefit to the economy – they more than pay their way, which means you need to follow the money and blame the governments for spending it poorly, rather than blaming the immigrants.
Finally, go back far enough in your ancestry and you’ll find that you wouldn’t accidentally be living on this island without someone having emigrated here!
Some good points, however.
Re. “immigration generally … is actually a net positive benefit to the economy – they more than pay their way”.
Not so, this bit of misinformation came out of Khans London regime, where only middle class, well off immigrants we’re counted, the reality is that the majority of Immigrants are low skilled and it would take them decades, if ever, to make positive contributions. Regardless, in the meantime accommodation and public services cannot cope, the government won’t do anything, so we must assume that is actually the plan – destruction of the UK. Meanwhile people will get angry.
Sorry but that doesn’t wash; my understanding comes from official statistics dating back to 2001/2 – nothing whatsoever to do with Sadiq Khan
Same was said about you know who when they moved to Palestine. That ended well, didn’t it? So, Britain is not a country anymore – just an economy – all are welcome, billions and billions are welcome! I wonder if it’ll end well?
Really fanboy ! You’re using old statistics to validate a recent issue. Immigration 25 years ago was a different beast to what it is today.
“Not so, this bit of misinformation came out of Khans London regime, where only middle class, well off immigrants we’re counted”
Where did you get that from, the Daily Mail?
,”the reality is that the majority of Immigrants are low skilled and it would take them decades, if ever, to make positive contributions”
Apart from the fact that the idea that only middle class immigrants can make a positive contribution looks like the sort of snobbery that the UK has become famous for, it is self-evidently false, as demonstrated by e.g. what happened to the hospitality industry when all the low-skilled immigrants from eastern Europe went home. Given that twenty years ago the British didn’t have enough babies to supply today’s workforce, how else, apart from immigration, is the UK going to solve that problem and is not solving what seems to me a quite pressing problem not making a positive contribution?
If you threaten someone a line has been crossed whether the threat is imminent or not. Connolly may have crossed that line but the sentence was ridiculously excessive. A known thug, banned from every pub in his town, who headbutted my friend’s son and knocked out most of front teeth got two years….suspended. His lawyer said that was par for the course. How can a tweet justify separating a mother from her child for 31 months?
Incidentally it’s not feminists who are attacking free speech but the LGBTQ+ lobby and the ‘wokerati’ who have had no hesitation in using violence, threats and intimidation to silence anyone who dares to challenge their ideology.
Having listened to ‘Bob Vylan’ and ‘Kneecap’ I’m left with the impression that they’re nothing but talentless attention seekers. The best course of action would be to ignore them.
Classic to accuse the “LGBTQ+ lobby and the ‘wokerati’ ” of violence, threats and intimidation, when these are the usual tactics of the far right that PM belongs to. I wouldn’t say that the accused people have never ever been robust in their actions but it’s extremely rare compared to the violence of the right.
Ignoring your slur, a list compiled by Sex Matters:-
https://sex-matters.org/about-us/what-we-are-up-against/transactivist-violence-a-timeline/
and another example of LGBTQ+ activists respecting the right to free speech:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-PX3MFV-F8
Not rare at all, its become very common.
Pears Morgaine.
Quite an irony to try and get the media and its pundits to ignore ‘Attention Seekers ‘
as that is exactly what the ‘ personalities ‘ in the media seek themselves.
Attention – like a clingy child.
They are very good at taking offence on behalf of the British Public but don’t realise that
the vast majority of the public don’t give a toss what the Bands or the media and politicians
say anyway.
They flatter themselves as Guardians of Public Morals.
That’s Reverent Blair’s job.
And of course Richard Madeley.
I’m for free speech as long as the right don’t go all woke themselves when they haven’t got a
political argument to put when challenged.
Libertarians are only bothered about their individual liberties and not any one else’s.
So it’s no wonder they are usually found on the right.
Rees – Mogg has taken the Liberty of stashing his cash in Dublin whilst claiming to be a Patriot and
a hardworking tax payer.
These kind of people are legion in British politics – such as Nigel ( two passports ) Farage.
Next PM?
I sincerely hope not but, looking at the state of all Western Politics it would not be a surprise if it happened
by accident.
It’s a growing dangerous trend in politics.
‘ We don’t like extremes etc etc.’
Re-phrase that; We don’t like the extreme left but we don’t mind the extreme right.
Not too many Bus Stops away from real authentic Fascism.
“Incidentally it’s not feminists who are attacking free speech but the LGBTQ+ lobby and the ‘wokerati’ who have had no hesitation in using violence, threats and intimidation to silence anyone who dares to challenge their ideology.”
Everybody with an axe to grind is doing it these days. Any trawl through social media will show that it is a national pastime of the British to try and stop other people doing things of which they personally disapprove, a practice often referred to as “bansturbation”.
Dear Mods,
Is there any particular reason why all my comments (which were within the guidelines you posted) beneath this blog post – critiquing the arguments, not the commenters – citing the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and mentioning the report that Albanese released today (which I’m surprised to have to note you haven’t and might have been useful for your other readers to know about)…have been removed?
EDIT: Never mind, not sure why but they didn’t appear – and the comment count appeared as 8 – until I clicked ‘Post Comment’ on this one. My apologies for the confusion!
I suspect that was caused by caching, which is a necessary defence against unknown entities who try to overload the site to make it unavailable.
“Clear and present danger” I’d be grateful if you’d reflect on the adequacy of this phrase, because there aren’t other forms of danger. Danger is immediate in time or space or both and that phrase is an American illiteratism we English should deprecate. The American language died in 1979.
Possible dangers exist, that are not clear and present.
To find out who rules you, find out who you cannot criticise
Her indoors ! 🙂
“To find out who rules you, find who you’re not allowed to criticise.” (Slightly amended.)
If I had enough money, I would stand hundreds of candidates for a party of that name in all the elections. Almost certainly this wouldn’t be allowed. The rulers really don’t like those words for some reason.
Alternatively, just look to see what sectors of commerce 1) escaped nationalisation in 1945 and 2) are zero rated for VAT.
The problem is in how laws are being interpreted too literally, with no other common sense tests, such as context and capability to carry out said action(s) being taken into account.
Another case everyone may recall, because it attracted celebrity attention and criticism, reported in the Guardian quote :
Frustrated by delays at Robin Hood airport, near Doncaster, 26-year-old Paul Chambers keyed in: “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” Police arrested him shortly afterwards under the Criminal Law Act 1977.
After his conviction, he subsequently lost his job, as an accountant. He also lost his appeal, at which his KC, Ben Emmerson, told the court: “One has to inject common sense to avoid the law ending up looking silly. Was this a steamroller to crack a very small nut.”
Isn’t it fairly common sense that you don’t even publicly joke about blowing up an airport/insert-other-infrastructure-here?
It’s not something I would do, as I know that any intended sarcasm, humour etc, i.e. context, is lost online. I remember the early internet, which was like the Wild West compared to today; especially online gaming chat. There seems to be far too much state effort today, being put into policing thought and speech, amid the the wider attempt to Disneyfy the internet. When I hear a Labour politician say they want to make Britain the safest place in the world to go online, I immediately think of China or N.Korea’s internet, and wonder what draconian restrictive BS they dream of imposing on us?
Indeed, slightly off topic but have you seen what is going on in Germany lately? You risk being arrested if you ridicule, insult a german politician online.
German police launch nationwide operation against online hate speech
https://www.yahoo.com/news/german-police-launch-nationwide-operation-061636979.html
Recently an Afd-related journalist uploaded a harmless manipulated photo of interior minister Nancy Fraser holding up a paper that said “I hate freedom of speech”. Quite harmless. But for that photo he got a suspended sentence:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/10/editor-of-german-far-right-outlet-receives-suspended-sentence-in-freedom-of-speech-case
We are going to see more of this sickening authoritarian censorship all over europe soon.
Consecutive British governments – and the MSM, have for decades been subtly implanting in our minds racist thoughts – with regards to brown skinned people, and of late Russian people, indeed – Facebook and Instagram at one point cancelled their hate speech policies, to allow the calling of bad things to happen to Russians.
I’d say that with their support for genocide in Gaza, British governments have lost much of their credibility – and respect, its gotten to the point that, if you publicly speak out against the genocide that you stand a fair chance of going to prison – the chant the river to the sea is frowned upon, and now the chant DDttIDF is also a unacceptable in some quarters.
As for prisons, right now they’re all bursting at the seams – but there always seems to room for those who upset the established order, via a compliant judge.
The British judiciary are already very, very conservative. That seems to be the defining characteristic required, besides being a white, Oxbridge educated male, as most are. The old system for appointing Judges was called the “tap on the shoulder” system; it was the opposite of an open and transparent recruitment process. Bizarrely, since they changed the system to mitigate that secrecy, the judicial appointments have become even less diverse. Conservatism is baked-in to all honours and appointment systems in the UK. We’d need a determined, revolutionary govt and leader to change it. One that understands the sheer scale of the task.
“In short, the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has been the best recruiting tool that alt-right leaders like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson have been given.”
Actually the best recruiting tool for Farage and Tommy Robinson (like how you implicitly equate them both there BTW) has been, for decades, left wing woke wankers instantly screaming ‘racist’ at anyone and everyone who has ever tried to say anything negative about the levels of immigration. People are just bored of you. I am just bored of you.
Here are the judge’s sentencing remarks explaining the reasons for his sentence:
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/R-v-Lucy-Connolly.pdf
Just realised (after re-reading the moderation rules) that this (msg of 15:16) is against the rule barring messages which are primarily links to somewhere else. Therefore it is not a true contribution. So please censor it.
Lol
Very cogently argued and thought through, Craig. Prison reform, as you say, should be a priority for any sane government in this country, but of course no political party will touch it, so in fear are they of the lobby power and social media to distort and destroy any reasoned debate. And I couldn’t agree more that, even if you accept Connolly’s conviction, the sentence of prison is utterly pointless and of course has made a martyr of her.
Russ Jackson has a very good thread on the various ramifications of the Bob Vylan nonsense, and the precedents which may operate in his case: https://x.com/docrussjackson/status/1939297725008474223
The point is really that whatever action is taken, or not, the grotesque charade of the ‘news’ agenda on this country has done its job of making a massive diversion from what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank in order to rile up public opinion against people who are anti-genocide, while dismissing any of the reality of the live holocaust. The chant itself offered no real threat to the IDF, but of course expressed our disgust at the murderous killing machine whose sadistic cruelty is on a scale soul-crushing in its industrial systematic extermination of human beings.
Starmer and his ruthless gang are apparently more interested in shielding the perpetrators of genocide than balancing the rights of UK citizens to free speech and protest. Allowing themselves to be hijacked by the very well-funded, but entirely unrepresentative ziolobby, is a betrayal of everything Britain stood for post WW2. Their historical and cultural ignorance is shameful, their reckless obsequiousness to foreign powers a measure of weaklings, cowards and the amoral.
The only drawback in this is that it assumes anyone would actually engage in debate. Most people hold opinions, and many hold strong opinions, without actually being able to tell you WHY they hold those opinions. Much is prejudice, fear and seeking to ‘punch down’ I would also say that laws (generally) do not seek to fill jail cells but rather to change behaviour. In this respect laws have been mostly successful. But there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution to any of this..
“Most foreseeable of all was the use by the Zionist lobby of its power in the state to seize upon the criminalisation of “hate speech” to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and attack pro-Palestinian sentiment. The Left made this rod for their own back when they led the charge against freedom of speech”
Perhaps this has been a long term plan conducted in secret.
I’ve followed Craig’s website for many years and would like to put on record how much I value the work he does in exposing what’s really going on in the world as opposed to what our governments want us to know. Thank you Craig.
That said, I find myself on the opposite side of the fence on the issue of free speech. You either have it or you don’t and currently in the UK we don’t. It’s got to the point where I can’t even explain to political candidates on my own doorstep exactly why I won’t be voting for them for fear of causing offence and ending up behind bars. At the same time, the internet has become a minefield for those of us with strong opinions on controversial subjects; a team of lawyers is now required to vet what we write before posting. How many people for example are fully au fait with the large and growing list of proscribed organisations and what they each represent? Look at how the right wing media is currently jumping up and down with allegations of “hate speech” and demands for criminal charges against an unknown band plying their trade at Glastonbury. In summary, untrammelled free speech has potential pitfalls but as we’re now seeing for ourselves, the alternative is much worse.
With my wife I give a lift to school sometimes of my five year old grandson.
He often takes his I pad with him. I can hear him playing a game on his I pad.
The graphics that I have seen do not seem related to the talking.
One person can be heard talking all sorts of rubbish. I have heard the character talking about doing some very dangerous things and committing crimes to get money.
I don’t know if it artificially generated . I know there are some very sick video games.
You can get all sorts if information of the internet including how to make bombs.
If artificial intelligence makes a tweet like Lucy’s who would they arrest I wonder.
Five year old, iPad, games. There’s the problem !
There are very few in parliament who’d endorse these borderline free speech absolutism views, very few who’ll defend civil liberties in fact. On the Tory side there’s only David Davis who consistently defends civil liberties – the best leader they never had – I don’t know how, or even if, he voted on proscribing Palestine Action? It’s now before the unelected Lords (debate started at 5PM today) not law until Saturday morning at the earliest.
It’s rumoured Corbyn may formally launch a new party based on his parliamentary group, which includes Shockat Adam, the MP for Leicester South; Ayoub Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr; Adnan Hussain the MP for Blackburn, and Iqbal Mohamed, the MP for Dewsbury and Batley. Noticed Adnan Hussain, who won the seat Craig contested was previously Labour, but only until 2020, when Starmer became leader so he may be ok?
If it is formed, can only imagine what will be thrown at such a party if it starts to gain serious traction.
Given this report on Twitter, the right can throw the kitchen sink at a new party, but it is unlikely to affect the majority of the population, who I believe have had enough of arrogant aggressive Zionism now.
“A house has been quietly bought in the UK by a man called Avi Avner Segal for £502,500 and he didn’t have to legally report the purchase to his tax authorities.
Avi Avner Segal’s real name has been revealed as Avner Netanyahu the son of Benjamin Netanyahu.”
How is this even allowed to happen?
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-netanyahu-son-purchased-uk-apartment-under-different-name
An apartment in Oxford since 2022. Thanks Truss…
Is that what’s been flying into and out of Brize Norton/Akrotiri?
Is there a golden visa involved?
“and he didn’t have to legally report the purchase to his tax authorities.”
Is he an Israeli and are “his tax authorities.” the Israel tax office?
Proof, if needed of two tier Britain.
“A two-tier justice row has erupted after an engineer was jailed for half as long as Lucy Connolly over a near-identical tweet, while a Labour MP who punched a constituent to the ground was spared jail completely. ”
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/03/engineer-given-half-lucy-connollys-sentence-for-near-identical-tweet/
Plenty of MPs think they are above the law.
When the authorities get conspicuously heavy-handed on ‘freedom of speech’ you know they up to something, most likely protecting their own false narratives. Usually the throwing someone to the wolves is a diversionary tactic for their lies and to show he public who is boss – remember Jo Moore after 9-11 who was relentlessly pilloried for a cynical but seemingly fleeting remark. The murder of David Kelly during the Iraq propaganda was probably the most extreme example, and perhaps Jean Charles De Menezes too, where people who knew or said too much were somehow silenced. There was a slightly different hysteria over the allegations about the late Lord McAlpine, when some people lost their jobs over remarks on social media. With Lucy Connolly, I would say it isn’t just the racism and malicious intent that were badly flawed but possibly many of her other assumptions – assumptions peddled also by the media. Therefore while ‘everyone is shocked’ by her criminal threats and racism, the failings or even lies by the authorities in other areas, and the legitimate doubts of people who aren’t racists, are obscured.
I think the intel agencies are driving the crackdown on social media; the demands for real time censorship and removal of data. They must be genuinely uncomfortable with the instantaneous nature of social media; in terms of the potential for someone to break the Official Secrets Act and leave them scrambling to rectify a situation. Imagine, for instance, if someone revealed details about a sensitive military operation that was underway, or live, like the route of the recent attack on Iran. Look at the sheer panic as the Snowden stuff broke in the guardian, with planes and senior security personnel jetting in from the US.
There are secrets, that if true, could possibly put a lot of senior, well known politicians and former security chiefs in jail. They’d also risk permanently undermining democratic faith, among our peoples. You might ask, well, why do the elites do risky stuff that puts so much in jeopardy? And I honestly don’t know the answer to that. Maybe our elites are addicted to taking risks? Look at what Craig revealed about New Labour being comfortable with the use of torture.
“Imagine, for instance, if someone revealed details about a sensitive military operation that was underway, or live”
You mean like “we are operationally secure”…?
” Imagine, for instance, if someone revealed details about a sensitive military operation that was underway, or live, like the route of the recent attack on Iran.”
That’s not exactly a new problem. Militaries have had it for thousands of years and have, in that time, developed ways to solve it, mainly by making sure the information is not passed to anyone who might blab it. Generally, the state wants to keep things secret from the public. If a military secret gets out, it will be the enemy who knows it first. The main thrust of official secrecy is to prevent the government being embarrassed by being found out doing things they have previously denied doing, or would like the public to think they didn’t do, like obtaining information through torture.