Deborah Lough is a transgender woman who was arrested in front of her children for allegedly posting a "sexually offensive" meme on her social media account. She claims that she was mistaken for a transgender person and that the police arrested her because they thought it was her.
00:00:30.000The state of free speech in this country has never been in a poorer state.
00:00:54.980I mean, we're at risk of becoming the North Korea of the North Sea.
00:00:58.360And Deborah's case is just the very latest example.
00:01:01.420But, you know, there was an article in The Times a few months ago saying that the police are arresting over 12,000 people a year for supposedly saying offensive things online.
00:01:26.540I was arrested in front of my five children in 2022 on suspicion of posting a meme.
00:01:35.820Literally, somebody had posted something offensive.
00:01:38.080And the person, the complainant, the transgender activist said that it must be me and he knew it was me because I had posted similar things on my Twitter feed.
00:01:50.260So the police actually came and arrested me in front of my children, seized all my devices, tried to feed my children's devices because they have actually admitted this.
00:01:58.580They were looking for material that might link me to the meme.
00:02:03.040It's not easy being a dissident these days, though.
00:02:29.580Like many, I was deeply concerned that a police force deemed it necessary to take five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer from a flight.
00:02:38.240Some may have found Mr Linehan's comments offensive, but that isn't the point.
00:02:42.940If you don't support speech you don't like, you don't support free speech.
00:02:46.900Will the Prime Minister commit to reviewing our speech laws to ensure the legitimate free expression is protected?
00:02:54.620And will he condemn the culture within the public sector which prioritises this dangerous and perverse nonsense?
00:03:55.720And the Trump administration has officially told them that the State Department gave them a statement saying if you continue to arrest people for praying outside an abortion clinic legally, if you continue to arrest people for their speech, if you continue to push all this stuff on the kid, the transgenderism, all of it.
00:04:11.900And I've told Canada this too, and everybody else.
00:04:39.480We've kind of forgotten the Voltairian principles that we'll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with.
00:04:49.460That is the absolute foundation, if you think about it, of free speech, of democracy, of living in freedom.
00:04:54.680It's kind of why we fought two world wars at massive, massive cost to defend that very principle for ourselves and for many, many others around the country.
00:05:04.900And I first became worried about all this with cancel culture.
00:05:08.120You know, the idea that we can't have this speaker go to a university because some people might be offended by what he or she have to say.
00:05:17.560And it's extraordinary that, you know, I come from a land of Magna Carta.
00:05:21.760I come from a land that gave us the mother of parliaments.
00:05:24.820And it doesn't give me any great joy to be sitting in America and describing the really awful authoritarian situation that we have now sunk into.
00:05:35.500J.D. Vance did us all a service at the Munich Security Conference back in February this year.
00:05:41.220He really got this debate up and running.
00:05:43.600A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
00:06:01.560Not obstructing anyone, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
00:06:08.880After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
00:06:24.200Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.
00:06:37.060He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
00:06:41.100Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.
00:06:50.260But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
00:07:06.620Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.
00:07:14.780In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
00:07:20.180It's on the 70th and 10th of 2023, on Bathurst Green Road, at 10 of 4, you were witnesses saying, obviously, people, while they're over here, et cetera, we let them into our country, et cetera.
00:07:57.040You are literally more likely to be arrested for transgressing their political dogmas than you are for mugging someone, robbing a shop or burgling someone's home.
00:08:10.100In 2023, the police made 33 arrests a day for speech crimes.
00:08:18.060Now, all the while, Keir Starmer just keeps repeating his robotic nasal mantra.
00:08:23.560We've had free speech for a very, very long time here.
00:08:42.640These are not the behavior of a free country.
00:08:45.520Well, you can't say anything, especially in Britain now, if you say a boy can't be a girl or a girl can't be a boy, you get the police at your door.
00:08:54.260You know, if you get burgled, if you get your house burgled, the police will never show up.
00:08:58.340But if you say a boy cannot be a girl, you'll get 15 police officers at your door.
00:09:03.360The Times, 23, 1440, are arresting you on suspicion of improper use of the electronic communications network.
00:09:38.780One of the greatest comedic minds of his generation has been cancelled from the Edinburgh fringe because he doesn't want a naked man next to his daughter in the swimming pool changing rooms.
00:09:54.120He's written jokes for Brass Eye, the fast show.
00:09:56.420But the biggest joke of all is that the show he was a part of, Comedy Unleashed, has now been cancelled in the name of inclusivity.
00:10:03.780So I didn't immediately think they were going to arrest me, but they did ask me, they said, can we go somewhere private to speak?
00:10:12.920So we went down this kind of tunnel and through a doorway and they stood around me and he said, your passport is on a wanted list or something or it was flagged up or something.
00:10:25.060And you're being arrested for, you know, a tweet.
00:10:29.980Something that we believe you've written on Facebook has upset someone.
00:10:34.200You're here because somebody got upset.
00:11:13.060Are we going to find ourselves arrested and thrown into jail by this new elite police force that this government has set up to monitor our speech, our debate, our views?
00:11:26.580Well, I will see you in jail because I will never be silenced as I speak up for you and this country.
00:11:36.460Have you had a lady called Lucy Connolly since you've been here?