Britain’s most senior police chief on Wednesday defended the arrest of an Irish comedy writer over comments about transgender issues, saying officers were in an impossible position in arbitrating between free speech and criminal content.
Graham Linehan, co-creator of popular TV comedy shows Father Ted and The IT Crowd, said on Tuesday he had been detained by armed police at London’s Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to posts on X.
Explaining his officers’ decision to arrest Linehan, London Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said in a statement they had reasonable grounds to believe he had committed a public order offence, but said he understood concerns.
Rowley said people would agree action was needed when the threat of violence was obvious, but in lesser cases police had been “left between a rock and a hard place by successive governments, who have given officers no choice but to record such incidents as crimes when they’re reported.
“I don’t believe we should be policing toxic culture wars debates and officers are currently in an impossible position.”
Linehan, 57, has been a vocal critic of transgender activism. In one X post, he wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
“When Did Britain become North Korea?” asked the Daily Mail newspaper on its front page after news of his arrest.
Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said the duty of police is to public safety not to “not monitor social media for hurty words.”
But Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, said the posts were “totally unacceptable” and the arrest seemed “proportionate.”
Still, the arrest will likely be seized upon by Reform Party Leader Nigel Farage, who has surged in British polls amid dissatisfaction with the Labour and Conservative parties.
Farage is in Washington, D.C., testifying Wednesday at a committee hearing led by Republicans, entitled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation.”
Farage late Tuesday posted a tabloid front page with coverage of the Linehan arrest, stating, “Free speech is under assault in Britain.”
In prepared text for Wednesday’s appearance, Farage raised alarms about “illiberal and authoritarian censorship regimes that are alien to both American and traditionally British values.”
In his testimony, Farage also lamented the 30-month prison sentence for Lucy Connolly over “lamentable” posts she took down hours later.
“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f–king hotels housing migrants to the U.K.,” Connolly posted last year in the wake of a high-profile mass murder of children that British police said gave rise to a wave of online misinformation about the attacker’s citizenship status and religion.
A British court heard that in the few hours that Connolly’s post was up, it was viewed over 300,000 times and shared nearly 1,000 times. She was released last month after serving 10 months in prison.
Police commissioner calls for greater clarity
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government has faced repeated accusations from critics that the state is curtailing free expression, and social media companies have criticized new online safety laws designed to protect children and remove hate speech, including from X owner Elon Musk and U.S. Vice-President JD Vance.
The Online Safety Act of 2023 passed under a Conservative government.
Starmer called out Farage’s absence from British Parliament on Wednesday to “bad mouth and talk down our country” in Washington.
But Health Minister Wes Streeting acknowledged the potential for unintended consequences of the legislation.
“We are all … quite anxious about some of the cases we’ve seen in the media or proceed through the courts of what people have said online, where you think, ‘was that really what Parliament intended when they passed these laws?'” he told BBC Radio.
Rowley said greater clarity on the law was needed and, in the meantime, processes would be put in place so only “the most serious cases” were taken forward, where there was a clear risk of harm.
Linehan said he was released on bail without charges on Tuesday, but is due to go on trial later this week on separate charges of harassment and criminal damage involving a transgender activist.
