Roxy Music pop star criticises the Met for police arrests at Quaker Meeting House.

 

Brian Eno

The former Roxy Music band member, Brian Eno, is spot on about the police arrests at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster, London. When expressing moral concerns is treated as criminal intent by the police then we ought to be rightly worried and concerned. Are we living in a Stasi-like police state under Starmer's squalid Labour government? These people met to discuss and share opinions about climate change and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. The police smashed in the front door, arrested six people, and confiscated laptops and mobile phones.

The U.K. recently came under fire by high-profile politicians in the U.S. for allegedly curtailing citizen’s free speech. J. D. Vance, the U S. Vice President, accused the U.K. of curtailing freedom of expression during a meeting with the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, at the Oval Office on 27 February.

Although we know there have been a number of people including Journalists, who have been arrested by the police for publishing tweets and comments on social media concerning the Israeli offensive in Gaza, Starmer has defended the U.K.'s track record on free speech. Responding to comments made by the U.S. Vice President, Starmer, said: "We've had free speech for a very long time in the United Kingdom and it will last for a very, very long time."

Despite what Starmer says, we don't have free speech in Britain and never have done, because we have laws that seek to constrain what we can say. Following the riots in Southport that occurred following the stabbing of a number of children at a dance class in Southport, many people were arrested, tried, and sent to prison, for comments that they made on social media. The authorities claimed that these people had aimed to incite violence towards others or had aimed to incite racial hatred towards others.

The 'Online Safety Act', is cited as another potential barrier to free speech in the U.K. The government say that it's designed to stop harmful content, threats and misinformation, online. The Public Disorder Act, makes it an offence for a person to use threatening words that can cause distress, based on race, religion or sexuality. A Stockport housewife was recently visited by two Greater Manchester police officers after she called online for a councillor to resign. The police said they were acting on a complaint.

Although Article 9 of the Human Rights Act protects the right of freedom of thought and belief and Article 10, protects the right to freedom of expression, they are not absolute rights. In 2010, the police raided the London home of the freelance photographer David Hoffman, after he displayed a picture in his front window of the Conservative politician David Cameron, with the word 'wanker' written underneath. The police told Hoffman that they were acting on a complaint and he was asked to remove the poster from his window. He was threatened with arrest and handcuffed. Hoffman later made a complaint against the police claiming that they had violated his right to freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act. The police later apologised for breaching his rights under Article 10, and paid him compensation.