There is virtually zero internal British pressure in defence of free speech. Everything good is coming from Trump’s USA.
JUPPLANDIA
Myself and my fellow British citizens now live in a country where free speech has already been effectively removed and where questioning Globalist orthodoxy online or verbally can result in imprisonment, or at the least police harassment.
Under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 it is illegal to intentionally “cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”. Which means that potentially any comment anyone else finds offensive can be complained about and if the police decide it’s an intentional offence and a judge agrees a person can serve prison time essentially because they have upset someone.
In 2020 The Week reported on section 127 in this fashion:
“Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it illegal to send a message via a public electronic communications network that is considered grossly offensive, or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.
“This offence is incredibly broad and has been used to address jovial, albeit misjudged communications – it carries huge implications for freedom of expression,” says justice and freedom campaign group Liberty.”
Despite these earlier criticisms of the broadness and vagueness of Britain’s growing restrictions of free speech this legislation has had sentences added to cover things like criticism of religious groups and criticism of gender identity, with these additions being equally subjective in tone and definition.
In this already censorious atmosphere, the Conservative Party added the Online Safety Act 2023. It’s under the terms of this act that some of the most draconian police and judicial reactions to online content have occurred. The Act is excused as an attempt to protect children (for example from grooming or harassment or serious offences like child pornography) but has been far more often deployed politically to respond to non-PC commentary on race, immigration and Islam. The Act is also being used as a weapon against social media companies by empowering the Ofcom quango with legal powers to enforce compliance with their demands regarding what content is censored, silenced, removed or shared with the authorities:
“The act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content or legal content that could be “harmful” to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.
The Act also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites and obliges large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or other content that is in the public interest. It introduces new rules to make sure children are protected from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content and provides parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they arise.
Under the Online Safety Act, tech firms must do more to tackle illegal content on their platforms as Ofcom gains new powers to enforce the rules laid out in the bill. From Monday, March 17, 2025, the regulator will start enforcing the Online Safety Act’s illegal content codes, requiring social media companies to find and remove content such as child sexual abuse material.
The Act lists over 130 ‘priority offences’, and tech firms must assess and mitigate the risk of these occurring on their platforms. These include cyberflashing, intimate image abuse (revenge porn), and epilepsy trolling….
Some civil liberties groups believe its content measures risk stifling free expression online, while others express concerns about privacy and security related to requirements for porn sites to use technology for “robust age checks”.
Ofcom has published its first-edition codes of practice and guidance on tackling illegal harms, such as terror, hate, fraud, child sexual abuse, and assisting or encouraging suicide, under the UK’s Online Safety Act. These codes of practice and industry guidance are designed to help firms comply with the new safety duties placed on social media firms, search engines, messaging, gaming, and dating apps, and pornography and file-sharing sites.
As of March 17, 2025, online platforms must start putting in place measures to protect people in the UK from criminal activity, while Ofcom has launched its latest enforcement programme to assess industry compliance.”
Much of this of course sounds not only reasonable but morally good IF it was used for the purposes stated to protect children from grooming, harassment, pornography and sexual predators. But actually the opposite of this is happening-the SAME police and judges using this Act to pursue POLITICAL thought crimes are giving disgustingly LIGHT sentences for the possession of child pornography or for pedophile activity including rape.
UK judge gives 31 months prison for hate speech, 0 months for child pornography
(Highlight link and click open link).
While ‘offence’ has been extended to be almost always a criminal matter if someone complains to the police, child protection has not been increased, and while special and extra protection has been extended to particular groups (hate speech rules designating certain groups and never the majority populace as having ‘protected characteristics’) all forms of hate, abuse and incitement to violence aimed at the majority of the populace tend to be ignored.
Not only that, but mainstream media outlets have an automatic ‘trusted source’ status in this legislation, meaning that independent news commentators can be hit much more easily than legacy newspapers or TV stations-only these established legacy media outlets, often presenting the same lines on an issue, are covered as ‘journalisric’ sources whose access is protected.
This inculcates a dangerous two tier response to offence based solely on the highly subjective interpretations of what are essentially the political prejudices, likes and dislikes of individual judges and senior politicians and bureaucrats, rather than an equally enforced just law applied evenly for the purposes cited in its creation. Both non favoured demographic groups, and independent news sources, are by the terms of the legislation as well as the prejudices of the staff at Ofsted more subject to control than anyone else.
Both Ofcom and any strident minority or any aggressively offended ‘protected group’ are empowered to use the law to go after their political opponents or to enforce their ideology and their idea of what is acceptable discourse on others, increasingly in cases where no actual incitement to harm (still less actual support for child harm or terrorism) exists.
In reaction to these powers, Ofcom have for example been making aggressive demands to ALL social media platforms and providers, all of which can now be hit with pretty arbitrary massive fines repeatedly for every instance where anyone complains to Ofcom about content on those platforms. Rather understandably, some have refused to comply with a demand that they remove anything and everything Ofcom tells them to remove or that they pass any and all customer information onto Ofcom.
The Gab social media company have been especially engaged in an extensive battle with Ofcom about these matters. Gab have a firm commitment to free speech and accurately regard Ofcom’s demands and new powers as an infringement of the free speech rights of their customers and their own right as a company to determine the guidelines of content on their platform. Gab today sent me this explanation of their ongoing battle with British censorship which helpfully also references the strong support for free speech offered by J.D.Vance and the Trump administration:
“Just days after we exposed the UK government’s escalating attacks – including their admission of targeting our infrastructure providers in an act of economic terrorism – new developments confirm that our warnings about the dangers of the UK’s Online Safety Act are being recognized at the highest levels, while simultaneously revealing the truly draconian nature of their threats.
First, the Vindication: A recent report in The Guardian has revealed that officials from the U.S. State Department directly challenged the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, regarding the severe threat the Online Safety Act poses to freedom of expression.
According to the report:
-Officials from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) met with Ofcom in London.
-During this meeting, they explicitly raised concerns about how the Online Safety Act risks infringing free speech.
-A State Department spokesperson confirmed this, stating: “As vice-president Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom. It is important that the UK respect and protect freedom of expression.”
This is significant validation of everything Gab has been fighting against. Even elements within the US government recognize the UK Online Safety Act for the threat it is.
Now, the Stark Escalation: While Ofcom downplays the Act, claiming it only targets “illegal content,” the reality is far more sinister and extends into unprecedented personal threats. The scope of this law isn’t limited; it potentially applies to any user-to-user service accessible in the UK.
And here’s the truly chilling part: Buried within this tyrannical legislation is the power for UK authorities to bring criminal charges against named senior managers at companies deemed non-compliant.
Let that sink in. They genuinely believe they have the authority, under this Act, to target individuals – like myself – and potentially send American citizens to PRISON for the supposed crime of refusing to implement the UK’s subjective censorship regime on a US-based platform protected by the First Amendment.
This isn’t just delusional; it’s a stunning display of authoritarian overreach. It’s as if they’ve forgotten we operate in the United States, under US law. This threat to literally imprison executives of foreign companies demonstrates the absolute extremity of their censorship agenda and their disregard for international norms, national sovereignty, and fundamental rights.
What This Means:
Our Fight is Justified & Now Validated: The US State Dept. acknowledges the free speech risks.
Ofcom’s Narrative is Disproven: Their actions and the law’s text reveal a broader censorship goal, now including threats of imprisonment.
The Stakes are Personal and Existential: This is no longer just about fines or deplatforming; it’s about the potential for criminal prosecution of individuals for upholding free speech principles.
Urgent US Action is Imperative: “Expressing concern” is insufficient when faced with threats of economic terrorism and potential imprisonment of US citizens by a foreign government over constitutionally protected speech.
We are leveraging this validation from the State Department, combined with the exposure of these outrageous personal threats, in our ongoing communications with the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Justice, The White House, and other relevant bodies. We demand decisive action from the US government, including President Trump’s proposed tariffs, to protect American companies, American citizens, and the foundational principle of free expression from this foreign aggression.
This fight has reached a critical intensity. The UK government is not just attacking a platform; they are threatening individuals with imprisonment for defending your right to speak freely. We must have the resources to fight back on all fronts – legal, technical, and political – against this multi-faceted assault.”
What this Gab statement makes very clear is the extent to which the only significant push back against the assault on free speech being conducted by the British government comes externally from US sources-from companies like Gab, and from members of the Trump administration. British free speech has American champions, at least at the seniormost levels, whereas the Brirish media class (while themselves being protected from the worst excesses in ways ordinary citizens and independent journalists are not) pretend there is no problem with partisan and selective censorship at all.
In order though to get a proper sense of the scale of this change from the expected level of free speech that once applied in modern democracies, it’s probably best to cite a few modern examples of assaults on free speech by the British authorities:
- During the so called Southport Riots, grandfather Peter Lynch held up a banner calling the police, courts and government corrupt. Verbally, he said he was protesting the mass rape of British children (the grooming gang cases) and protesting on behalf of the children of the UK. Lynch did do in one of the hotspot areas where the worst grooming gang cases had occurred, and was a local resident of that area. Lynch did not commit any violent act, did not call for violence, did not assault or fight anyone, did not carry any weapon unless his banner was counted as one, did not cause any property damage, and did not engage in any rioting at all. He did not set fire to anything. He did not smash or break anything. And he did not hurt anyone.
Lynch did shout at the police and call them unpleasant names. He also said “you are protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them”. For shouting unpleasant hurty words at the police (which were arguably factually accurate given proven police dismissal of grooming gang victims who were children, as consensual prostitutes) Lynch was sentenced to two years and eight months for ‘violent disorder’ (having used no violence). After two months in prison, Lynch, who had never before been arrested or in trouble with the law, killed himself.
What is extraordinary about the Lynch case is that it occurred as a direct result of the Prime Minister demanding swift and tough sentencing of ‘Southport Rioters’ and demonising all those arrested in public announcements. The punishment was excessive and resulted in a man’s death, and yet nobody in the mainstream British media expressed disgust at this death or saw the Prime Minister’s pre-trial condemnations and demands as scandalous and prejudicial.
- Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative Party Councillor, was arrested, charged and imprisoned for 31 months in reaction to tweets she posted on X. Connolly was convicted of inciting racial hatred for saying “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.” in one tweet and saying “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care” in another, which she deleted within a few hours. The metaphorical, rage induced tweet which was clearly an expression of disgust rather than a serious call to harm-“for all I care” means that she would feel no sympathy, not that she intends or asks someone else to do it-was enough to land her with a prison sentence longer than that of many people who have committed sex attacks or violent assaults.
After her tweets and arrest, it emerged that the Southport killer she was discussing was an asylum seeker, and one who possessed an ISIS training manual. The police knew but delayed releasing this information to the public.
- More recently, a family found 6 police officers storming their home to arrest them in response to a minor dispute with their child’s school and messages exchanged in a private WhatsApp with just a handful of participants. “Maxie Allen and his partner Rosalind Levine were arrested on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications after they complained about the teacher recruitment process at their daughter’s primary school, Cowley Hill Primary School in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.” Allen has described the messages in question, none of which contained threats, violent language, encouragement of violence or anything beyond what would occur in a mild conversation-the most extreme insult present was calling someone not present in the group a ‘control freak’. For that Allen and his partner were both arrested (one in front of a young daughter), placed in a cell for 8 hours, interrogated and subjected to 5 weeks of following worry and anxiety before the police admitted there was no case to answer.
- In 2022 and 2023 Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a Christian volunteer, was twice arrested by West Midlands Police for silent prayer in the vicinity of an abortion clinic in Birmingham. West Midlands police, due to various heavy handed aspects of these particular cases, were eventually forced to offer £13,000 in compensation for wrongful arrest.
- On the 17th October 2024 Reason magazine commented on a similar case:“This month, a British man was convicted of criminal charges for praying silently near an abortion clinic. The man, Adam Smith-Connor did not attempt to harass, intimidate, or interact in any way with those entering the clinic. Instead, he wordlessly prayed with his head bowed slightly. He wasn’t even on clinic property—he was outside the sightline of the clinic itself, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a religious freedom group.
As a result, Smith-Connor was questioned by police and later charged with violating a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO), a broad censorship order enabled by the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. Under this law, local authorities can obtain special status for some public places, allowing them to ban a huge range of conduct. In the name of limiting “anti-social behavior,””
These are just a handful of cases I have chosen to highlight, but there are many, many more. In just one year, over 3,400 people have been arrested, charged and imprisoned for ‘speech crimes’ in the UK, and as can be seen above various different legislation can be applied to do this. The current Labour government wish to add further Islamophobia legislation into this already subjective and partisan minefield of thought and speech control, which would yet further increase the two tier advantages already supposed to a highly protected and cosseted religious group.
When Lucy Connolly was arrested for online rants, for example, large mobs of armed Muslim men were being told by police that they would not be challenged, arrested or imprisoned for openly carrying weapons they were preparing to use. Instead, they were informed that nobody would be arrested for waving their swords, knives and other deadly weapons on the street (the Southport ‘Muslims can carry weapons’ response comes in the same country where the white Nuneaton resident Anthony Bray was imprisoned for four months in 2024 for carrying a replica toy Legend of Zelda sword and where the Prime Minister has recently announced the banning of ‘ninja swords’).
At a governmental level, only the Americans are defending our free speech. Allegedly rival parties have conspicuously failed to condemn the two tier policing, the draconian punishments of online commentators following Southport, and the aggressive demands of Ofcom. And in a surely more morally disgusting manner, have been extremely cowardly in terms of applying criticism to Keir Starmer himself for interventions that undoubtedly led directly to Peter Lynch’s death.
UK censorship, claiming to protect children, already has the blood of an innocent man on its hands, and by the bitterest of ironies that of a man whose only professed purpose was to speak up for children our rulers had already betrayed.
This article (GAB, Vance and the US Defence of British Free Speech) was created and published by Jupplandia and is republished here under “Fair Use”
Featured image: Shutterstock
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