Any British voter who thinks that the problem of “hate speech” laws can be solved politically, by electing a government that will reverse them, had better come to terms with the fact that they have been weaponised under thirteen years of a “Conservative” regime.

So far I’ve seen no sign that any Conservative MP, or any British MP at all, has any interest in doing so.

And before you get too smug about the following British horror story, understand that the same “thinking” and ideology that created this in Britain also exists elsewhere in the West, including here in New Zealand.

Although they’ve been pushed back for now it will be merely a temporary setback for the Left, as such things have proven to be. A future Labour-Green-Maori government will try and implement such laws here in New Zealand.

That is if National doesn’t beat them to the punch, following in the footsteps of the British Tories and determined to show that they too stand for the oppressed for whom opponent’s speech is violence.

The story is that the Surrey Police have gone after one Caroline Farrow, a mother of five kids, for supposedly posting anonymous messages on webpage that are held to constitute “malicious communications and harassment”:

… adding that officers ‘seized a number of electronic devices’. Temporary Detective Chief Inspector David Bentley said the devices had been seized as police continue to ‘gather further evidence and carry out an investigation to prove or disprove the allegation’.

Mrs Farrow has strenuously denied the accusations, explaining instead that she was playing the organ during Mass at the Holy Angels Church, Aldershot during the times the posts were made. She was previously the subject of a five-month police investigation in 2019 – after she was accused of calling a transgender woman a ‘he’ on Twitter. 

She got searched outside her home before being taken to Guildford Police Station for questioning.

Here Twitter thread explains what happened in more detail and the Samizdata blogsite have summarised it here in case it vanishes. Some of the detail:

On page 1 of the bundle repeated misgendering is cited. Here are the prohibitions they are seeking tomorrow morning. I will be assigned an “offender manager”.

I will not be allowed to use any Social Media, Social Networking, Gaming, Dating (lol) site without this person’s written permission and having supplied them with usernames and passwords for all sites within 3 days.In addition the following requirements are added:

  1. Allow Police Officers to enter your registered address(es), between the hours of 8am and 8pm, to conduct a risk assessment, monitor devices, and manage compliance of the order
  2. ….

The Surrey Police Superintendent signed off on the document, which includes this phrase:

“I consider that in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 8 of HRA, an interference by this force as a public authority is in accordance with the law and is necessary.”

Understand that Caroline Farrow has not seen the inside of a courtroom or been convicted of anything. The Police simply acted on a complaint and they’re enforcing all this since the law allows them to do so. How such a law could be passed that allows such actions without a conviction is beyond me.

Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four as a warning, not a training manual.