It’s a focal point of national discussion: online hate, misinformation and what constitutes each. While many Americans still consider the First Amendment a near-absolute for free speech, Britain has taken a starkly different approach. The country’s Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, was billed as protection for kids. But it’s unleashed what many consider disturbing policing of online speech. And it comes with a warning for people in the U.S.
In Southport, England, in 2024, the British-born son of Rwandan immigrants stabbed to death three little girls and injured 12 others, slashing one six-year-old 122 times and trying to cut off her head. The horrific murders sparked riots and a free speech crackdown.
Jamie Michael, a former Royal Marine and father of two young daughters, took to Facebook with a call to action.
“I posted a 12-minute video asking, calling on the community to come together and have a meeting so that we can discuss safety measures for the schools and parks,” Michael told Full Measure in an interview in London.
Police soon showed up at his workplace in Wales – and arrested him.
“The words they said: that could be “indecent racial hatred,” Michael said. “They actually said that I’d had terrorist intentions, that’s what was on the police report.”
While he was in jail, Michael says, officials altered a transcript of his Facebook video – to make it look like he’d admitted to starting a riot. Yet he’d said no such thing.
“So I put my hand up in the court to say, you know, ‘Things are wrong.’ [I] wanted to say, ‘That’s wrong, and this is wrong,’ and the judge literally shouted me down, said, ‘Sit down.’ He said, ‘This isn’t a place for you to speak.’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Businesswoman Bernie Spofforth was also arrested for her social media post after the Southport murders.
“I was taken to the police station and held for 36 hours like a terrorist. Held for 36 hours,” she says.
Her offense? She had shared the identity circulating online of a supposed suspect: asylum seeker Ali Al-Shakati.
Spofforth didn’t know it, but someone had made up the name. She deleted the post when she couldn’t confirm the name. But days later, police came for her, too.
“What were they trying to prove?” Full Measure asked her.
“Malicious communications and making up communications in a racist way,” Spofforth responded. “ They thought I’d made the name up in order to create hate and to incite violence, which, of course, I didn’t do.”
It’s a 2023 British law that’s largely responsible: the Online Safety Act. The government framed it as vital to protecting children. But Claire Fox says shocking provisions in the fine print outlaw speech that “harms.”
Fox is a member of the British House of Lords in Parliament and founder of the Academy of Ideas, which advocates for free speech.
She was one of the only legislators who opposed the British bill because of broad generalizations as to what it criminalized.
“In this particular bill, the Online Safety Act, they then stressed, ‘Well, no, when we say ‘harm,’ we don’t mean physical harm, we mean psychological harm.’ Psychological harm is an elastic term that’s become inflated beyond any recognition, which basically says, you know, anything can be harmful,” Fox told Full Measure.
“You hurt my feelings?” Full Measure asked.
“You hurt my feelings,” Fox confirmed. “And that’s what happened through the online safety bill. And that became institutionalized in law.”
Police in England and Wales arrested more than 12,000 people in 2023 alone for violating communications law: not only for obvious incitement to violence but also for private messages and chats deemed to persistently cause “annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety.”
The whole debate may feel foreign in the United States, but cracks are also appearing in America’s free speech protections.
In July, police in Fort Worth, Texas, told street preachers at a gay pride event that it’s against the law to offend somebody else. The alarming exchange was captured on video and posted on social media.
“If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” a female officer tells the preacher.
“Wait – you’re going to ticket us for offensive speech?” retorts the preacher.
“Yes, absolutely,” replied the officer.
Fort Worth police later admitted the officers were wrong, and announced First Amendment refresher training.
In the UK, a civil liberties group took up Michael’s defense. A jury found him not guilty in just 17 minutes. But after jail time and months of anguish, Michael says he’s still dealing with a destroyed reputation.
Spofforth was never tried or convicted. She’s now suing the police department over her arrest and the permanent damage she says it’s done to her career.
Meantime, the British government is introducing something called “respect orders” that can charge people with a speech crime with no jury: it goes before a magistrate and that’s a charge with a criminal record.
For more on this story, watch “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” Sunday. Attkisson’s most recent bestseller is “Follow the $cience: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails.”
Order “Follow the Science” today!
Managing Editor, Full Measure
Author of bestsellers “Slanted,” “The Smear,” and “Stonewalled”
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