“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” – John Milton (1644)

“Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.” – John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon (Cato’s Letters, 1720–23)

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” – Ibid.

“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom—and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.” – Benjamin Franklin (1722)

“Big Brother is watching you.” – George Orwell (1948)

Our First Amendment guarantees that “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech.” This was not an idea original to American soil. Instead, it came from the mother country, Great Britain, which had long had a tradition of free speech, unlike all other countries in the world at the time. What the Americans did that was unique was to enshrine free speech in a contract between the people and their government, one that severely limited the government.

Unfortunately for the British, no such contract exists. That explains why Graham Linehan, an Irish comedian whom some may know as the creator of the acclaimed Father Ted TV series, upon returning to the UK from a gig in America, found himself facing five policemen sent to arrest him when he arrived at Heathrow. His crime? Hurting the feelings of so-called “transgender” people. Here are the three tweets:

Those tweets are not police. Also, the first tweet mentions punching, although it’s clearly a joke because real women in female-only spaces don’t have testicles. In America, they’d get some shrill opposition but no government action. In Britain, things are different.

Linehan wrote about the arrest on his Substack page:

When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists” [sic] The officers gave no reaction and this was the theme throughout most of the day. Among the rank-and-file, there was a sort of polite bafflement. Entirely professional and even kind, but most had absolutely no idea what any of this was about.

“Kind” because the officers saw how upset I was—when they began reading me my rights, the red mist descended and I came close to becoming one of those police body-cam videos where you can’t believe the perp isn’t just doing what he’s told—and they treated me gently after that. They even arranged for a van to meet me on the tarmac so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist. Small mercies.

After a night in a cell, Linehan was interrogated by an officer deeply disturbed that Linehan refused to acknowledge the reality of so-called transgenderism. Eventually, Linehan got so upset that the police called a nurse, who discovered that his blood pressure was over 200 (stroke territory), so they took him to an Emergency Department.

The doctor suggested the stress of the arrest, following on the heels of a long flight, caused his high blood pressure. While Linehan agreed that the experience was stressful, he described something infinitely more stressful:

I feel it may also have been a contributing factor that I have now spent eight years being targeted by trans activists working in tandem with police in a dedicated, perseistent [sic] harassment campaign because I refuse to believe that lesbians have cocks.

The only condition for Linehan’s bail was that he shut up:

I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes—just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.

England, once famously a class-based society, has once again become a class-based society. This time, though, it’s not the hierarchy of birth (royalty, aristocrats, landed gentry, etc.). Instead, it’s a hierarchy of victimhood. Sexual deviants and Islamic immigrants (both legal and illegal) occupy the top rungs of British society, and woe betide anyone who runs afoul of them.

Linehan’s torture at the hands of crazed “transgender” activists is proof of the role sexual deviancy has in dictating policy in England. This video clip illustrates the high position Muslims now occupy in once-great Britain:

Labour MP Bridget Phillipson is asked if she agrees with the Home Office that the rights of illegal migrants are more important than the rights of the people of Epping.

"Yes, of course we do"

They are past the phase of denial. Now it’s about rubbing it in and breaking the… pic.twitter.com/XLDQEI1yNs

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) September 1, 2025

There’s also the report from the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies claiming that Britain’s “overwhelmingly white” rural areas are a “psychological burden” for minorities (read: Muslims) who must “navigat[e] predominately white spaces” thanks to problematic and exclusionary “monocultural customs.” Therefore, these rural areas need to make more halal food and prayer areas available to Britain’s new overlords.

The report also recommends kosher food, but you and I know that’s a red herring. British Jews have never demanded that the countryside stop raising pigs.

The response to Linehan’s arrest from the few voices in Britain still brave enough to tackle trans-fascism and the erosion of free speech (including, of course, J.K. Rowling) has been utter outrage:

When @Glinner landed at Heathrow, he was met by five armed police officers, and immediately arrested.

His ‘crime’? Three gender-critical tweets.

As Graham says in his Substack:

“In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women… pic.twitter.com/1YDOhtwRRm

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) September 2, 2025

What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable. https://t.co/CRl2n9rorh

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 2, 2025

What’s happened to @Glinner today is absolutely ridiculous.
Five armed cops arresting him at Heathrow for tweets mocking the scandal of biological men invading women’s spaces?
When it comes to free speech, Britain’s turning into North Korea.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 2, 2025

Britain is now a total laughing stock - a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets. It would be laughable it it wasn't so serious.
- Graham Linehan on his arrest today ???? pic.twitter.com/JaCKKtz271

— Neil O'Brien (@NeilDotObrien) September 2, 2025

You can see more tweets here.

Britain was the cradle of our American concept of free speech. Now, though, proving George Orwell painfully prophetic, it has become a free speech graveyard or, more accurately, a gulag for those who still cling to the old rights.

(It just occurred to me that, even if I wanted to enter the UK, a country I once loved but can no longer stomach, I’d probably be banned for my views. Trump is trying to stop terrorists, while the UK is adamantly stopping those who advocate for biological reality and warn against the threat posed by a religion that has conquest as a core doctrine.)

Image created using AI, inspired by Graham Linehan’s self-portrait on his Substack.