British police have told famed Fr Ted creator Graham Linehan that he faces no further action in respect of the investigation that included his arrest at Heathrow in September by 5 armed members of the force. There was no realistic prospect of conviction, police said.
Mr Linehan had previously said he was arrested at Heathrow airport by 5 armed police because of tweets he had posted critical of transgenderism – and was granted bail on condition that he “stay off Twitter”.
At the time, the comedian wrote on his Substack: “I arrived back in London to discover the UK is still a police state run by trans activists”.
Now Mr Linehan’s lawyers have been informed by police that he faces no further action in respect of the arrest at Heathrow. “After a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn’t even bother to attend) the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case,” the hit comedy writer posted on X.
He vowed that “with the aid of the Free Speech Union, I still aim to hold the police accountable for what is only the latest attempt to silence and suppress gender critical voices on behalf of dangerous and disturbed men.”
The Free Speech Union (FSU) said that London’s Metropolitan Police Service had dopped their investigation into Graham Linehan’s tweets “after weeks of police bail – subject to unlawful conditions, including a ban on posting on X.”
Officers told Mr Linehan, they said, that “prosecutors say there isn’t sufficient evidence to support any charges”, adding “that shouldn’t have been a surprise since opposing trans ideology is not a crime.”
“Throughout this probe, the police have behaved like activists, not impartial upholders of the law. Last week, FSU lawyers had to take the Met Police to court to get their illegal ban on Graham contacting any trans-identifying male dropped. The Met didn’t even show up to the hearing,” they said.
“Rather than inviting Graham for an interview in September, the Met sent five armed police officers to arrest him at Heathrow airport. So, we’re not stopping here. Police forces cannot continue to suppress lawful free speech without facing consequences,” the FSU continued.
“We’ve instructed a top flight team of lawyers to sue the Met for wrongful arrest, among other things. Graham deserves an apology but, more importantly, the police need to be taught a lesson that they cannot allow themselves to be continually manipulated by woke activists,” they said.
Journalist Alison Pearson said that “what police disgracefully did to Graham Linehan is part of a disturbing pattern”, describing his arrest by 5 armed officers as “huge police over-reach”.
She said that “no further action” had then been taken by police but that “stress and shock” had been caused “deliberately”
“Police must stop doing this to innocent people,” she added.
At the time of his arrest. Mr Linehan wrote on his Substack: “I arrived back in London to discover the UK is still a police state run by trans activists”.
He also revealed that during his arrest “a nurse came to check on me and found my blood pressure was over 200 – stroke territory” – adding “the stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life! So I was escorted to A&E, where I write this now after spending about eight hours under observation.”
Mr Linehan has been consistently outspoken on issues around demands made by transgender activists, in particular in relation to women’s’ spaces and in opposition to the claim that biological sex is not real.
Hate speech laws in the UK have led to high-profile arrests and charges being brought against persons who have engaged in what they argue are legitimate gender-critical views.
Mr Linehan says that: “the moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two – five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.”
“In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up.)” he added.
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”
In one of his posts on X, the comedian wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
In another, he posted a picture of a demonstration with the caption “a photo you can smell”. He followed that post up with the comment: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F— em”.
“At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated. Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices,” Mr Linehan wrote.
And he said that during the police interview “the officer conducting it asked about each of the terrible tweets in turn, with the sort of earnest intensity usually reserved for discussing something serious like… oh, I dunno—crime? ”
“I explained that the ‘punch’ tweet was a serious point made with a joke,” Mr Linehan wrote. An officer mentioned “trans people”, he said. “I asked him what he meant by the phrase. “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” I said “Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend.”
On being brought from police custody to the A&E with spiking blood pressure, Mr Linehan said: “The doctors suggested the high blood pressure was stress-related, combined with long-haul travel and lack of movement. 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, persistent harassment campaign because I refuse to believe that lesbians have cocks.”
“I looked at the single bail condition: 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,” he added.
“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers. To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad,” he wrote.