It has emerged that former Manchester City midfielder, Joey Barton, has been charged with malicious communications over tweets he sent on Elon Musk’s free speech platform, X.
The BBC reports: “The former Manchester City, Burnley and Rangers player is due to appear in court later this month.
“On his X account, the 41-year-old said he had been charged over tweets relating to broadcaster and multiple league title winner Eniola Aluko.
“Cheshire Police said the charges concerned messages sent between 1 and 18 January.”
In a statement, a force spokesman said a man from Widnes had been “summoned to court to face charges of malicious communications”.
The force added that following a police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service had “authorised the charges for Joseph Barton” – with the former footballer set to appear at Warrington Magistrates’ Court next week.
Barton’s crime was airing his views on female football pundits, which stirred up predictable furore at the start of the year. Part of the controversy included Barton’s suggestion that “tokenism” was behind the growing number of women securing roles as commentators on men’s football. His tweets referred specifically to two commentators and sportspeople, Lucy Ward and Aluko.
“Personally I think regardless if you love or hate the man it’s freedom of speech and this is a dangerous road we’re heading down if you can’t express an opinion,” he wrote.
“How is she even talking about men’s football? She can’t even kick a ball properly. Your coverage of the game EFC last night took it to a new low and Lucy Ward, the Fred and Rose West of football commentary.”
It was the reference and bizarre perceived comparison of Aluko and Ward, in the second paragraph, to Fred and Rose West, notorious British child killers, that raised the temperature and led to the remarks being widely branded as “vile.”
Despite the inevitable backlash, Barton went on to – joke? – that Eni fell into the “Joseph Stalin category” for “murdering hundreds of thousands of fans’ ears.” I’m sure Barton thought he was being funny, but the black female pundit later revealed that she was bringing legal action against Barton, saying the saga had left her feeling “scared.”
ITV was left to mitigate the PR storm that followed – issuing a statement on the 5th January condemning the remarks.
“For Joey Barton, an ex-professional player with a significant social media presence, to target two of our pundits, Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward, with such vindictive remarks based on gender and invoke the names of serial killers in doing so, is clearly contemptible and shameful on his part. Football is for everyone.”
But surely there is a point to be made that while we can regard Barton’s tweets as unsavoury and disagreeable, they do not, in fact, make Barton a criminal. We seem to have crossed a line – where it is no longer good enough to merely disagree with a point of view. The person expressing said opinion must be hounded, condemned by the masses, and then, eventually, criminalised.
I think the tweet was in poor taste, and probably, to most people, Barton comes off as a bit of a wally – but poor taste is all it is, not criminal. We’ve all said things in poor taste before, and if every single person who did so was thrown into cells, there would be no prison room left.
There is also the possibility, to be considered, that Barton was raising – albeit badly – a legitimate point about sports broadcasters’ ramming hours of relentless virtue signalling and political posturing at people who just want to watch the game. During the Black Lives Matter protests, viewers endured lengthy pre and post match segments with statements supporting anti-racism,
You can be a strong supporter of anti-racism and still believe that football coverage on television incredibly seems to be about anything and everything rather than the football itself. Barton has amassed some level of support despite the controversy that now seems to follow him, likely because lovers of the game are sick of all the political pandering, and see some truth in what he is trying to say.
Barton touched on this when he tweeted to his 2.8 million followers: “…You cannot watch a game now without hearing the nonsense.” Many feel the same, having likely grown fed up with years of players taking the knee at matches, the endless political posturing, the opportunistic virtue signalling.
The BBC’s apparent “obsession” with women’s football is also a subject which has gained significant traction in online forums. People have asked why coverage of women’s sports seems “disproportionate” compared to the interest people have in watching it. One person, in a recent forum, for instance, came to the conclusion that the media lives in its own bubble, scared of a number of loud feminists – meaning they’ve taken the easy route of appeasing ‘woke’ voices, and in this person’s words ‘pretending that women’s football is worth bothering about.’ Similar opinions were voiced in masse under ITV’s own statement on Barton – with droves of people arguing Barton was in fact right.
“Hire people on their ability, not their race,” was one Twitter reply, while another person wrote, “Yes [Football’s] for everyone but people are free to give their own opinions. No one’s exempt from criticism.”
“He’s right, though,” one response which was met with 600 likes, read. What happens if we go down the road of criminalising opinions? Will opinions such as these be criminalised? Is everyone who has an unsavoury opinion open to being sued? Where do we draw the line?
Barton is still standing, and has retained his almost three million followers, because people realise we are facing a choice – that is, public figures having the right to say mad things on the internet, or facing criminal action for speaking their minds.
At the end of the day, the Joey Barton controversy isn’t really about hurty words. It’s about deciding whether we would like to continue living in a society where we have the liberty and freedom to express ourselves as we please, whilst running the occasional risk of hurting others’ feelings. It’s about deciding whether we are in favour of silencing wrong-think and enforcing a ban on dissent from elite consensus opinion.
There is also an unbridled snobbery around people like Barton – intemperate and unpredictable and unscripted – speaking their minds. It’s similar to the snooty attitude the Irish establishment has shown to people in places like Eastwall in Coolock. They are disparaged as ‘far-right’ and treated with a disdain rarely shown towards left-wing, well heeled protestors at the Grand Canal or objectors to tented accommodation in Ballsbridge. And of course the media and consensus voices would have us all believe that it’s only those who veer to the right on social opinions who can be nasty.
The very real prospect of government action against Barton is just one more example of the normalisation of censorship – especially those who are not trendy or temperate or well-spoken. That is why Barton’s – notably a Liverpudlian from a working class background – defiance on the matter has won support, despite a lot of people objecting to what he actually said.
It’s about free speech. It’s about the age-old principle of disapproving of what someone says, but defending to death their right to say it.
“Crazy times we’re living in. Haven’t the Police got enough on their hands?” Barton hit back this week.
“[The] British system is becoming a Banana Republic. Lawfare used against its own citizens for having a dissenting voice.”
Barton is right on that one. But you don’t have to agree with anything he has said to realise that the important issue here is liberty, not hurt feelings.