Police probe into 'transphobic' tweets unlawful

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The police response to an ex-officer's allegedly transphobic tweets was unlawful, the High Court has ruled.

Harry Miller was visited by Humberside Police at work in January last year after a complaint about his tweets.

He was told he had not committed a crime, but it would be recorded as a non-crime "hate incident".

The court found the force's actions were a "disproportionate interference" with his right to freedom of expression.

Officers visited Mr Miller's workplace and then spoke with him on the phone, and he was left with the impression "that he might be prosecuted if he continued to tweet", according to a judge.

Speaking after the ruling, Mr Miller, from Lincolnshire, said: "This is a watershed moment for liberty - the police were wrong to visit my workplace, wrong to 'check my thinking'."

His solicitor Paul Conrathe added: "It is a strong warning to local police forces not to interfere with people's free speech rights on matters of significant controversy."
'Orwellian society'

Mr Justice Julian Knowles said the effect of police turning up at Mr Miller's place of work "because of his political opinions must not be underestimated".

He added: "To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom.

"In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society."

Responding to the ruling, Helen Belcher, who co-founded Trans Media Watch, said: "I think trans people will be worried it could become open season on us because the court didn't really define what the threshold for acceptable speech was.

"I think it will reinforce an opinion that courts don't understand trans lives and aren't there to protect trans people."

Mr Miller, 54, also launched a wider challenge against the lawfulness of College of Policing guidelines on hate crimes, which was rejected.

Mr Justice Knowles ruled they "serve legitimate purposes and [are] not disproportionate".

The guidelines define a hate incident as "any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender".

Mr Miller posted a number of tweets between November 2018 and January 2019 about transgender issues as part of the debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

In one tweet Mr Miller wrote: "I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don't mis-species me."

This tweet was among several others which were reported to Humberside Police as being allegedly transphobic.

Mr Miller's barrister, Ian Wise QC, argued the force's response had sought to "dissuade him from expressing himself on such issues in the future" and had a "substantial chilling effect" on his right to free speech.

Man complains of 'Orwellian police'
Former officer challenges transphobia guidelines

Mr Justice Knowles said Mr Miller "strongly denies being prejudiced against transgender people" and had regarded himself as a participant in a public debate.

He said only one person, known in court as Mrs B, had complained about the tweets and they had been recorded as a hate incident "without any critical scrutiny...or any assessment of whether what she was saying was accurate".

The judge said: "The claimants' tweets were lawful and there was not the slightest risk that he would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet.

"I find the combination of the police visiting the claimant's place of work, and their subsequent statements in relation to the possibility of prosecution, were a disproportionate interference with the claimant's right to freedom of expression because of their potential chilling effect."

Hate speech laws in the United Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_spee ... ed_Kingdom

"Hate speech laws in England and Wales are found in several statutes. Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation is forbidden"

Okay, the tweet in question is pretty stupid, as gender and species are not analogous.

But recording a "non-crime 'hate incident'" is a threat to the free, democratic society we idealize.
If it's not a crime, there's no reason for it to be on record. This is very scary stuff going on here.

Now I'm somewhat worried about this post being recorded as "non-crime 'anti-state-activism-incident'".

Never forget: the word 'terrorist' entered the english language referring to British supporters of a republic, as opposed to the monarchy. (It referred to the French Revolution's evolution into the 'terreur'-regime. Modern democracy had a bit of a bumpy, bloody beginning, to be fair.)

You should be worried. Describing anatomy and physiology to refute certain aspects of the trans movement is considered 'Transphobia' on this site. It doesn't matter if you don't care anything else about the movement, or don't wish them any harm. It only matters that you can't say competition in sports is disproportionately in favor of X because they still harbor X as the result of X being a factor in their bodies for so long.

There is quite the difference in being warned or banned by moderators and having police come to your residence and warning you not to do that again or else.


Under this guideline any word is a hate incident if anybody on planet earth thinks its motivated by transphobia. I'm speechless.

...this allows for literally anyone to be declared guilty at any time. Perception of motive by the quote unquote victim or any third party gets you a visit from the police to "check your thinking"? I don't even need to actually be trans for this to work, I just need to claim that I think someone thought I was and that this is what motivated their hostility against me.




Yes, how ever will trans people cope with people not getting visits from the police over Tweets? Imagine the death toll after the deluge of transphobes that were surely waiting for just this ruling cascade across Twitter like a tidal wave of undiluted hatred in 240 characters or less.

...oh, it's zero. Well, darn.




Well no, but if one thinks that biology and gender are related at all, the analogy is valid if hyperbolic.

It doesn't, because you can't be guilty of something in law if it isn't a crime. It's literally a statistical reporting tool.

The police should probably not have said that Mr Miller was at risk of prosecution. While his tweets were hateful and transphobic, they did not reach the high bar for a hate crime (which I think basically means you have to be encouraging violence). However, they were absolutely right to investigate and record this as a hate incident.

This is yet another scary piece of judicial overreach which shows that judges are out of touch with how normal people speak. Mr Miller's remarks are plainly transphobic, so the judge has made a serious blunder. Now we don't tend to hear about the cases where judges don't blunder, but everyone should be worried about the cases where they do. The blunders cut both ways, from cases like this where they try to stop the police doing their job, to cases like the girl who was convicted of a hate crime for posting rap lyrics on Instagram as a tribute to a friend, or the far-right activist who got convicted of a hate crime for teaching his dog to do a Nazi salute. It is the judges, far more than the police, who are having a chilling effect upon our speech.

Hopefully other police forces aren't cowered into inaction by this judicial overreach. They need to be allowed to do their jobs, and it might be worth finding a role for juries, or something like juries, in cases like this.

1. Guilty in the broader sense of having failed to uphold a moral standard, and arguably beyond that because apparently you'll have your opinion registered by the police (I don't know the english term for it, but Swedish police was brought up on and convicted in a EU court for just that in 2012 as a violation of human rights.)

2. You're focusing on the wrong thing. The important part was that someone elses perception and reading a motive into a hypothetical action I might take determines if I'm guilty (broadly, not legally (maybe)). How do I defend myself from that?


...And for some reason you still think that the guy who taught a pug to do the Nazi salute is pro-Nazi...

You don’t need to defend yourself. In fact really I don’t think you will usually even know about it. A few months ago I found a poster outside work which, I can’t remember the details but it was promoting the “Great Replacement” theory and had a link to an “identitarian” (Nazi) website. I didn’t report it to the police, but I reported it to a charity which monitors hate crime who may have passed it onto the police. Nobody is going to be accused of anything but it’s still worth recording.

As for Mark Meacham, yeah, guy’s a fascist. Quite embarrassing for me after I spent so long defending him. By the time he joined UKIP it was a far-right party, and he was found making racist comments on his Discord which was full of Nazis.

Harry Miller, the man whose freedom of expression was breached by Humberside Police, has spoken out for the first time after the High Court ruled in his favour.

Mr Miller, 54, was speaking on the steps of the High Court on Friday morning after partially winning his case against the force which descended on his workplace in response to a tweet they deemed to be "transphobic".

The limerick, which was posted on social media, was recorded as a "hate incident", despite the police admitting that no crime was committed.

He described the move as having a "substantial chilling effect" on his right to free speech and led Mr Miller to set up the 'Fair Cop' campaign group.

In a statement he read out in London following the end of the case, he said: "Mr Justice Knowles was very clear - we have never had a Gestapo or a Stasi in Great Britain.

"Well, the actions of Humberside Police came way too close for comfort. This is a watershed moment for liberty: the police were wrong to visit my workplace, wrong to 'check my thinking'."

Holding a copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, he added: "I'm going to continue tweeting, I'm going to continue campaigning and I'm going to continue standing with women in order to secure their sex-based rights.

"This judgement today has told us that we can do that and, if the police come knocking, say: 'Miller v Humberside Police, b****r off!'"

However, that may not be the end.

At a hearing in November, Mr Miller's barrister Ian Wise QC said his client was "deeply concerned" about proposed reforms to the law on gender recognition and had used Twitter to "engage in debate about transgender issues".

He argued that Humberside Police, following the College of Policing's guidance, had sought to "dissuade him (Mr Miller) from expressing himself on such issues in the future", which he said was "contrary to his fundamental right to freedom of expression".

The judge said Mr Miller strongly denies being prejudiced against transgender people, and regards himself as taking part in the "ongoing debate" about reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which the Government consulted on in 2018.

Humberside Police have been contacted and are expected to release a statement shortly.

The judge said Mr Miller strongly denies being prejudiced against transgender people, and regards himself as taking part in the "ongoing debate" about reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which the Government consulted on in 2018.

Rephrasing, how could I defend myself from it, given that my guilt would be contingent on how someone else felt about and what they think motivated me to do a thing?

As for Meechan, colour me sceptical. I followed that youtubers-join-forces-with-UKIP thing fairly closely, and seemed to me mostly to be a tactical maneuver, taking advantage of the floating corpse of a dead party to try and keep it vaguely relevant for long enough to be something of a threat while the establishment parties bungled about with Brexit. At worst I'd say he's guilty of being an edgyboi on the internet, and given he's an edgy comedian by trade (at least part-time), I think some extra leeway is in order. I'd argue that the treatment of him by both the courts and the media is a lot more fascist than anything I've seen from him.

It’s fine to criticise systems of belief. It’s even fine to criticise the practitioners. But when you go beyond “criticism” and into “hatred” then you have a problem.

Mr Miller didn't go beyond presenting a point. He was involved in a discussion. It was an exercise of free speech.

He can deny it however much he likes, but as a matter of fact, he plainly is. It's like how the statement "I'm not racist, but..." is always followed by a racist comment.

Mr Miller isn't "criticising a system of belief" or "criticising practitioners". He is criticising the very existence of a group of people. That isn't legitimate criticism, it isn't "presenting a point", and it has no place in a civilised society.

You are entitled to your opinion. I don't share it, nor does the judge, however.

He was making an analogous point about trans people saying that they were a gender other than their assigned sex, is as delusional as a human, a mammal, saying they are a fish. How is that not hate speech? Saying a subset of people are inferior (crazy).

I thought that this would be a bit hard of a subject to insert into, but I think that the judgement of the judge should be looked into. That to interpret the comments as not hateful to the identities of trans people, feels like the judge could be predisposed to not believe in the identity of trans people. It kind of looks like if some random white guy was making messages of calling black people monkeys, but when confronted he said that he is not racist, just taking part in an ongoing debate about racial equality, and such a judge buying that defense and saying that police overstepped in talking to him.