In the beginning there was Tommy Robinson. Well, not in the beginning, perhaps. But it was Tommy, a working-class lad from Luton, England, whose outspokenness made him the first major face of bold truth-telling about Islam in a country whose entire political and media elite, it seemed, was intent on purveying pretty fictions about its ever-growing Muslim minority – and on continuing to cover up the facts that Tommy insisted on publicizing. Among them: that the Koran preaches violence against non-believers; that mosques all over Britain provided financial support to terrorists; and, most famously, that working-class girls in many English cities were being systematically raped by the members of Muslim “grooming gangs” even as local police, politicians, and social workers turned a blind eye to this barbarism for fear of being called racist.
The attempt by the British establishment to destroy Tommy Robinson reached a climax on May 15, 2018, when he was arrested, tried, and imprisoned – all within a period of a few hours – for the crime of reporting on a grooming-gang trial in Leeds. The contemptible characters behind this miscarriage of justice were obviously hoping that a stint behind bars would finish Tommy off for good – or at least silence him. They almost succeeded. But released after two months when a Court of Appeal found his conviction unfair – he would otherwise have served for over a year – Robinson was wan and weak, but still alive and kicking. Instead of giving up, he returned to the battlefield, and early this year released a powerful documentary, The Rape of Britain, about the grooming gangs in the city of Telford.
If the police went after Tommy for kicking up a fuss over Islam, Harry Miller found himself in their crosshairs because of his views about transgenderism. In January 2019, a police officer showed up at his home in Humberside to inform him that several items on his Twitter feed making light of transgenderism (“I was assigned mammal at birth but I identify as fish”) “caused danger” to trans people. For this reason, contended the cop, “I need to check your thinking.” The officer of the law proceeded to explain that tweets like Miller’s represented “stage one of a five-step journey”; from mere tweeting, Miller would, barring police intervention, proceed to insulting trans people in person, beating them up, murdering them, and then participating in anti-trans genocide.
When informed that he now had a police record for a “non-crime hate incident” – a record, mind you, that police would be free to use against him (in order, for example, to warn away potential employers) – Miller sued the College of Policing, which, established in 2012 to educate police officers in England and Wales, had waited only two years before pushing on constabularies the utterly un-British idea of “non-crime hate incidents.” Miller lost in a lower court but won on appeal, with the judge, Dame Victoria Sharp, writing that “[t]he recording of non-crime hate incidents is plainly an interference with freedom of expression.” Since the verdict, Miller has founded Fair Cop, a group focused on addressing “police attempts to criminalise people for expressing opinions that don’t contravene any laws,” and (with Laurence Fox) the Bad Law Project, a organization designed to fight “political ideology disguised as law.”
All of which brings us to yet another victim of “political ideology disguised as law.” In this case, the offender challenged the official orthodoxy not on Islam or transgenderism but on abortion. And she wasn’t targeted by the police for making noise in the streets, like Tommy, or for tweeting, like Harry Miller, but for standing on a public street in Birmingham near an abortion facility (which was closed at the time). It happened earlier this month, on December 6. The woman, a pro-life activist named Isabel Vaughan-Spruce who heads a group called March for Life UK, was alone on a sidewalk in Birmingham, quiet and motionless, apparently lost in thought, not bothering anybody. Nor, as the website citizengo.org noted, was she “carrying any signage or religious symbols or expressing any opinion whatsoever about abortion.” But a police vehicle drove up and a uniformed officer stepped out and approached her anyway.
All this can be corroborated by a now-viral video of the encounter. The police officer asks why Vaughan-Spruce is there. She admits that it’s because of the abortion facility. He asks if she’s praying. “I might be praying in my head,” she replies. Pointing out that the spot where she’s standing is located in an area covered by a Public Service Protection Order (PSPO) – meaning that anti-abortion protests are prohibited within its boundaries – he asks if she’ll come along voluntarily to the local precinct for questioning. She says no; he places her under arrest.
When this video surfaced on December 22, it was retweeted by a number of prominent Twitter users, including the Free Speech Union (founded two years ago precisely to address outrages like this) and actor Laurence Fox (whose Reclaim Party, established in October 2020, stands for free speech and the rule of law). To be sure, the video seemed so over-the-top that Fox wasn’t entirely sure it was the real thing: “Please tell me this is a well made fake?” he wrote.
Fox, needless to say, was on Vaughan-Spruce’s side. But a depressing number of Twitter users sided with the cop, agreeing with him that Vaughan-Spruce, simply by praying silently, was in violation of the PSPO. “She’s in breech [sic] of a PSPO and therefore should be arrested. Otherwise, why have PSPOs?” read one tweet. Other Twitter users praised the cop for being “[v]ery professional and courteous” and for handling the situation “brilliantly” and in a “completely sensible” fashion.
It’s always useful to be reminded how many people who live in a historically free country actually love the idea of living in a police state.
Eventually, Twitter – yes, Elon Musk’s Twitter – inserted into at least one of the threads on the topic a text box providing what it called “context.” Vaughan-Spruce, explained Twitter’s contextualizing text, “was not arrested for silently praying. She was arrested for breaking a temporary Public Space Protection Order on four separate occasions which was used to ban protests outside of an abortion clinic due to safety concerns.” What a splendid job of totalitarian hair-splitting! To quote the translation of Twitter’s “context” by one sane Twitter user, Luke Bonanno: “Isabel’s physical presence in the public space protection order (PSPO) area wasn’t a crime in itself; it was the contents of her private thoughts that were prohibited. If Isabel had stood in the same place thinking about another topic, she would not have been arrested.”
Yep. Thought Policing, pure and simple.
Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program on Friday, Vaughan-Spruce provided some useful addenda about her arrest. She pointed out that the original purpose of the law under which she’d been taken into custody had been to deal with matters like public drunkenness, but that it was now being used to punish people like her. She informed Carlson that during the interrogation at the police station, she’d been asked explicitly about the content of her silent prayer. And she disclosed that, when the interrogation was over, she was charged with four counts, including “antisocial behavior.” She will go to trial in February.
The day after Vaughan-Spruce appeared with Tucker Carlson, I watched a service of lessons and carols from Westminster Abbey hosted by the Princess of Wales and attended by the King and Queen and a glittering assortment of other nobs. You might almost have thought that the U.K. was still a Christian country. For over an hour, there was wall-to-wall singing and talking – and praying! – about Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus. I kept waiting for a SWAT team to bust in and haul Charles, Camilla, and the whole gang off to the hoosegow. Why not, after all? If silent Christian prayer is now verboten in the land of John Stuart Mill and John Milton, why should this kind of in-your-face worship be permitted? Shouldn’t the monarch set a good example of not offending the unfaithful?
Yes, Vaughan-Spruce’s arrest is appalling. But it’s nothing new. Aside from Tommy Robinson and Harry Miller, countless other Brits have been hauled into court for holding the wrong opinions, mostly about Islam. And speaking of Islam: it’s illuminating to note that while Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for praying silently, all by herself, nobody was arrested when (just to mention the first couple of hits I got in response to a quick online photo search) scores of Muslims blocked a London street to pray in February 2012, or when, in Birmingham itself, hundreds of Muslims prayed publicly last May to celebrate Eid. It’s also worth remembering that every man-hour that British police spend tormenting innocent people like Vaughan-Spruce is a man-hour not spent bringing to justice members of grooming gangs.
Plainly, groups like the Free Speech Party, Reclaim Party, Fair Cop, and the Bad Law Project have their work cut out for them. Of course, reforming this situation – if at all possible – isn’t just a matter of retraining lummoxes who’ve been fed toxic ideologies by the College of Policing. It’s a matter of taking down the College of Policing itself, along with other core institutions that target dissenters from progressive ideology and that don’t mind having the coppers do their dirty work for them. The very fact that Tommy Robinson, on that dark day in Leeds, was whisked straight to a courtroom and then to a prison suggests a degree of unholy collusion that brings to mind the current revelations about systematic connivance against American citizens by U.S. intelligence agencies and social-media platforms. We can only hope that in 2023 valiant free-speech champions like Laurence Fox and Harry Miller will begin, at least, to turn the tide against the heartless traitors to British liberty who want nothing less than to crush the good and decent likes of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce.
Muslims, on the other hand, are overjoyed with legal abortion – they don’t have them; white natives do.
As they’ve smuggly said before, they see themselves as out breeding the infidels within a couple of generations.
They already have an islamist mayor, who along with the bobbies, overlooks the child rapes – Rotterham being the surreal example.
Since when does “thought” take priority over minors being raped, chronic vandalism of cathedrals & icons, servicemen being run over & then decapitated.
Some British Muslims are white converts. And many brown British Muslims are native born. Many white British natives that are not Muslims are defending Islam.
Yeh, I would say Britain has a complicated problem on its hands. The most likely eventual outcome? Islam becomes the state religion or a race-based fascism emerges to kick the brown Muslims out. Like the Spanish Reconquista the push-back will grow and even the Hindus, Jews, and all non-white Christians will be pushed out of the country. White Muslims will be forced to convert to Christianity or be thrown out.
The main problem with the police force in the uk is that they need a university degree before being appointed.
That is the root cause, we have a 1688 Bill of rights that is still valid and cannot be revoked or changed by any government or force.
This woman has the right to stand and speak freely anywhere.
The so-called hate speech laws were introduced to prevent muslim imams from preaching to their flock and creating extremists, but it is being used by the university educated police.
The uk police are a disgrace I’m sorry to say, and until they get rid of the need for a university education nothing will change.
Meanwhile, I’ve read elsewhere that the British police have an absolutely abysmal record in making arrests for actual crimes. Well, after all, it is easier to arrest a lone woman for standing there silently than it is to arrest a resisting felon. What happened to you Britain (the country formerly known as Great Britain)?
It has long been a bucket list item for me to visit Westminster Abbey and visit some famous graves, there. How soon until all the historical remains are first, roped off, and second, unearthed and moved? Maybe dumped into a common grave? Who can say, anymore?
My mother’s hometown being Oxford, I’ve long wanted to visit England. After seeing what’s been going on there the past several years I have given up on the idea. I doubt the England of my mother’s youth will be around for much longer. It’s really sad to watch.
“In the history of mankind it is earlier than we think.” – Ayn Rand
The United Kingdom has NEVER been a free country, it’s essentially a semi-free KINGDOM-ESTABLISHMENT OLIGARCHY, and always has been. The UK has never had freedom by right but only freedoms by permission of the state. Permissions granted, are permissions that can be taken away, they are not freedom by right. No country in Europe has ever been a free country by right.
There’s only one country in history that established freedom by right — the USA. No people can have freedom by right until they discover what it is, that it exists, that it is right, and then explicitly write freedom by right into their constitution.
“Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document—the Constitution—which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments—unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions—demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.” – Ayn Rand
Rand is wrong, the 1688 Bill of Rights is still to this day law and what these alleged police officers did is illegal.
Perhaps then, since you think we live in a free country, you should stop whining about our freedoms, specifically our various forms of Christianity.
I can only imagine what a grey dark world the objectivists would create and enforce should they ever gain a measure of real power.
“She pointed out that the original purpose of the law under which she’d been taken into custody had been to deal with matters like PUBLIC drunkenness…” Emphasis added.
If you want to get drunk that’s your business, just don’t make it my problem. In order to stop you from making your drunkeness my problem we need private property rights.
Individual rights cannot be implemented and defended without property rights. In a free society all property is privately owned including streets, sidewalks, highways, parks, schools, and libraries.
“The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible…. Since “public property” is a collectivist fiction, since the public as a whole can neither use nor dispose of its “property,” that “property” will always be taken over by some political “elite,” by a small clique which will then rule the public—a public of literal, dispossessed proletarians.’ – Ayn Rand
So you cant pray outside Abortion Clinic in the UK but Muslims can block the streets with their streetside prayers to Allah This is one reason out U.S. Constitution prohibits having established religion
Evil grows more offensive by the minute. It is almost unconceivable to me that
grooming gangs raping women do not disappear, what happened to the men
of England, where are they, in a pub, under their beds. Rape was a capitol
offence but as degeneracy moves along it is OK in Merry Old England. Pray
for the women of this fallen State and that the grooming gangs be deported
back to where they came from.
That awful terrible treatment Tommy Robinson received for speaking out the truth about dangerous and subversive powers of Islam in England and other Western nations is shameful. That Mr. Robinson was treated in such terrible ways and this British court ruling only prove the point that many zealous Muslims, by hook or by crook, are making gains in the West for Islam.
There is movement that is known as the Stealth jihad otherwise called the Muslim method of Islamic Gradualism to establish Sharia in America and other Western nations. This method different to the way of the violent jihad or also called the militant jihad .This non-violent form of the jihad for Islam is a very sly, insidious, subtle and deceptive way of working for the advancement of Islam.
This Muslim scheme for achieving the goal of the Islamic agenda is as, many times, as subtly effective as it is demonically clever. Furthermore, this Islamic gradualism, in some ways, is very similar to the instruction printed in the book entitled THE ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu. Which reads “At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to opposes you”
The sly Muslim stealth jihadist infiltration and insidious growing power of Islam in the Westerns countries may be seen in that the government of the United Kingdom by vicious and unfair UK treatment towards the British patriot Tommy Roberson.
Grateful to Bruce Bawer for his excellent article, as always. Like Mark Steyn on GB News British police is taken to task, and good riddance! Western Christians are facing sterner times, and so are seculars with conservative values such as common sence, nuclear family, responsibility, freedom of expression, decency. Liberal democracy is going astray into tyranny, and government powers are freeing themselves from the people resulting in neglect. No solidarity with the indigenous Westeners. A resistance movement must be brewing. Hard times ahead.
Quote, “Pointing out that the spot where she’s standing is located in an area covered by a Public Service Protection Order (PSPO) – meaning that anti-abortion protests are prohibited within its boundaries ”
How the hell are you expected to know where these boundaries are ? Are they painted markings on the roads & pavements to warn us? If not how do we know?
Can anyone tell me the answer !!
Disgraceful how the political establishment has so irresponsibly let its country and citizens tumble and cowardly harassed patriots such as Tommy Robinson. Sir Churchill would roll in his grave.