A 15-year-old supporter of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party was arrested in Britain after he made jokes about a local Conservative Party politician online.
The schoolboy, only referred to as Fraser, was arrested by four officers from the West Midlands Police at his home in the early hours of August 3rd. He was taken from his family home and searched in front of his neighbours, locked in a cell, fingerprinted, had a mugshot taken, and had a sample of his DNA taken. Meanwhile, two officers searched his bedroom, and he was pressured to hand over his phone for other officers to search.
While the police force has yet to confirm the reason for the 15-year-old’s arrest, The Telegraph reports that it appears that it was a result of comments made by Fraser online about the standard of dress of the leader of the Conservative Party on the Wolverhampton City Council, Simon Bennett, who has admitted referring the boy to the police over the posts.
In one post, he complained that the Tory councillor had attended a meeting in a T-shirt and shorts and later said he expressed approval when Bennet then attended a subsequent meeting in a suit. Fraser said that he was glad the councillor did not turn up “looking like a rent boy”, a derogatory phrase for homosexual prostitutes in Britain.
Fraser told the paper that he believes his arrest was due to his support of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and noted that Green Party leader Zack Polanksi did not face arrest after he sparked controversy by sharing an image on social media suggesting the assassination of Mr Farage.
“If I had posted something about beheading Nigel Farage, that would have been fine. This all happened at the same time. Zack Polanski wasn’t even questioned and yet a 15-year-old says some hurty words and he gets arrested,” Fraser said.
Lawyers for the child are preparing a lawsuit against the West Midlands Police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment. However, they must wait until the force decides whether to criminally charge Fraser, which has still yet to happen more than two months later.
The Free Speech Union (FSU), which has joined Fraser’s legal team, said: “It is deeply shocking that a Conservative councillor thought he could use West Midlands Police as his personal tool to silence comments he disliked about himself — especially when they were made by a 15-year-old child.
“More shocking still is that West Midlands Police investigated and arrested the child. This is not an isolated case: the force has a record of zealously acting on complaints about ‘hurty words’ online.
“Calling someone a ‘rent boy’ may be personally offensive to the councillor, but it is not a hate crime. We are in the UK, not North Korea. Politicians must not be able to use the police to silence people who insult them. This is a blatant abuse of power — an assault on both free speech and democracy.”
For his part, Bennet said: “The police have not arrested for no reason… There were a number of posts that targeted me… It was unpleasant and I was targeted by a child I had no way of dealing with.”
The West Midlands Police said in a statement: “In line with the College of Policing guidelines, we wouldn’t confirm or deny the identity of anyone arrested. We fully understand the impact of being a victim of crime and if we receive any crime report, we will always look to investigate.”
Despite being a progenitor of many Western values, including freedom of speech, modern Britain has devolved into a heavily censorious society, with a report from the Big Brother Watch civil liberties campaign group finding last month that at least 62,000 Britons have been arrested over the past five years for speech crimes, including for jokes made online.
The drift towards draconian speech restrictions has become a major dividing line between London and the Trump administration in the United States, which has previously criticised the “increasingly routine” censorship in the UK.
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