Judge backs man over ‘transphobic’ tweets
A SENIOR judge yesterday compared police to the Stasi and the Gestapo after a former officer was warned for criticising the transgender lobby.
Mr Justice Julian Knowles said Harry Miller, now a businessman, was entitled to post sceptical tweets about people who identify as members of the other sex.
The 54-year-old claimed he was exercising free speech with twitter quips including: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.”
Officers from Humberside Police warned him about the risk of making transphobic remarks, after Scotland Yard received a complaint and asked the force to investigate.
Mr Miller, from Lincolnshire, claims an officer who visited his workplace told him that he had not committed a crime, but that his tweeting was being recorded as a “hate incident”.
But yesterday the High Court ruled that police unlawfully interfered with his right to freedom of expression.
The judge said the police action was akin to the Nazi secret police or the Stasi in communist East Germany.
Mr Knowles said: “The claimant’s tweets were lawful and there was not the slightest risk he would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet.” He said that by quizzing Mr Miller at work police had interfered with his freedom of expression in a “chilling” way which should not be underestimated. “To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom,” the judge added.
“In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi.We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”
Mr Miller, who runs pressure group Fair Cop, which campaigns against the “criminalisation” of political views, welcomed the decision. He said: “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 continue standing with women in order to secure their sex-based rights.”
TV comedy writer Graham Linehan, a supporter at yesterday’s hearing, said: “We are not transphobic, we just think there are some issues that need to be discussed.”
Ian Wise QC, representing Mr Miller, a married father-of-four, said: “The claimant has never expressed hatred towards the transgender community, or sought to incite such hatred in others.”
He said his client “simply questioned (at times provocatively and using humour) the belief that trans women are women and should be treated as such”.
Helen Belcher, co-founder of Trans Media Watch, said: “I think trans people will be worried it could become open season on us.”