As a comedy writer, Graham Linehan wrote Father Ted and The IT Crowd. As a social media activist, he wrote gender-sceptical X posts. Perhaps the former deserved some sort of punishment. The latter did not.
Yet when the 57-year-old Irishman touched down at Heathrow Airport yesterday (1 September 2025), he was detained. The Metropolitan Police said a man was arrested by the MPS Aviation Unit, then taken to hospital, then bailed “pending further investigation”. Linehan and his team supplied their story on his Substack. Linehan was confronted by five officers, had a panic attack and had to go to hospital because of his blood pressure. He said his arrest was for three April X posts about challenging “a trans-identified male” in “a female-only space”. After release, he said, he was instructed “not to go on Twitter”.
Linehan has been campaigning on the anti-trans beat since the late 2010s and especially since 2020, when Channel 4 took down an old episode of The IT Crowd after viewers called it transphobic. The ferocity of Linehan’s rhetoric has made him enemies on both sides of the debate, including among staunch gender-critical feminists. One post that may have contributed to his arrest read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.” The writer has a harassment case ongoing. But this arrest appears to be related only to his online posts.
He is far from alone in being arrested for something he said. Throughout the summer, the government has arrested protesters for supporting Palestine Action, ever since Yvette Cooper proscribed the group as a terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act in June. On the 9 August alone, 532 people were arrested at a demonstration in London, 522 of those for displaying placards or signs, some of which read simply: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
[See also: Palestine Action and the distortion of terrorism]
A Labour government is arresting its citizens for crimes of expression on the right and on the left in order to occupy a centre that can never hold. No one wants the UK less safe and less fair. And the crackdown serves none of the government’s “foundations” or “missions” which, again, are economic stability, secure borders, national security, kick-starting growth, future-proofing the NHS, smashing the class ceiling, and making the streets safe. Yet our rulers are expending their focus, resources and dignity on controlling what we say.
When it comes to free speech, all the good lines are taken. Such formidable brains as John Stuart Mill, Albert Einstein, Voltaire and George Orwell have leant their minds and pens to the cause. (In fact, Keir Starmer might consider what historic names are on his side.) But under such authoritarianism, it is worth taking a moment to polish off what Vladimir Nabokov called the bleak grey rock of liberalism: “freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art”. And sometimes you have to play the hits. The best was the poet and pamphleteer John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644). Its purpose was to argue against a law made the year before, which demanded that authors have works approved by the government before printing them. Milton said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
The case against censorship stands. Ideas make us human. Throughout history, the best places have allowed ideas to be born freely as babies, while only oppressors have performed inquisitions. Truth is found by exposure to falsehood and knowledge comes by assessing contradiction, not conformity. Banning dissent blunts our chances of learning new and better ideas in the future. No one is pure, intelligent or trustworthy enough to decide what is good for everyone else. It is not a freedom to be desired that “no grievance ever should arise”, according to Milton. Instead we should wish for a society where “complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed”. Only then “is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for”.
Our government should make its own choices. It should not be cowed by the hectoring of JD Vance or Elon Musk, who caricature Britain as a crucible of oppression (Nigel Farage has already promised to raise the event when he speaks in the US this week, grist to his transatlantic culture war). But, if the government is wise, it should stand down from this mad quest and turn to meet the real, hard issues it faces. Luckily, it has the freedom to follow its conscience – that’s why it has the freedom to make things better.
[See also: The intolerant age]
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