Award-winning Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan said that he was arrested in London over posts on social media criticising transgenderism.
The creator of celebrated comedy programmes, including Father Ted and The IT Crowd, said on Tuesday that upon recently arriving at Heathrow Airport, he was met by five “armed police officers” who he says arrested him over “three tweets”.
“In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up),” Linehan wrote on his Substack.
According to the Irish writer, the posts for which he was arrested included one in which he argued that biological men who enter female-only spaces are committing a “violent and abusive act”. “Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls,” Linehan suggested.
Another included a photograph of an LGBTQ+ rally in London, which Linehan captioned: “A photo you can smell”.
The third apparently offending post said: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. Fuck em.”
According to the writer, the sole condition for his release was that he no longer post on Elon Musk’s X social media platform.
“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers,” he remarked.
“To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.”
The Black Books writer has become one of the leading voices against the transgenderism movement in Britain and Ireland. However, this has also come with a cost, with multiple stage shows having been cancelled due to his gender-critical views.
The Free Speech Union announced that it would be supporting Linehan in the case, writing on X: “We do not believe Graham’s arrest or the bail conditions imposed were lawful. We will be backing him all the way in his fight against these preposterous allegations and the disproportionate response from the police.”
Despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s insistence — while in front of U.S. leaders like President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — that the United Kingdom still has freedom of speech, a report earlier this year from The Times of London found that police in Britain made 12,183 arrests for posts online in 2023, or approximately 33 arrests every day.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
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