My fight against the police over ‘transphobic’ tweets

The police have no jurisdiction over our thoughts, but that hasn’t stopped them trying recently. Just over a year ago, a plainclothes officer from Humberside Police turned up at my workplace to ‘check my thinking’ for getting involved in the transgender debate online. An individual had taken offence at something I’d retweeted and reported it as a hate crime.

The crime in question? Well, it was retweeting a silly song lyric that brought the complaint, but the subsequent police investigation found another 30 ‘transphobic’ tweets I’d made. As a former police officer myself, I considered the force’s intrusion to be deeply Orwellian. I stated as such to the bemused officer who visited my workplace, but sadly my comment that Nineteen Eighty-Four was a warning, not a manual, flew six feet over his head. Following the publication of my story in The Spectator, Humberside’s assistant chief constable then felt moved to issue a statement.