Our next guest joins us from the northeast of England. Harry Miller is a former police officer
and is the CEO of Fair Cop, a group set up to fight back against the growing trend of
police involvement in people's right to express their opinions freely. Harry, thanks so much for
joining us. You were a police officer previously and now you're attempting a guest to hold them
to account. What inspired you to start Fair Cop? Let's just get one thing straight.
I was a police officer a long, long time ago, for about five minutes, 500 years ago.
I'm from a family of police officers. Because of that, I think I've had a natural
bent towards the law. I've remained current when it comes to criminal law. I understand the
principles of justice. I understand the principles of habeas corpus and the principle that we are
all innocent until we are proven guilty. I also understand the definition of a crime,
which is men's rape plus acts of serious violence and defence. Simply that means guilty mind plus
guilty action with no excuse. So when in 2019, a police officer from my former force,
Humberside, came to my place of work at the time I was running a large port dock company,
a heavy plant machinery company, and told me that my workplace was dangerous for trans people on
the basis of the views that I'd expressed on Twitter. After I'd stopped falling about laughing at him,
I then asked him, as a former police officer would do, have I committed a crime?
And he said, no, no crime. I said, well, what have I done then? He said, well,
you retweeted the limerick. I said, well, how is me retweeting somebody else's limerick
a crime? He said, ah, without our intervention, it could become a crime. I'm like, okay, this
sounds absolutely bonkers. So I said, let's just get this straight. I haven't committed a crime.
He said, no. And he said, and I said, why are you here? He said, I'm here to check your thinking.
You've got to be kidding me, right? I said, no crime, but you're here to check my thinking.
He said, yeah. I said, you do realise that 1984 is a dystopian novel and not a police how-to
manual. The reference entirely passed him by. Well, that's how I came to police attention
in 2019, because I thought this is absolute nonsense. How can we have a situation where
you are not committing a crime on the basis of expressing a perfectly lawful opinion on Twitter?
The police can come round to your place of work, have a word with you,
tell you that they are going to check your thinking, explain to you that without their
intervention, you are likely, and this is what they said, you are likely to go on and commit
crime. And I asked them what crime they had in mind. And the answer was, and I'm not kidding,
genocide. They said that I was on step one of a five-step journey that ends in genocide.
That was the argument. It's based on a thing called the Allport Scale,
which was published by a psychologist in America in 1953, I think it was.
There was looking back at the historical causes of the genocide, the Second World War,
and all the rest of it. Well, it's a great, I'm sure it's a very, very good book,
where you can't take a 1950s work that was looking back in history and apply it in this way,
and then say that everybody that expresses a view, which is slightly contentious,
is basically Hitler on the way to committing genocide. And the only thing we can do to stop it
is go around and have their thinking checked and make sure that they don't express
anything like that ever again onto it. And that is the only way to keep the world safe.
This is how crazy it was. I instinctively knew it was crazy. Philosophically, I knew it was
crazy. And in terms of our own jurisprudence, I knew it was crazy. And so I challenged the
police, homicide police, they said that they were following national guidance set out by the
College of Policing, in other words, the government. So I challenged the government as well. We went
to the High Court, and we went to the Court of Appeal, and eventually I won and got the
hate crime guidance overturned. Unfortunately, it's come back in another guise. It's a little
bit like herpes, you think you've got rid of it, but the bloody thing just keeps coming
back and back and back. And this is what non-crime hate incidents are. The so-called
non-crime indicators that without the police intervening, without them putting you on a
naughty list, you are allowed to carry on and commit horrendous crimes. It's absolutely crazy.
So little did we know that if the police had intervened when Pol Pot was retweeting
Limericks, we wouldn't have had, I mean, wow. I remember one particular case, which I know you're
attached to, of a lady, and people watching this certainly from the United Kingdom will
be aware of this, a lady that was banned from attending Newcastle United Football Club matches
for about three years, I think. The ban was pushed by the Premier League because she said
some stuff on social media critical of the transgender movement, also it was claimed.
Can you tell us about that? Because that one is truly extraordinary as well.
Yeah, yeah. So this is Lindsay Smith. Lindsay is a lesbian woman, a lovely, lovely lass
from Newcastle. She's a lifelong Newcastle United fan. She absolutely loves the team.
It's the centre of her world. She's also a lesbian, as I say, and she's very concerned about
men in dresses, encroaching on women's rights, etc. So on her Twitter account, she said that she
was LGB, not LGBT, and she said that trans women are men, which they are. As a result of this,
the police came around and threatened her with arrest. So she went into the police station
voluntarily. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind based on advice given by Fair Cop
to record the interview. And the interview is quite astonishing. They said simply,
do you think anybody could have been upset by your tweeting? What do you mean by you are
LGB, not LGBT? I mean, can you imagine that the police were trying to force upon a lesbian
an identity which included men in dresses? They said that she had committed the crime
of malicious communications by saying that she was LGB and not LGBT. Now, we knew that this was
absolute nonsense. We knew that she could not have possibly committed a crime because the
crime that accused her of committing was the Malicious Communications Act. Well, the thing
about malicious communications is this. It happens when person A, Lindsay, sends to person B
something very offensive. Well, there was no person B. She didn't send it to anybody. So
there could not have been a crime. It's absolutely impossible. There could not have been a crime.
So what the police did? They simply said, well, what would have victim feel like
if she had sent it to somebody? In other words, it made up they posited, they hypothesized
a victim and went on the basis of that. I said, this is a little bit like a murder squad. They're
lacking a murder. And so what they do is they simply draw an outline of a body on the pavement
and said, that's what a murdered person looks like going on the bastards. That's
precisely what it was. They simply imagined what a victim would look like and proceeded
according to that. Now, there's a part and parcel of this. They consulted with Newcastle United.
They told Newcastle United that she was a criminal, that she was being investigated for a hate crime.
And Newcastle United said, oh, this is absolutely terrible. There's no hate at St. James's Park.
We're going to Banner for three years. They got hold of the Premier League and the Premier
League said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea, Banner. The Premier League and Newcastle
United, they got a Singaporean spy agency to monitor Lindsay, a foreign spy agency
monitoring a lesbian because she'd asserted lesbianism and refused to assert trans rights.
Can you believe that? This is how crazy it is. Now, the other astonishing thing about the Lindsay
Smith case is that we put in a complaint and I said, I imagine that it was more than one
dumb officer engaged in this. Well, the investigation took a year. And guess what?
Fourteen different officers were engaged in deciding that Lindsay Smith was a criminal.
This included a superintendent, two inspectors, including a Detective Chief Inspector,
a number of sergeants, a so-called quality control unit. They all decided that Lindsay
Smith saying, I am LGB, not LGBT, was a criminal offense. There was no victim.
The fact that you can identify as whatever you want now, I thought that was the rule. So I can
identify as a cat if I want, but I can't identify as LGB because I get banned for three years.
Now, as I understand it, this Singaporean spy agency, so as you say, a foreign spy agency has
been employed by the Premier League, they were taking photos and documenting where she lived
and where she walked her dog. That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like something
out of a really shitty John Le Carré book. It's like this could not possibly happen. And yet
it is happening. It has happened. We've got the evidence. Absolutely. There's no denying it's
happening. We got this information by putting subject access requests into the Premier League,
Newcastle United, and Northumbria Police. And they gave us the information, and it absolutely
blew our minds. So the position that we're in now is that we are chasing down Northumbria
Police for a full and frank apology from the Chief Constable. We're asking the Chief
Constable to intervene with St James's Park, Newcastle United, and say, look, we're terribly
sorry we got this very, very wrong. You would be doing us all a massive favour if you could
not only let Lindsay back in the ground, but we'll pay for a seat for the next three years,
trying to do the right thing. If she's not going to do that, then if Chief Constable
is not going to do that, then we'll keep campaigning and we're looking to take her,
the Chief Constable, Vanessa Jardine, to the High Court, to judicial review, because
it's entirely wrong that a Chief Constable, a police force in 2023, 24, 25, can go after
a lesbian because her lesbianism doesn't embrace men in dresses. It's absolutely
outrageous and we will not let the Chief Constable off the hook. Last month, I went and
with Lindsay and I handcuffed myself to the flagpole and what we did was we invited the
Chief Constable to come down and simply hold up a sign that said this Chief Constable guarantees
the right to say trans women are men without fear of arrest. That's all we wanted to do
and she absolutely refused to do it. On April 1st, this year, I went up to Northumbria,
dressed in a full-on jester costume and handcuffed myself to the police headquarters again
and invited the Chief Constable once again to come on down and guarantee that no other lesbian
is ever going to be arrested for saying trans women are men. Again, the Chief Constable
declined, so we will continue our campaign throughout the summer and however long it
takes because we cannot allow Chief Constables to act like this. Absolutely not. It's one of those
stories though. You know when you talk about spy agencies and being banned for three years for
saying something online or whatever, if you said that to someone in a pub, even today, I bet,
if I said that to someone in a pub, they'd go, no, no, wait, they wouldn't do that. It's like,
dude, they've done that. It's extraordinary. The other part of it that I think is
yes, if someone says something, then they can have this happen to them. And of course,
she's got someone like yourself and Fair Cop fighting for her, which is of course fantastic.
But do you think this kind of stuff is actually frightening people into saying stuff? So people
might want to express an opinion, but they look at how mad things are getting and just think,
oh, it's not worth it. And so they end up censoring themselves.
That's exactly it. And the judicial term for it is the chilling effect.
It's the chilling effect on free speech. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights,
you know, whether you like the convention or not, it guarantees our right to express ourselves,
lawful expression without any interference from the state. So when the state get into the habit
of sending police forces around to check your thinking to where they collude with other
agencies like the Singaporean spy agency in Newcastle United to get you banned from one of the
great theaters of life. Of course, the natural response to that is to check your own thinking,
to self-center and go, do I really need to say this? Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut
because the price of saying it is too high. Well, that's entirely wrong. That is entirely
wrong. And it leads us down a political route that is more akin to the weird Marxism of Chairman Mao.
We have a situation now where teachers and children are reporting on other children
who express views which the state considers to be not sound.
Last year, I was called to help a family in the north-east of England
because I think he was about 13-year-old, slightly autistic little boy. I'd done a
little TikTok video where he'd said that he was gay, he was gay not queer.
And the school reported him for saying this. A few weeks later, he did a little video of
himself in his own garden with a wooden crossbow bought from English heritage, a child's crossbow
that fired foam arrows. It's a child's toy. He did a little TikTok video of him doing that.
Two weeks later, prevent the anti-terrorist unit and the police arrived at his house
because A, he was engaged in dodgy ideology and B, he showed an unhealthy interest in weapons.
My goodness. But prevent couldn't stop Southport happening despite it being reported to them several
times. They tried after the event another story following the Southport riots. I was called
up by a 19-year-old charity worker, an absolutely lovely, lovely young girl.
Prevent had knocked on her door and said, were you involved in the Southport riots?
And she said, absolutely not. They said, did you encourage it? And she said, absolutely not.
And then they said, do you have any sympathy at all with any of the concerns of the Southport
rioters? And he said, well, maybe I've shared some of their concerns. And then they said,
who do you vote for? And what are your politics? Okay. So she said, well, we're a conservative
family. And she said, I noticed, we noticed that there's religion iconography in your house,
due to the parents, their Catholics. And they said, you know, again, does this
suggest something dodgy about your politics? Anyway, they then saw that there was a
replica Samurai sword owned by her father that pinned up on the wall. So they confiscated that.
And then they said, then they identified, or wrongly identified, a Anglo-Saxon helmet on the shelf.
And said, why would you have that if you're not far right? Because Anglo-Saxon helmets are
famously far right. Well, it wasn't even Anglo-Saxon helmet, it was a replica Roman helmet.
But nevertheless, this was an indicator to prevent that her ideology was unsound,
that she was a passive supporter of the Southport riots. And when she said, what had she done,
they simply looked at her and said, bite your tongue in the future and then left.
Oh, mate. Well, I hope she shouts even louder. Because that's how I think we can go back at
this and just go, do you know what, if you're telling me I can't say something, I'm going
to say it and I'm going to say it louder. And it was interesting as well about the religious
iconography. If that iconography had been Hindu or Islamic or Jewish or any other than Christian,
they wouldn't have said a word. They would not have said a word or even mentioned it.
It might have been Jewish, I think. I think the police have got a bit of a down run juice
in the menu. But certainly, they wouldn't have understood it if it was Sikh. I mean,
they can't tell the difference between Sikh and Muslim. It's quite pathetic, really.
But you're absolutely right. Had they got a scimitar on the wall,
then I'm sure it would have been given a pass as being a religious iconography for the correct
religion, Islam. I don't think they would have touched it. But this is where we are at the
moment. The whole grooming gang scandal and cover-up is simply because the police and
the government do not want to meddle with Muslims for two reasons. One, because they're dangerous.
They don't just argue with you. There is a tendency amongst certain parts of the Islamic
population to take direct violent action against you. So that's one reason. And the other reason,
of course, is the gerrymandering of votes. Kirstamma doesn't want to upset his constituencies
where there is a heavy Muslim population. It's as simple as that. It's rank cowardice and dishonest.
It's the state of this country at the moment, honestly. I feel like I sound like an angry pensioner
half the time now when I look around me and I start speaking about it. Where can people
find you then? Because I'm thinking now, if people say, do what I'm going to do and what
I will continue to do and always have, which is speak my mind and if you don't like it,
well, fine. But if people do do that and they find themselves in hot water with this madness,
how can they seek your services? The best place is to follow us on Twitter. We are fair cop
and you give us a follow. If you get into trouble like that, even if you can't get
hold of me directly, somebody will get hold of me. Somebody will see it and get hold of me
and then we'll stoop into tailpound. We only cover matters arising around free speech.
If somebody gets accused of having a bunch of rocks down the back of the sofa,
then there's nothing we can do about that. We're quite limited in what we do do.
And that is the right to express yourself freely, not targeting anybody individually,
not going after somebody but just expressing a view. If the police come at you because of that,
we'll be there to help. Fantastic. Thank you so much for talking to us. It blows my mind,
mate. It really does. I see stuff all the time, but Singaporean spy agency,
like you say, is something from a very bad novel. But thank you for sharing that with us.
We appreciate it, mate. Thank you.