As a cultural observer it strikes me that every now and then there is a cultural moment which seems significant. The death of Princess Diana, the Brexit vote, the first Biden/Trump presidential debate. These were all occasions when I felt something had happened, something had changed.
Only time will tell but I suspect the arrest of Graham Linehan may prove to be such a point – especially in the world of culture wars and identity politics.
Linehan is one of the UK’s best-known comedy writers – famous for shows such as the IT crowd and above all Father Ted. Perhaps I shouldn’t have liked the latter? After all, it mocked the Catholic Church and at times was crude and crass … and yet I loved it.
I did not take it too seriously, and yet it also provided moments of perceptive insight into both culture and church. And above all, it had a quality which has become all too rare in contemporary comedy shows – it was funny!
This week Linehan was arrested as he returned from the US to the UK. As he explains in his own words, “The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for 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 …”
You could argue that the tweet is in poor taste. You might think it is rude and not funny. But is it worthy of arrest? And does it require five armed officers to arrest him?
Linehan suggests, “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. 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.”
There is no question that he was targeted. This was not PC plod deciding to turn up to Heathrow as though it were a major drug bust. No, this was an order from higher up the chain – precisely because Linehan has become a target for the trans ideologues ever since he began to campaign for women’s rights.
In going against the narrative that men can become women he has paid a heavy price. The Father Ted musical was cancelled (costing him millions), and he claims that it also cost him his marriage, friendships and further career opportunities with Channel 4 and the BBC.
It is no surprise that he was targeted. But it is a shock that the police are now apparently being used as the thought police for the trans activists.
Ironically when the government has tried to argue that there is no such thing as two-tier policing, Linehan’s arrest provides evidence that two-tier policing is very much in vogue in the UK. When Jo Brand joked about throwing acid on Nigel Farage there was no arrest. When Wes Streeting posted about wanting to push a Daily Mail columnist in front of a train there was no arrest. When many participants in Pride this year held signs reading ‘Punch a TERF’ there were no arrests.
Chanting ‘burn the witch’ won’t get you arrested. You can shout ‘death, death to the IDF’ and face no consequences. In today's Britain encouraging people to cut other peoples throats is not incitement to violence (providing you have the right political opinions). But Linehan's ‘punch up’ joke required five armed police officers to make an arrest!
This is a pattern of censorship and attempted thought control that is being repeated throughout the Western world. Finnish MP, Päivi Räsänen, has been dragged through the law courts since 2019 for daring to question the Lutheran Church’s support for a Pride event in Helsinki.
In Germany you can be arrested for saying that a politician is fat. In Australia and in the UK, governments are preparing new blasphemy laws which will, in effect, make it illegal to criticise Islam.
In Australia a New South Wales Court has just ruled that calling two biologically male soccer players who identify as female ‘male’ is a crime, punishable by a fine of $200,000. Apparently telling the truth in NSW is now a crime. Anyone who dares to disagree risks being fined and forced to submit to ‘re-education’.
All of this is profoundly disturbing. And yet the case of Graham Linehan may mark a turning point. The vast majority of people, including many commentators, politicians and journalists, even some who have been indoctrinated into the trans cult, can see that sending armed police officers to arrest a man for a tweet, is a ludicrous overreach.
Even senior police are now beginning to realise that. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley stated that officers are in an "impossible position" when policing online speech, suggesting that the existing laws force them to investigate cases like Linehan’s, which he described as part of "toxic culture wars debates".
He also argued that the police should not be involved in such matters and called for the government to clarify or change the law to limit resources dedicated to tackling online statements unless they pose a clear risk of harm or disorder.
As a minister in the Christian church, I have been dealing with, and welcoming, trans people in my church for many years. But I will not lie about them, or for them. No government can compel me to state what is a falsehood.
I think of one brave university lecturer who, when asked to sign a trans policy stating that men could become women, refused to do so. His colleagues suggested that he not risk his career, and that he should just go along with what they all knew was rubbish. He refused to do so on the grounds it was unscientific, and in the end, the university was forced to back down and change its policy. Maybe if more of us followed the example of that man as well as the likes of Linehan and JK Rowling, we would stop this unscientific, illogical, unloving and totalitarian ideology.
Most of the elites may have been captured by it, especially after their mandated Stonewall training, but the rest of the world is just not buying it.
Perhaps the farcical arrest of Graham Linehan will be the canary in the coalmine that wakes society up to what is going on – and causes us to say ‘enough is enough’. I suspect and hope that our Father Ted moment will be a significant one for the UK – and beyond.
David Robertson is the former minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee. He is currently the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales, and blogs at The Wee Flea.
