Trump Sends Free-Speech Squad to Interview UK Activists Arrested for ‘Silently Praying’
The US President has sent a team of American diplomats to the UK to meet with pro-life campaigners amid concerns that Downing Street has been suffocating free speech. The Telegraph has the story:
A five-person team from the US State Department spent days in the country and interviewed campaigners to feed back to the White House.
They met with five activists who had been arrested for silently protesting outside abortion clinics across Britain.
Washington launched the fact-finding mission after becoming concerned about the erosion of free speech in the UK.
The visit is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs.
The diplomats from the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) travelled to London in March in an effort to “affirm the importance of freedom of expression in the UK and across Europe”.
Led by Samuel Samson, a senior adviser in the State Department, they met with officials from the Foreign Office and challenged Ofcom on the Online Safety Act, which is thought to be a point of contention in the White House. …
The delegation also quietly met with a handful of anti-abortion campaigners at an event held at a “nondescript” office block, the Telegraph can reveal.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, Rose Docherty, Adam Smith-Connor, Livia Tossici-Bolt and Father Sean Gough, a Catholic priest, described to the visiting diplomats their experiences of being detained while silently praying.
Mrs Docherty, a 74 year-old grandmother, became the first person to be arrested and charged under a new law that creates buffer zones outside hospitals and clinics providing abortions in Scotland. She was arrested outside Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow in February.
“All I did was stand peacefully offering consensual conversation to anyone who wanted to take up my offer to talk. I didn’t break the law, I didn’t influence, I didn’t harass, I didn’t intimidate,” she said.
“And yet, I was arrested just for standing there, peacefully, within 200 metres of a hospital.
“This can’t be just. It’s heartening that others around the world, including the US Government, have realised this injustice and voiced their support.” …
During his meeting in the Oval Office in February, the Prime Minister claimed Britain “wouldn’t want to reach across US citizens” in questions over free speech.
“We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the UK, and it will last for a very, very long time… Certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across US citizens, and we don’t, and that’s absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m very proud of our history there,” he said. …
Lord Young, the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, which helped fund Connolly’s appeal, said: “If Sir Keir Starmer gave any promises to protect free speech in the course of negotiating the UK-US trade agreement, he doesn’t appear to be keeping them.”
Worth reading in full.
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Starmer can only promise to protect free speech by repealing all the related laws and scrapping Ofcom
Starmer is of course lying. We don’t have free speech in the UK.
Of course he’s not going to say “we are implementing censorship and clamping down on dissent”. Stalin didn’t say that either. On paper there was freedom of speech in the Soviet Union.
The reason for the FSU is exactly because of the increasing curbs on free speech and censorship that characterizes Britain.
Imo, Stalin was clever. A belligerent, intelligent and crafty man who chose his words, knew what he wanted and how to keep his secrets, secret.
Not only does Sir Kneel lie, he simply doesn’t care that every day everybody across the whole world *knows* that he’s lying.
Either that or – tenuous, I know – nobody’s told him that because the world now has a global, free and always available communication thingee, very few people get their news from the (aka, his) state controlled sources. Which, on reflection, may be true…
How else might we explain – as only one example, amongst so many – why the UK’s Prime Minister (our leading politician, fhs) would be so dumb/crass/insert-your-own-invective, as to connect: Southport, the vicious murders of three little girls, a public outburst of anger/exasperation and, “Right Wing thugs.”
Hmm… Doesn’t care? Doesn’t know? Naaa, for me, he knows and he doesn’t care. Because, being *in charge* is everything. Today, in his world – and imo, go on, name and count them, he’s far from alone in this – core, foundational ethics and morality are confections – and strictly for the others, us, the plebs.
Just for context, the 1000 years of free speech we’ve enjoyed, obviously doesn’t include the hundreds of years when a word out of place would have the King lop your head off, or would get you burned at the stake for heresy.
Indeed
And more recently we’ve not had it since 1965 Race Relations Act
As Major has pointed out, we don’t have free speech in the UK which is why we have the Free Speech Union and which is sadly very busy. So, once again Kneel is lying.
I’m shocked. Shocked I am.
There are posters in Reading asking people to celebrate the Race Relations Act. This is similar to so-called demonstrations against the right in Germany the Scholz government used to call for and which politicians and political activists from state-sponsored NGOs then attended or to the way the population was asked to celebrate public organisations or past acts of government in the GDR (and probably other eastern block states as well).
The idea that people should celebrate that a certain law was passed in the past is IMHO seriously odd.
That is creepy but sadly in keeping with the direction things are heading
Wow, that is seriously disturbing. Of course those posters in Reading won’t mention the strange coincidence that Race Relations Acts were shoved through the British Parliament AND the American Congress in THE SAME YEAR of 1965.
They also won’t mention the fact that RACISM IS NOT A CRIME anywhere on Earth except for WHITE COUNTRIES, where it has been forced upon the population by a certain ancient tribe from the Middle East, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the West.
Re your final comment- like bashing pans together for “our” NHS.
More accurately, people loyal to the King would lop your head off. Conversely, if a monarch or wannabe monarch got a bit uppity they tended to have their heads lopped off too. Nowadays dispute between the state and an individual over rights is fought out in the courts/tribunals (if you have money or are not a citizen) or the local benefits office (if you don’t have the money or are a legal citizen).
Traditionally being burned at the stake for heresy was more prevalent along the Rhine than along the Thames.
Nowadays, the psychological barrier to being a heretic is fear of having your social media account closed, your vapes outlawed, your professional membership revoked, or your employment lopped off, especially in the MSM and the public sector. Despite that, these “show trials” created by false allegations, official cover-ups, confected charges or oppressive laws or seem to be on the rise, resulting in controversial custodial sentences “pour encourager les autres”.
You said, “Traditionally being burned at the stake for heresy was more prevalent along the Rhine than along the Thames.”
That is FALSE.
“She was known as “Bloody Mary” for having some 300 Protestants burned at the stake for heresy against the Catholic faith. Mary’s sister and successor, Elizabeth I, reversed this Catholic restoration and denied papal authority in England.”
Notice how the Telegraph says, “The visit is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs”, as if it were some sort of affront, when countries “intervene” in the domestic affairs of other countries all the time, particularly the EU constantly interfering in the domestic affairs and even elections of other countries.
As J.D. Vance pointed out, when the lack of Freedom of Speech in the UK and EU threatens to harm the interests and freedoms of Americans doing business with the UK and EU, they will of course intervene.
All the countries of the West should have Freedom of Speech & Thought enshrined in their laws, like the US First Amendment, and the right to bear arms for self-defence, like the US Second Amendment, which was modelled on the 1689 English Bill of Rights.
I can’t believe that that awful Mr Trump doesn’t believe Dear Two-tier, Right-wing-smear, let-me-be-clear, curry-and-a-beer Smarmer.
Satire/irony right?
Nice one! Don’t forget to add “Free-Gear Starmer”.
From the US point of view – why would you spend billions of dollars to defend countries that do not share your values?
Washington’s free speech pundits really do not need to travel so far. Trump has his free-speech suppressors arresting and/or deporting all foreign students who happened to ever write anything critical about Israel. In the same vein, Microsoft has reportedly implemented a policy blocking employee emails from containing the words ‘Palestine’, ‘Gaza’ or ‘Genocide’.
The US may have a brilliant constitution but, quoting Chicago University’s Prof. Meirsheimer, “We live in the days of imperial presidency”.
“Trump Revokes Visas of 4,000 Foreign Students In First 100 Days, Most With Serious Criminal Records.”
“…. The State Department teamed with Homeland Security to review its databases and compare that information with existing law enforcement records. The official explained that only individuals with serious offenses had their visas revoked, while those with minor infractions, like littering, did not face visa cancellation.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/05/02/4k-foreign-students-visas-in-first-100-days-nearly-all-with-serious-criminal-records-n2656293
People who had committed “serious offences” would already have been arrested. Trump is having any student deported who protested against Israel, e.g. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/columbia-complicit-trump-arrest-student-leader-mahmoud-khalil. In other words, free speech on certain subjects – anything that offends Israel – is not allowed in USA. Well, it is tolerated (more or less) if you are a US citizen but foreign students will have their visas and green cards revoked. You may think that is fine but it is hardly demonstrative of free speech. It also demonstrates the strangle-hold Israel has on USA politicians, including Trump.
So it’s you who admired Resident Biden.. it figures.
It figures? What figures? President Biden was clearly mentally incapable of being President for way longer than his last term. He was also, in my opinion, an old-school US politician, bought and paid for by various organizations. I never admired him, quite the opposite.
I admire Trump for destroying (or attempting to destroy) DEI, the climate nonsense, LGBTQ (not sure if he has actually done anything there) and so on. But he continues to fund the genocide in Gaza as well as the destruction of Ukraine. He also (like so many US Presidents before him) is happy to bomb completely innocent civilians himself, e.g. Yemen, Somalia.
I do hope President Trump will be addressing “The Mother of Parliaments” – both Houses – when he visits later this year.
It will be wonderful to watch the assembled ranks of authoritarian Uni-Party MPs and Frauds forced to listen.
Why is the US taxpayer funding trips to the UK to research its ban on free speech. It is real, it exists. Look at those currently serving time in prison for something they said or wrote online. Hopefully, our President will treat the UK like any other communist country. It is no longer a democracy, if it ever was.
Only approved speech is free