Police have arrested 60,000 in the UK for 'problematic' speech

This made me slightly edgy. It’s reasonable to imagine that at least one employee of HMRC was sitting mortified in our midst. Is this not the sort of irresponsible labelling that can trigger anxiety? What did the Prince of Peace think he was jolly well playing at?

Of course, even a thin grasp of the exegesis in this text reveals that, in the time of Jesus, tax collectors were the corrupt agents of the invading Roman interlopers. Gentiles, being non-believers, wouldn’t be expected to possess a robust moral compass anyway. The Son of God was painting pictures his audience would understand.

Even so, you can’t be too careful. Judged in the spirit of the age, priests or ministers could find themselves in severe soapy for reading such verses if they haven’t taken care to provide a warning.

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This was reinforced the very same day by a report in a Sunday newspaper that police have arrested more than 60,000 people across the UK for speech deemed problematic, especially on social media. Research by the monitoring group Big Brother Watch found that 62,199 people have been arrested over alleged hate speech since 2021. Less than a third were later charged or convicted.

It should be acknowledged at this point that many of the convictions would have resulted from legitimate wrongdoing covered by existing laws around genuine threat and intimidation. It seems though, that a significant cohort of single-issue activists have exploited a well-intended ordinance to cause panic and anxiety out of sheer malevolence. In doing so, they divert time and energy from investigations into credible claims of harassment and imperilment, mainly by women and girls.

In one instance, police investigated a vulnerable teenage girl over a social media post that had included an image of a teacher alongside negative comments. She hadn’t created this post, nor commented on it. She was exonerated from any suspicion of malicious intent.

In Scotland, these numbers will surprise few following Holyrood’s implementation in 2024 of the Hate Crime and Public Order Act. This introduced the new law of ‘stirring up hatred’, even though legislation already existed to protect citizens from hate crimes.

The new law has encouraged bad actors among the country’s professionally offended to target individuals who had hurt their feelings. In June this year, the Crown Office revealed that the number of hate crime charges in Scotland had reached a record high.

More than 7,115 charges with at least one element of hate crime were recorded in 2025-26, an increase of 17% on the previous year and the highest number since 2003-04 when records began.

Yet, a much more insidious by-product of this totalitarian legislation is now evident in all spheres of public life in Scotland. It’s now become normal to target people for expressing opinions (or merely holding them), knowing that the mere process of being visited by the police will terrorise them into silence.

In the public sector workplace; in professional politics and in some trade unions merely being deemed to be on the wrong side of the gender debate can end careers and result in profound mental health challenges. In other sectors, having the audacity to challenge executive power is to risk disciplinary action and reputational damage. Status, experience, a spotless criminal record and proven ability offer no protection in this creep towards state-imposed despotism.

Last month, the Glasgow City Labour councillor, Fiona Higgins won her legal fight against the Commissioner for Ethical Standards, who’d sought to prevent her using vital documents in a disciplinary action brought by a former council officer. She'd been accused of making some Council officers 'uncomfortable' by sharing concerns about massive education cuts.

Last year, Police Scotland had to apologise to the Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser after they’d recorded a social media post he’d made as a ‘hate incident’. Mr Fraser had likened identifying as non-binary to identifying “as a cat” when commenting on Scottish Government equality policies. The police admitted his case had been dealt with ‘differently’ to reported incidents involving other public figures.

In 2021, Dr Neil Thin, the Edinburgh University social anthropologist, was targeted in a coordinated online campaign by student groups which accused him of being racist after he opposed renaming the university’s David Hume Tower. He was cleared by a formal investigation, but this very experienced and respected academic was forced to step away from teaching for two months, such was the intensity of this contrived witch-hunt. Meanwhile, dozens of performers and authors have effectively been blacklisted by the Edinburgh Festivals for their gender-realist views.

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Yesterday, the author and former Edinburgh Labour councillor, Susan Dalgety posted on Twitter/X that women campaigning for their rights had been “stopped from meeting; had peaceful meetings disrupted; been spat on and viciously insulted” for their views. “Women had lost their livelihoods, their careers damaged, had death threats; vicious online abuse”.

I have personally witnessed this on several occasions. These women all belong to the authentic left, not the counterfeit version of it created by their detractors.

The law around hate speech is designed to limit free speech and is thus deployed by some people in power to discourage scrutiny of their actions. It’s clear too though, that it is only selectively enforced. If your beliefs, religious and cultural, aren’t deemed to be in line with the prevailing state orthodoxy you are much more at risk of the 2am knock in John Swinney’s progressive, enlightened Scotland.

Now, I’m seriously considering joining the Free Speech Union, which supports those who are targeted by the fanatics and an acquiescent police force. I’m fortunate to work for The Herald which, under its leadership team, values and protects diversity of opinion. But we live under a state regime which wants to suppress it.

Kevin McKenna is Scotland’s Columnist of the Year