A great bit of free speech news.
About a month ago the political commentator Peter North who goes by the moniker of Northern Variant ( https://x.com/FUDdaily) on the X platform was arrested by North Yorkshire Police’s ‘hurty words’ squad. The police burst into his home and dragged him away for nothing more than a meme attacking the increasingly demented Moslem and non-Moslem ‘Palestine’ obsessives. The meme in question is the one that I’ve used as the header image for this piece.
The bad news for free speech in the UK was when Mr North was arrested. It was yet another speech crime arrest of the sort that is horrifying those of our American friends who take in interest in matters pertaining to free speech in the UK, or the increasing lack of it.
The good news is that Mr North is no longer under investigation. North Yorkshire Police have dropped the hurty words case against him. On the 21st October 2025 Mr North received notification that the police will be taking no further action against him. Whether this sets a precedent with regards to the ‘Fuck Hamas’ meme that he was arrested for and that this meme is not considered as ‘criminal’ is difficult to say at this point. Even if the police have backed down on this occasion there’s nothing to stop this force or any other police force arresting a Briton for sharing this particular meme. It could be any other Briton who ends up being arrested for sharing this or a similar meme with all the disruption that such arrests bring. Remember in Britain the process is the punishment in particular when it comes to speech crimes. Even if someone is eventually exonerated either by the courts or by the police stating no further action, the person has still had their lives turned upside down and been made to live in some fear of what might eventually happen to them. This fear is real as Britain is a country that gaols people for jokes or opinions, something that I’ve seen shock Americans as their First Amendment prevents their state from prosecuting people, at least in peacetime, for opinions or jokes or anything else.
I’m very pleased that North Yorkshire Police have seen sense and are not prosecuting Mr North on a bullshit ‘stirring up racial/religious/sexual orientation hatred’ charge. I suspect that with Mr North having a relatively high profile in the British online political commentary world may have had an impact on North Yorkshire Police’s decision (his high profile might also have been a factor in his original arrest but that cannot easily be proven). In addition, Mr North stating quite publicly that he was going to fight the police and the Crown Prosecution Service over this charge, may have played a part in why the police dropped this case so remarkably swiftly. It was clear that Mr North was not going to roll over, cough to some bullshit ‘hate speech’ charge and go quietly into gaol. He stated that he was going to take North Yorkshire Police on and made it clear that he was going to be no pushover. Because of Mr North’s high profile and the respect that he has from many of us he would also have been assisted in legal fees to fight his case. This case could have ended up as being a whole load of unnecessary public embarrassment for North Yorkshire Police at a time when many of our police forces are mired in various kinds of embarrassment.
Mr North is quite rightly and understandably angry and in a post on X he made after receiving the ‘no further action’ letter from the police he said:
“I am especially angry today given the backdrop of sectarian mobs on our own streets while the police do fuck all. What we get from the police when we need them most is bureaucratic incompetence and abject cowardice - and they have the nerve to turn up at MY door, and drag me from my home in the middle of the night, shutting me in a cage, because I have the audacity to notice my country turning into sectarian slum. So no, I am NOT relieved. I am not pleased with this outcome. It is a grotesque insult. Just who in the hell do they think they are to be telling us what we can say? The police notice says "No Further Action", but I can promise that there will be further action on my part. This is NOT over.”
Congratulations to Mr North for beating the ‘hate speech’ tripehounds of one of Britain’s increasingly woeful police forces. I also hope that Mr North sues the arse off of North Yorkshire Police as they, and many other of our worryingly politicised police forces, truly deserve it.