London’s Metropolitan Police have issued a formal apology to Father Ted creator Graham Linehan after he was arrested last year as he landed in the UK over social media posts criticising transgenderism.
Linehan, who is one of the most celebrated comedy writers in British television history, having been the creative force behind hits such as Father Ted, The IT Crowd, and Black Books, was arrested last September at Heathrow Airport by armed police on suspicion of a public order offence over posts he made on comments made on X.
According to the Irishman, who has become a leading critic of the transgenderism movement, previously revealed that one of the supposed offending tweets included a joke about what to do if a biological male enters a female bathroom: “Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
The arrest sparked widespread controversy in Britain and the United States, where Linehan currently lives and where he wrote the social media posts in question.
Critics of the censorious government in London, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, told the U.S. House of Representatives that American citizens should be concerned about travelling to the mother country, which he said has become like “North Korea“.
However, the scale of the outrage over the incident appears to have forced some rethinking in Scotland Yard. This week, after a five-month investigation concluded, the Metropolitan Police issued a formal apology to Linehan, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Met Inspector Matt Hume, of the police force’s directorate of professional standards, said: “I accept that the service provided was not acceptable and recognise the distress and impact this matter has caused Mr Linehan.”
“I apologise to Mr Linehan for the shortcomings in this investigation. The Met Police remains committed to lawful, proportionate policing and to learning from failings when they arise.”
Lord Young of Acton, the head of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which had supported Linehan’s suit against the Met, responded: “The FSU welcomes this apology and the acknowledgement that the arrest and detention of Graham Linehan was an unacceptable interference in his right to free speech.
“We look forward to working with the Met Police and other police services to ensure their response to complaints about social media posts in future has due regard to freedom of expression.”
Even before the apology, the incident appeared to have pressured British police to reconsider some of their more draconian speech restrictions, including the recording of the Orwellian “non-crime hate incidents“, which will no longer be logged in criminal databases.
However, the speech codes written into law would need to be repealed for some semblance of freedom of speech to return to Britain, such as the Online Safety Act, which was used as a pretext by TikTok to censor and remove a video detailing Reform UK’s plans to confront the migrant crisis just this week.