IN A striking defence of free speech, the High Court has reaffirmed the core democratic principle that the law protects not only polite or popular views, but also those others may find offensive, upsetting, or wrong. The ruling dismissed a legal challenge to Greater Manchester Police’s (GMP’s) decision not to prosecute gender critical blogger Stuart Campbell, a member of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and better known online as @WingsScotland. It also pushed back against a growing trend to treat psychological harm as grounds for criminalising dissent.
The case arose after the murder of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old transgender girl who, in February 2023, was stabbed to death in a park in Warrington. In a series of posts on X, Campbell criticised what he described as the politicisation of Brianna’s death by trans activists and expressed his view that gender is biologically fixed. A trans woman who saw the posts reported him to police, alleging they breached Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 or Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
Several of the posts were quoted in the court’s ruling. In one, Campbell wrote: ‘These disgusting ghouls are SO excited that a trans person has finally been murdered in the UK, so they can use it to attack [JK] Rowling and “TERFs”, that they can’t bring themselves to wait even a day for the facts.’ That post was accompanied by a police statement, issued shortly after Ghey’s death, noting that they were not at that stage treating the murder as a hate crime.
Campbell also repeatedly referred to Brianna using male pronouns and rejected the idea that human beings can change sex. In one exchange, responding to a tweet by Owen Jones on the subject of Ghey’s death certificate ‘class[ing] her as a boy’, Campbell wrote: ‘Why the f*** does it even matter what’s on the death certificate? Who cares? If their parents want to bury their child under their trans name and put it on the headstone, nobody is going to stop them. Jones is just desperate to weaponise it.’
Following the claimant’s first contact with GMP, officers opened a crime report and began assessing whether any offences had been committed under the relevant legislation. By early summer, they had concluded that the threshold for prosecution had not been met and closed the case.
It appears, however, that the claimant did not receive notification of that decision. Some weeks later, she contacted the police again, warning that the legal time limit for bringing a charge was approaching. The material was reviewed once more, but the force stood by its original conclusion. Still dissatisfied, the claimant brought the matter before the High Court, launching a judicial review.
That challenge has now been rejected. Campbell, who was joined to the case as the interested party, successfully defended the police’s decision in a ruling handed down in April by Mrs Justice Hill. The court held that his comments formed part of a legitimate public debate (specifically, the framing of Ghey’s death) and that his views on biological sex were recognised as legally protected beliefs.
While acknowledging that the posts were made in the wake of a deeply sensitive event, the judge held that ‘shockingly bad taste’ is not the same as illegality. Campbell’s belief that gender is biologically determined, and his refusal to use preferred pronouns, fell within the scope of protected opinion on a matter of current and controversial public interest. His posts, the judge concluded, did not come close to meeting the threshold for being ‘grossly offensive’ under either statute.
‘The Defendant’s conclusion,’ the judge wrote, ‘properly reflected society’s fundamental values of free speech, including the need for tolerance of statements and opinions that some might find offensive or upsetting.’
The court also rejected the argument that Campbell’s tweets constituted psychological harm severe enough to engage Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment. a rare and stringent legal threshold.
Rejecting the claim as unrealistic, the judge emphasised that distress or offence caused by someone expressing protected views on matters of public concern cannot justify criminal investigation. Even if the claimant’s rights under Article 8 (private life) were engaged, the judge found, they would be outweighed by the imperative to uphold Campbell’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10.
Make no mistake: this is a significant judgment. In finding that Campbell had committed no crime and that his gender critical beliefs are protected under equality law, R (Watson) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police[2025] affirms that the right to express such views, however ‘uncomfortable’ some may find them, remains protected under UK law.
And yet, buried within this ruling is a sobering reminder of how far we still have to go in resisting the creeping criminalisation of ‘hurty words’. Although GMP chose not to pursue criminal charges, they nevertheless informed the claimant early on that the X posts ‘came under the realms of hate incidents’. In other words, even as the force confirmed there would be no further action, it signalled that it intended to record Campbell’s lawful expression through a separate, largely unregulated mechanism.
Under College of Policing guidance, a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) is ‘any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any bystanders to be motivated by hostility or prejudice’ based on a protected characteristic such as race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.
The key word is perceived. As the guidance makes clear: ‘The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required.’ As Campbell’s case demonstrates, in practice this means an NCHI can be recorded simply because someone, somewhere, took subjective offence to something entirely lawful.
Despite never being authorised by Parliament, NCHIs allow police to log personal data against individuals for lawful expression, which can appear on enhanced criminal records checks, potentially affecting a person’s ability to secure employment.
Since 2014, when they were formalised in their current form, the FSU estimates that more than 200,000 NCHIs have been recorded in England and Wales, averaging around 68 each day. In 2023 alone, police recorded roughly 13,000 NCHIs, taking up an estimated 30,000 hours of police time.
Small wonder, then, that the Conservatives have pledged to abolish NCHIs altogether. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp recently confirmed that his party will table an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to that effect, and force a vote to make it, in his words, ‘clear which MPs are willing to stand up for common sense, getting police priorities straight and for free speech, and which MPs are not.’
The FSU welcomes the initiative. It’s long past time the state stopped recording lawful speech as a form of wrongdoing.
