TWO and a half years after throwing me in the back of a police van for opposing the monarchy, Thames Valley Police have admitted that I was wrongfully arrested.
 
I am pleased and relieved of course. But I am also acutely aware that most people who are unlawfully arrested receive little or no publicity and are not in a position to take legal action against the police.
 
I was able to do so only because of Liberty, whose excellent lawyers advised and represented me. I was helped, practically and emotionally, by a wide range of friends, comrades and strangers.
 
But this is not about me. It never was.
 
It is about the rights of all people to speak out, to express themselves, to challenge the powerful, to refuse to bow down, to assert the dignity and equality of all humans.
 
Leaving church in September 2022, I found myself amid crowds of people trying to negotiate their way around town despite roads being closed for a ceremony declaring Charles Windsor to be king.
 
I remained silent as the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire read out expressions of grief for Elizabeth Windsor.
 
But then he declared Charles to be our king and “rightful liege lord.” I called out “Who elected him?”
 
A couple of people told me to shut up. I said that a head of state was being imposed without our consent.
 
I might well have left it there. But three security guards came over and told me to be quiet. With no sense of irony, they stood menacingly right in front of me and said they were asking me “nicely” not to express my views.
 
When I asserted my right to speak, they began to push me backwards. I briefly feared that I would be knocked over.
 
The police intervened — not to arrest the security guards for assaulting me, but to arrest me for expressing my views. I was forcibly led away and handcuffed.
 
I will forever be grateful for two people — complete strangers to me — who followed us down the road. They repeatedly asked the police why I was being arrested. They said they didn’t agree with me but they thought Britain was a “free country.”
 
The police contradicted themselves several times about which law I had been arrested under.
 
I was called back for a police interview and told that one of the security guards had alleged that I had assaulted him. This was a reversal of the truth.
 
Three months after my arrest, I was charged with breaking the Public Order Act 1986 through behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress.”
 
Two weeks later, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges, saying there was little prospect of conviction.
 
On the same day that I was arrested, a 22-year-old woman in Edinburgh — who has preferred to remain anonymous — was arrested while peacefully holding an anti-monarchy placard. Shortly afterwards, Paul Powlesland was threatened with arrest in London if he wrote “not my king” on a piece of paper.
 
When it came to the coronation, Graham Smith and other staff at Republic were arrested as they arrived to set up for a lawful demonstration. The police used powers that had been rushed into law less than a week earlier.
 
After my arrest, I was taken aback by the level of media interest. I received hundreds of supportive messages, dozens of abusive messages and a few death threats. Andrew Schraeder, a Conservative councillor in Basildon, tweeted that I should be sent to the Tower of London.
 
I also heard from many other people who had been wrongly arrested, or otherwise mistreated by the police, who had received far less publicity than me.
 
Several anti-monarchists were arrested at the royal wedding in 2011. We all know how anti-protest legislation has been used against nonviolent anti-war and climate campaigners. And I have lost count of the number of protests I have attended in which black and Asian people have been the first to be questioned or arrested.
 
Certain cases of appalling police behaviour at least make the news, such as the vile police assault on a vigil mourning Sarah Everard in 2021. At other times, police behaviour receives little attention. A homeless woman in Oxford told me of how she had been beaten up in the back of a police van. She did not, of course, have the resources to take legal action.
 
Yet it is rightwingers — including some on the extreme right — who misleadingly present themselves as defenders of free speech.
 
This claim reached the heights of absurdity when JD Vance criticised Britain for a lack of free speech, with an outrageous lie about people in Scotland being prevented from praying in their homes.

Similar claims about the suppression of free speech are made by Nigel Farage — a far-right multimillionaire who receives excessive media coverage in inverse proportion to the coherence of his arguments.
 
Far-right types on social media claim to be upholding “free speech” when they want an excuse to peddle racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and other doctrines that demonise their fellow human beings.
 
Meanwhile, various celebrities claim that they are being “cancelled” when voluntary organisations such as students’ unions decide not to invite them to speak.
 
Vance, Farage and their gang do not of course mention the arrests of peaceful people resisting war, monarchy or climate change. The excessive prison sentences for Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action campaigners receive no criticism from them.
 
It is not the rich and powerful whose free speech is threatened. Free speech is under threat in Britain because police are arresting and charging people for nonviolent protest and the expression of opinions. Unlike Vance and Farage, most people have limited power to do much about it.
 
But as every socialist and trade unionist knows, we all have more power when we act together. Now is a vital time for the left to seize the narrative and take back the cause of free speech from the hatemongers.
 
In demanding our rights to freedom of speech, we assert the reality that we have equal value to the kings, presidents, generals and billionaires who are so keen to be heard while expecting the rest of us to shut up. Let’s make sure they know that shutting up is the last thing we will be doing.
 
Symon Hill is a Baptist minister-in-training and a history tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association. His latest book is The Peace Protesters: A History of Modern-Day War Resistance (Pen and Sword, 2022)