17 Minutes of Courtroom Sanity

With the help of the FSU, a former Royal Marine who served in Iraq has been cleared of publishing threatening material with intent to stir up racial hatred – in reality, a 12-minute Facebook video urging people to stage peaceful protests about illegal immigration. Jamie Michael, an FSU member, was unanimously acquitted by a jury at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court in just 17 minutes. The story was reported this week in The Telegraph. We paid his legal fees and arranged for him to be represented by solicitor Luke Gittos and barrister Adam King. Prosecutors claimed his language was “unrelentingly negative” towards immigrants, but his defence made clear that it was directed only at those who are “illegal, unchecked or radicalised”. The jury reached its verdict in 17 minutes, less time than it took to hear the prosecution’s opening arguments. FSU General Secretary Toby Young has written to the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) on behalf of the FSU protesting its decision to release the name and street address of the man who was arrested on Monday for publicly burning the Koran. In the letter, Toby tells the Chief Constable: “As you must know, demonstrations involving damage to or the destruction of a Koran have been responded to with violence of the most serious kind. Just last week, an Iraqi man named Salwab Momika was murdered in Sweden after he burnt a Koran”. Meanwhile, Angela Rayner, in her role as communities secretary, is planning a new council on ‘Islamophobia’ and lining up ex-Tory attorney-general Dominic Grieve to chair it, according to The Telegraph. The 16-strong body will draw up an official government definition of Islamophobia. In 2018 Mr Grieve wrote a foreword to the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims which set out the controversial definition of Islamophobia later adopted by the Labour Party when it was in opposition. This definition has been widely criticised – including in a Free Speech Union briefing – for being far too broad and labelling perfectly legitimate criticisms of Islam ‘Islamophobic’. We end with a report that NHS staff have been told not to call people “obese” in an inclusive language guide produced by the medicines watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The guide, reported in The Telegraph, instructs medical workers to describe the badly overweight as “people with obesity”. It also warns against using “diabetic”, and “alcoholic” rather than “people with diabetes” and “people who are dependent on alcohol”. ‘That's Debatable!’  is edited by Jason Clift.