Free the Donkeys!

Four men have been arrested after an image of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein was projected on to Windsor Castle on Tuesday night – the same evening the US president arrived in the UK for his second state visit. Led By Donkeys, a ‘centrist dad’ campaign group, claimed responsibility, posting an image of the projection on Instagram with the caption: ‘Hey Donald, welcome to Windsor Castle.’

Whatever we might think of Led By Donkeys, the arrests should worry us all. A group of activists beamed a satirical image on to a public building, poking fun at the leader of the free world over his friendship with a convicted paedophile. The police then decided that this was a breach of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 – a law designed to deal with poison-pen letters. Clearly, this is not what parliament remotely intended when the law was passed.

The act makes it an offence to send something indecent, grossly offensive, obscene, menacing or knowingly false, where the purpose is to cause distress. Most arrests under the act tend to be for threatening statements, such as racist threats – not political protests. The law assumes that the malicious message will be sent to a specific person, not broadcast into the night sky. Unless we’re supposed to believe that Windsor Castle itself was the victim here?

To make this charge stick, prosecutors would need to show that the Trump-Epstein image was ‘grossly offensive’ in the eyes of a reasonable person. They would also need to demonstrate that one purpose of the projection was to cause distress. A cheeky jab at a political leader surely doesn’t come close to meeting that threshold.

The Malicious Communications Act’s sentencing guidelines, which are based on culpability and harm, show how ludicrous these arrests were. A person is considered more culpable if a threat was made or if a vulnerable person was targeted. The harm is higher if the victim is considered to have suffered significant distress. Clearly, neither principle applies here. There is neither a victim nor any evidence of distress.

Chief superintendent Felicity Parker said officers ‘responded swiftly to stop the projection’, stressing that police ‘take any unauthorised activity around Windsor Castle extremely seriously’. This is an interesting choice of words, suggesting that this was less about preventing malicious speech than ‘unauthorised’ speech.

And that is what should really worry us. While the sensitivities of a royal state visit – and the ever-present backdrop of security concerns – may explain the rapid police response, the worry is that communications law is being repurposed to sanitise public space, erasing all those untidy, provocative signals of dissent that are the lifeblood of a functioning democracy.

Remember, this was a light show – a joke – at the expense of a serving politician. But it was followed by four arrests. So is Britain now a country where political satire can be recast as a criminal offence if it makes certain people feel uncomfortable? And if so, where does that leave us?

It’s worth recalling that a very similar incident played out in a foreign country only a few weeks ago. Police swooped on a projector beaming slogans on to a university building. One declared: ‘Freedom is not a gift, it must be seized back.’ The country in question? China. Let’s hope this is not where we’re heading.

Freddie Attenborough is the digital communications director of the Free Speech Union.