The never-ending punishment of Jamie Michael

The process is the punishment. This is the fate suffered by thousands of people arrested every year in Britain for speech crime, for ‘grossly offensive’ or ‘hateful’ speech. Many people never make it to trial, while others are eventually acquitted. The police are now so zealously pursuing these supposed crimes they are going well beyond what even our illiberal speech laws require. But even when an alleged speech criminal is vindicated, a high price is exacted – in reputation, in lost earnings, in lingering suspicion. For former Marine and Iraq veteran Jamie Michael, the punishment never seems to stop.

Jamie was arrested and charged with ‘inciting racial hatred’ in August 2024. He was caught in a riptide of official hysteria following the Southport stabbings and nationwide anti-migrant riots, in which the authorities came down hard not simply on those who engaged in violence, but also those who aired their views on social media. For Jamie, his supposed offence was to post a 12-minute Facebook video, titled ‘This is what I think’.

In it, he railed against out-of-control migration. He said there were ‘scumbags’ and ‘psychopaths’ among those entering the country. (A take that, given the series of sexual offences, murders and even terror attacks committed by some illegal migrants, has aged better than some of Michael’s critics might care to admit.) He expressed himself ‘clumsily’, by his own admission. He wrongly said that the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, was not born in Cardiff. (It was a mistake many will have made; misinformation about Rudakubana was swirling online at the time.) But he also explicitly denounced violence, calling for public meetings with councillors and MPs, as well as security around parks and schools.

Nevertheless, he was put through the wringer as if he were some sinister terrorist. We spoke to Jamie for our documentary, Think Before You Post, about the rise of the British speech police. His treatment was as authoritarian as it was cruel. He was arrested, and held in custody. He was on remand for 17 days, only for him to be acquitted by a jury of his peers in 17 minutes. He had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to his autistic daughter down the phone from jail. As he told us in his village in South Wales, it all took a tremendous toll on his family.

And on it goes. Despite being found not guilty, he has been banned from coaching his daughter’s football team. (In his youth, he was an apprentice at Manchester United.) His local safeguarding board ruled he was not ‘suitable’ to work with youngsters, despite his emphatic acquittal. Jamie has now gone public and is bringing a legal action against the decision with the help of the estimable Free Speech Union, which represented him in his original trial, and has found more than a dozen other cases of safeguarding rules being used to punish wrong-think. (You can donate to the crowdfunder here.)

Thus, the cloud of suspicion remains, even after due process has run its course. Despite Jamie clearing his name, others continue to sully it. The scarlet letter of racism is difficult to remove once it has been applied. I was on LBC this morning, discussing Jamie’s case. The guest who was on immediately after me – a ‘child safeguarding consultant’, no less – accused him of ‘refer[ring] to people of colour as scumbags and psychopaths’. For her own sake, I would suggest she watch his full video, and Google ‘defamation’.

Not that we need any more matters of speech being decided in court. There’s been quite enough of that already. What we need is to take an axe to our speech laws, so that thought and opinion are no longer the business of cops and judges. We need to fight back against institutions, from safeguarding councils to banks to big corporations, that often pick up where the state leaves off, silencing ‘thoughtcriminals’ even where no criminal offence has been committed. And we need a cultural shift throughout society, so that a few angry words can no longer upend a life, so that years of service cannot be undone in a matter of minutes.

‘I was willing to put my life down on the line for this country on many occasions, and then for making a video, trying to get some safety in place for our children, I was punished so heavily… the same government that sent us to war was then sending me to prison.’ This is how Jamie Michael put it to me in the documentary, about the sense of betrayal his ordeal had left him with. It’s a moment that has stayed with me. And yet, even now, after all that has happened, he still cannot possibly be allowed to get on with his life? Let the man coach. And enough with the punishment of people for no other ‘crime’ than speaking their mind.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater

Watch Think Before You Post below: