Even muttering something under your breath in a car with the windows closed is a crime in the eyes of Police Scotland

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

12 November 2026

Since February 2020, the Free Speech Union has fought more than 7,000 cases and grown to over 50,000 members. In that time, it has seen some deeply troubling instances of police overreach. But one case takes the biscuit.

Writing in The Spectator, the Free Speech Union's General Secretary, Lord Young, said:

Surely, the Met dispatching five armed officers to arrest Graham Linehan when he got off a flight from America for a tweet is the absolute nadir? But no. We were in court last week defending a man who was being prosecuted for saying something verboten while driving his car. The only person who heard it was his four-year-old son, yet he was charged with 'threatening or abusive behaviour' with a racial aggravator.

In April 2025, an FSU member — let's call him Craig — was driving his four-year-old son home to Glasgow after a day out at an amusement park in Falkirk when another car cut him up as he was exiting the M80. Craig had to swerve to avoid a collision. He suspected the other driver was drunk and called the police from his car.

Both vehicles eventually stopped, and the police arrived. They declined to breathalyse either driver, but took Craig's dashcam footage to investigate whether any laws had been broken.

A week later, officers contacted Craig to tell him that an offence had indeed been committed — by him, not the reckless driver.

His "crime" was muttering the words "smelly black bastard" under his breath seconds after almost being driven off the road. The windows were closed, so nobody outside the car could have heard him. The other driver was not looking in his direction and could not have seen him say it. The only person who might have heard was Craig's four-year-old son in the back.

As Lord Young wrote:

This is a near-perfect illustration of 'anarcho-tyranny', a phrase often used to describe contemporary Britain in which law-abiding responsible citizens are persecuted and criminals go unpunished.

Craig told the Free Speech Union that he was being prosecuted for a thought crime — and it is hard to disagree.

Not the first case of its kind

This is not the first time the FSU has defended people pursued for what they said in private.

In one case, a couple were out horse riding with their fourteen-year-old daughter on a single-track country lane in Cambridgeshire when a car overtook them without slowing down. The mother made a rude gesture; the car skidded to a halt, and two travellers got out and began abusing her daughter. While on the phone to the police, the mother called one of the men a "pikey". The police took no action against the men, but threatened to charge her with a "hate crime" unless she completed a racial awareness course. The FSU helped her find a lawyer, and the police took no further action.

Another case involved a dispute between two former partners. A special constable in Hampshire had told his then-boyfriend in a WhatsApp conversation to lock the doors to "keep the pikeys out". After they broke up, the ex-boyfriend complained to Hampshire Constabulary about his ex's "racist" language, submitting a screenshot of the message. The FSU's member was then dismissed for gross misconduct.

Fortunately, Craig was found not guilty earlier this month with the help of the Free Speech Union. But this prosecution was a colossal waste of police time.

To put things in context, as Lord Young noted, in Glasgow four out of five burglaries go unsolved, while there were 11 car thefts per 10,000 people in the year to June 2026.

As Lord Young pointed out, in Britain today you have to be wary even of the crime of muttering to yourself.