JK Rowling has condemned the arrest of Father Ted creator Graham Linehan as ‘utterly deplorable’ after he was detained by five armed police officers at Heathrow Airport over three ‘anti-trans’ tweets.
The Harry Potter author is among several high-profile names to speak out after Linehan was detained as soon as he stepped off an American Airlines flight from Arizona to London.
The Irish comedy writer, whose successful career was derailed by his ‘anti-trans’ views, says he was treated like a ‘terrorist’ and arrested over ‘three tweets’ yesterday afternoon.
The Met Police has confirmed the 57-year-old was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence at around 1pm ‘in relation to posts on X’.
Reacting to the arrest, Rowling fumed on X: ‘What the f*** has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.’
The gender-critical campaigner leapt to Linehan’s defence just weeks after he accused her of failing to defend him after he was cancelled over his similar views.
Elsewhere, Piers Morgan accused Britain of ‘turning into North Korea’, Robert Jenrick blasted it as ‘a complete waste of police time’ and even presenter Iain Dale – who has come under attack from Linehan in the past – branded it an ‘outrage’.
Linehan’s arrest is the latest in a string of heavy-handed police responses over ‘thought crimes’, with writers, councillors and parents talking in school WhatsApp groups targeted in recent months.
The most high-profile ‘tweet police’ case involved Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor who was released from prison last month after being handed a 31-month sentence for a racist tweet after the Southport attack.
After his arrest, Linehan claimed he was escorted to A&E ‘because the stress nearly killed me’, adding that his blood pressure was recorded at over 200mmHg by a nurse.
The creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd has shared the tweets which he says police arrested him over. One from April 20 said: ‘If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.’
A second tweet, on April 19, was a picture of a trans rally with the caption: ‘A photo you can smell.’ The third was a follow up to this tweet which said: ‘I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.’
Condemning the arrest on X this afternoon, Piers Morgan wrote: What’s happened to [Linehan] today is absolutely ridiculous. Five armed cops arresting him at Heathrow for tweets mocking the scandal of biological men invading women’s spaces? When it comes to free speech, Britain’s turning into North Korea.’
Shadow justice secretary Mr Jenrick also weighed in, writing: ‘This is ridiculous and a complete waste of police time. The police only respond to 1 in 5 reported shoplifting offences, but deployed 5 armed officers to arrest a comedian over three tweets. We desperately need to end this nonsense and go after actual criminals.’
And LBC presenter Mr Dale fumed: ‘This is an outrage. [Linehan] has been pretty vile to me in the past on Twitter, but I stand with him on this outrageous experience. Read his Substack (link below). What an utter waste of police time.’
Describing his dramatic arrest on his Substack blog, Linehan wrote: ‘The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.
‘In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet.
‘I promise you, I am not making this up.’
He said he was ‘arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online’.
‘To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad,’ he added.
Linehan claims that even when he handed over his passport in Arizona, officials told him he did not have a seat and had to be re-ticketed.
‘At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy,’ he said. ‘But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged.’
Linehan says he burst into laughter when he first saw the police officers – alleging that some were even displaying a ‘polite bafflement’ over the arrest.
He claims a van was arranged to meet him on the tarmac ‘so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist’.
Linehan added: ‘At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated. Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices.’
He says ‘by some miracle’ he managed to sleep but he was then subjected to the quizzing about his tweets.
But he added: ‘The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans.
‘Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists. The male officers were mostly polite but clearly nonplussed by the politics of it all—just doing their jobs, however insane those jobs had become.
‘The female officers seemed more tuned in to what was actually happening. One mentioned the Sandie Peggie case in a certain way, and I realised I was among friends, even if they couldn’t admit it.’
Ms Peggie was suspended by NHS Fife after she complained about having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a trans medic, at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, on Christmas Eve 2023.
Linehan says he has a single bail condition: ‘I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes—just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.’
Condemning the arrest, Tory MP Neil O’Brien wrote on X: ‘Britain is now a total laughing stock – a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets. It would be laughable it it wasn’t so serious.’
A spokesman for the Met Police told the Mail: ‘On Monday, 1 September at 13:00hrs officers arrested a man at Heathrow Airport after he arrived on an inbound American Airlines flight.
‘The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.
‘The arrest was made by officers from the MPS Aviation Unit. It is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms. These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest.
‘After being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing.
‘He has now been bailed pending further investigation.
Linehan is facing trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday over two separate charges. One is in relation to harassing trans activist Sophia Brooks on social media and the other for damaging Brooks’s mobile phone in October.
He denied the charges at a hearing on May 12.
Last month, Linehan accused Rowling of failing to defend him. But he will no doubt welcome her support today.
He told how he had backed her strong views on SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which she previously dubbed ‘the biggest assault on the rights of Scottish women and girls’ in her lifetime.
But he claimed she failed to defend his right to free speech when he received backlash over his comments regarding trans people, saying Rowling’s ‘silence’ made him feel ‘toxic’ and isolated.