The Filton Four were sentenced for different charges than those they were convicted of

 Upon giving evidence in a court of law in the UK (and including Scotland, whose law is slightly different), you are compelled to solemnly swear (upon your Holy Book if you're religious, but also just in general) that the evidence you give will be 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'.

This is such a famous oath that it is known verbatim the world over, and has been repeated in countless media shows. At the time I started this blog in 2010, I was an AS-level law student, and I attended criminal cases myself at Bristol Crown Court and heard that oath uttered in person. I heard it again in 2015 as a Creative Performance undergraduate at Ipswich Crown Court, when as research for a piece of theatre I was involved in devising I attended several days of the trial of Eric de Smith, a retired headteacher who was ultimately jailed for sexually abusing several boys in his care. I was an absolutely terrible law student and I gave it up very quickly in favour of something I was a lot better at, but I have always found the law, and legal cases, absolutely fascinating and compelling.

One thing that I remember being one of the first things I learned when I became a law student is that every single legal case changes the law in some way. Another is that it's impossible for the law to be 100% fair. This is a hard truth you have to acknowledge if you take an interest in this kind of thing, because human beings are complex, there is very often context to what someone does outside of purely what their actions were, and legal cases rely very much on precedent. However, we can use our increasing development as human beings to make it as fair as it possibly can be, and we should. Thankfully, there have been many amazing people working on this throughout history, and there still are today.

It's really important that there continue to be amazing people working on it, because Friday 12 June marked an incredibly concerning moment in UK legal history. For the first time ever, a group of four defendants were convicted by a jury of one charge and sentenced by a judge for a different one. The group - Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani - were convicted by a jury of criminal damage after they entered the weapons factory Elbit Systems and damaged some property which was intended to be used as part of Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. We could debate at length whether a charge of criminal damage in this case is appropriate (these defendants had all previously been charged with, and subsequently found not guilty of, other charges, such as aggravated burglary and violent disorder). But subsequently to being found guilty of criminal damage, the judge in this case, Jeremy Johnson, added additional charges to the sentence so that the four could be found guilty of terrorism offences. Throughout the trial, that this was the judge's intention was explicitly kept from the jury during their deliberations, as was any means of being able to explain to the jury the reasons for their actions. Irrespective of what anyone thinks of what these protesters actually did, I think we should be able to agree that this is not in line with telling 'the whole truth', an essential part of the sworn testimony. It also cannot be considered a fair trial to extrapolate a jury's findings onto separate charges the jury was not made aware of. This could not be considered an appropriate use of the court's functions for any trial or any charge.

The terrorism charge means that each of them will serve more jail time than their actions otherwise would normally warrant (not including the jail time they've already served whilst awaiting trial, which is already a lot more than it's supposed to be). In addition, the terrorism charge will continue to stay with them upon release, which can significantly hinder their ability to gain paid employment and various other everyday necessities. I should reiterate, this is the outcome for a charge of criminal damage - something that has never warranted this kind of punishment before. One refrain that I've heard repeated quite a lot by people in social media comment threads is 'But they injured a police officer!', so I need to put this to bed. One of them did injure a police officer. That person was found by the jury guilty of GBH without intent - i.e. that he did not intend to cause the officer such a serious injury, as opposed to 'with intent', which is what the prosecution had charged him with. The sentencing guidelines for GBH without intent still do not resemble what he was actually sentenced for. The other three defendants were not involved in that incident at all, so it is irrelevant to their cases.

It's clear to me that the intent of this obscenely inappropriate sentence is highly political. The Government (both the current Labour administration and the previous Tory one) has been attempting to interfere in activism court cases for a number of years now, with varying degrees of success. These particular defendants have been in and out of court on quite a few attempts to convict them of various different charges; juries have consistently either found them not guilty or found them guilty of lesser charges than those they were in court for. This is proving quite inconvenient for the Government, to the extent that they're talking about scrapping jury trials (they say this is to clear the backlog, but the backlog doesn't actually have anything to do with juries).

To me though, the thing that's most concerning about this is the idea that it may deter others from taking the same sort of direct action. This kind of action should be taken. It saves lives. The weapons these individuals destroyed are weapons that would otherwise have been used to kill and maim innocent people, including children. They now will not be. There's countless petitions and vigils and marches and all sorts of other things that Governments do their utmost not to listen to, but damaging the equipment produces immediate results. I appreciate that not everyone feels comfortable doing that kind of thing. I appreciate that not everyone is able to put themselves in a position where they may be charged with a crime, particularly not if they may be charged as a terrorist (I think I'd have serious reservations about it myself). But the fact remains that I do think these kinds of things need doing, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who is prepared to do them. I have been absolutely in awe of some of the statements these activists have made (seriously, look them up if you haven't seen them). Ultimately, what they did saved innocent lives, which unfortunately in today's world is something that is considered more of a crime than the continual racial hate crimes, arson attacks and pogroms that have occurred in the UK over the last few weeks. This particular judge, Jeremy Johnson, released Tommy Robinson early from prison a few years ago. Clearly, Robinson's behaviour is considered to be less of a threat to public life than the actions of some incredibly brave individuals who concretely have saved lives. I'm really hopeful that their sentencing will be overturned on appeal.

And if you support the sentencing in this case even slightly, I ask you: can you justify, in any way, sentencing someone for a charge other than that which they were found guilty of? If you believe these individuals were terrorists, why was this information kept from the jury? If you want to have a conversation about that we can have that conversation - otherwise, any argument you can make in favour of this is a straw man.

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An open letter to Catherine Fookes MP regarding Early Day Motion 240

I wrote the following letter to my MP, Labour's Catherine Fookes.

Dear Catherine,

My name is George Harold Millman; I am a writer and social justice campaigner based in your constituency, and I write about politics under the blog name The Rebel Without A Clause. We have met a number of times, largely through my partner Owen's disability rights campaigns. I am writing to you concerning Early Day Motion 240, which has been put forward by your Labour colleague Nadia Whittome, and sponsored (amongst others) by your other Labour colleagues, Stella Creasy, Kate Osborne and Lorraine Beavers. The EDM proposes that the Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations, be disapproved.

As you probably know, the relevant code is highly contentious because it concerns access to public spaces, including gendered spaces, for transgender people. This is a subject that has become increasingly talked about in recent years. Your Labour colleague Samantha Niblett appeared on Politics Live this week to talk about compassion and respect for the trans community, and one thing she said that really stayed with me was that in 2017, there were only three organisations actively campaigning against trans rights. There are now 51 - for a group of people which makes up around half a percent of the UK population.

The new Code of Practice is both discriminatory and unenforceable. It states that gendered public services, such as toilets and changing rooms, must be used in accordance with biological sex rather than gender identity. One thing I need to make clear straight away is that 'biological sex' is not something that is all that quantifiable, because there are multiple different means of judging biology (chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, and more besides) and they don't always fit into neat boxes. In fact, most of us don't know all of these things about ourselves. I am a cisgender man, in the sense I was assigned male at birth and have never doubted my gender identity, but I don't know if I produce XY chromosomes - as with most people, I've never had any reason to get my chromosomes tested and find out. We cannot quote an accurate figure as to how much of the population is intersex, because many people go through their whole lives without ever knowing this about themselves - all we can know is that it's likely to be far more than we're aware of. Although I'm not any kind of expert (and it certainly needs more research), it is my belief that being transgender is likely to be a form of being intersex - if you can be born with characteristics of more than one sex, it's not a great leap from there into being born seemingly with all the physical characteristics of one sex but to know inherently that you're the other. Being transgender is biological, and we cannot and should not use the phrase 'biological sex' to suggest that it isn't.

The Code of Practice does not make clear exactly what transgender people (who have been using spaces corresponding to their gender forever) should do in this situation and what facilities they should use. Transgender people, commonly fear-mongered about as potentially being perpetrators of sexual assault, are actually far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. This is of course of particular concern for trans women, who if forced into male spaces are potentially putting themselves into an extremely dangerous place. The situation is even more confusing for trans men - technically, the new guidance says that they should use women's spaces, irrespective of how far through transition they are and how indistinguishable they are from a cisgender man (which also means a cisgender man could pretend to be a transgender man to gain access to women's spaces, the exact thing the guidance is supposedly to stop them doing). Unofficially, trans men have been advised not to do this - so what exactly is the advice? What are trans men meant to do in these situations? Trans men seem to have been mostly entirely ignored in the whole discussion, which only serves to highlight how flawed the discussion is and how it's focussed more on 'vibe' than on actual clear evidence and situational considerations.

The Code suggests that trans people should, ideally, use a third space. There are a very high number of problems with this. Firstly, not every facility has a third space, nor the resources to build one. Secondly, having a third space just for trans people would mean trans people would be forced to out themselves if they used it, which is discriminatory to any trans person who does not wish to be upfront about their trans status. Thirdly, it causes problems for disabled people - much of the time, a 'third space' will be the disabled facilities, which then increases demand for these facilities and means disabled people will have less access to them. Being trans is not a disability, and particularly as a disability rights campaigner, I have to make clear that we must not pit one vulnerable group against another. Fourthly, this is just immoral anyway, and bears some resemblance to apartheid South Africa. We must not have trans people in a separate moral category to cis people - doing that is completely at odds with a fair and just society.

Every year, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) publishes the Rainbow Map - a map of all the countries in the world according to the quality of life for LGBTQ+ people living there. From being first in Europe in 2015, shortly after having legalised same-sex marriage, the UK is now 22nd out of 49 countries - just above halfway down. As someone in a same-sex relationship, I am dismayed to see us fall so far in such a short space of time. But looking just at the gender recognition category, we are doing even worse. In 2005, we were first in Europe, having just passed the Gender Recognition Act. Socially, public acceptance of trans people had been affirmed quite strongly by the victory of trans woman Nadia Almada on the TV programme Big Brother, which at the time was one of the most watched television programmes in the UK. From having given a trans woman a massive popularity boost 21 years ago and sent a strong message of acceptance to the trans community in the UK, we now place 43rd out of 49 on gender recognition. I think most people would struggle to name 42 European countries, let alone 42 European countries who are more accepting of their transgender communities than we are.

My opinion of your Parliamentary work since being elected in 2024 has, truthfully, been mixed. There have been some things I have approved of, and some I haven't. However, I have been generally quite optimistic about your position on trans rights. So far, I haven't seen anything from you on this that has given me cause for concern. I have been glad to see you speak up on behalf of the trans community in Monmouthshire in Parliament. Hence why I was hoping to see your name on Early Day Motion 240. At the time of writing, it has 75 signatories, 31 of whom are Labour MPs. I really hope to see your name on it before long. Together, we can defeat transphobia and stand up for an extremely vulnerable and increasingly marginalised community of people, a community that I know you have great compassion for.

Thank you for your attention,

Best wishes,

George Harold Millman

P.S. This is written as an open letter, so I will be publishing it on my blog, The Rebel Without A Clause. I will also publish any response I receive from you, if any.

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2026 Senedd elections: much friendlier with the public, much more hostile amongst the candidates

 For the last few weeks, most of my time has been spent campaigning for my boyfriend Owen in the Welsh Senedd elections on 7th May. I've temporarily given up my various jobs to focus on this. It's still early days at this point (Owen's candidacy hasn't even been formally registered yet) but on the whole the campaign is going really well.

Owen is an independent candidate focussing primarily on social care, disability rights and support for the most vulnerable. Regular readers will know about how he stood for Parliament in the 2024 General Election for the constituency of Monmouthshire, primarily because none of our local politicians, irrespective of what party platform they were standing on, were properly representing those with disabilities. Owen and I had spent a number of years campaigning to save Tudor Street Day Centre in Abergavenny, a campaign that was eventually successful in part because of Owen's election campaign (Owen was never really in danger of winning, but Monmouthshire was a tight marginal between Labour and the Conservatives, and his candidacy meant that Labour had to significantly improve their campaign to avoid getting the Tories back in).

As I discussed in my new year blog, Tudor Street Day Centre is now being run horrifically badly, there's been one of the most grotesque abuses of power there that I've ever seen in my life, and local politicians have been just as unhelpful as they were when we were trying to save it from being demolished. This is a big part of why Owen has decided to stand again, having previously never intended to do another venture into politics. It's two years later, and things for the most vulnerable people in our local area have not particularly improved - in fact, there's an argument that they've got even worse. Hence Owen deciding to stand for the Senedd, the constituency of Sir Fynwy Torfaen.

The logistics of standing in the Senedd are a little different to standing for Westminster. One of the major differences is that in the Senedd, the voting system is different. There's something of a strange version of proportional representation - everyone gets just one vote, there are six seats in the constituency to be won, and how many a party wins depends on how many votes they get. This makes things more democratic in one respect, but in another means that you cannot specifically choose which candidate to vote for - you vote for a party, and then the party decides who will fill the seat. I am personally not too keen on this, as I regularly champion voting for a person, not just a party - party leaders change, manifestos change, and who you felt like voting for at the time may in time turn out not to have been worth it. I always say that you should ask yourself when casting your vote, 'How much do I trust this candidate to represent my best interests?' With the Senedd elections, you can't do that, and that's a problem. However, it does give an independent candidate like Owen a slight advantage - if you vote for an independent, you do know where your vote is going. In our constituency this is also the case if you vote for the Green Party, because there is only one Green candidate - Ian Chandler.

Ian Chandler was also the Green Party candidate in 2024, and is the Cabinet Member for Social Care, Safeguarding and Accessible Health Services. You would think that with a job title like that, it would be extremely counter-productive to stand against them. Both Owen and myself would far rather be out campaigning for Ian, especially given the Green Party's recent phenomenal success at the Gorton and Denton by-election. Unfortunately, our personal experience of Ian has not filled us with confidence that they truly have an understanding of what the most vulnerable people need. They have consistently proven themselves difficult to contact, obstructive and lacking in empathy, to the extent that they once used the Nazi slogan 'final solution' at a public council meeting in the context of discussing where disabled people should go. I think this was more a slip of the tongue than an intentional dog-whistle, but I still think it demonstrates a distinct lack of recognition about how that might make vulnerable people feel, some of whom were actually in the room at the time. I like the Green Party, and have been impressed by Zack Polanski's leadership - but if I have a fault with the Green Party, it's that their candidates can be quite hit-or-miss, and whether they're worth voting for really depends on where you live. This actually is the opposite to the Labour Party's problem, where candidates are not allowed to stand if they are in slight disagreement with the leadership on anything. I hope the Green Party makes gains in the Senedd in general, and I think they have a good chance of doing so - but they do not deserve to gain a seat here.

The party that across the UK people are most concerned might make gains is Reform. What I can say is that at the time of writing, Reform have not actually announced any specific candidates intending to stand. I presume that Reform candidates will be announced soon, but it does seem quite odd given that every other major party, and even some minor parties, announced their candidacy a long time ago. I would suspect that they're struggling to find anyone - I recall in 2024, for about a week the Reform candidate on the website was constantly changing, before Richard Tice's office manager Max Windsor-Peplow was finally announced. Windsor-Peplow came to all of one hustings, before failing to show up for any others, or to the vote count, or to respond to any emails (he still came third out of nine). It's early days, but from personal experience I haven't really come across anyone on doorsteps who has expressed interest in voting Reform. Owen has come across a few, but not many. I haven't yet seen evidence that Reform has as much popularity in my area as the media would have us believe.

Of the other parties, none have really garnered much support on the doorsteps. The one that seems most popular is Plaid Cymru, in the sense that more people I've spoken to have expressed interest in them than in any other party (which still isn't a great deal of people). To be fair, I can't really criticise Plaid Cymru at the moment - when people express interest in them, I normally say something along the lines of, 'Well, I can tell you why an independent candidate is better, but to be fair they probably are the next best option.' I've had a few Tories, but more out of loyalty than because they're actually especially popular. But the really fascinating one is Labour.

To be clear, I can't immediately recall anyone I've spoken to on a doorstep who has definitively said they're going to vote Labour. This is a significant change from 2024, in which trying to battle the Labour surge sometimes felt like swimming against the tide. I don't believe this change is altogether unexpected though; polls consistently show Keir Starmer and his Government as one of the most unpopular administrations the country has ever had. In 2024, people wanted to get the Tories out by whatever means possible; in two years, Labour has absolutely squandered the good will people were willing to offer them. Labour is offering very little to the people of Sir Fynwy Torfaen, and what they're saying (if anything) simply isn't washing.

But it's not just people's reactions to the Labour Party that have been fascinating at this election. It's the Labour Party people's behaviour itself. In 2024, in spite of not really having faith in her as a politician, Owen and I ended up actually becoming quite friendly with our now MP Catherine Fookes. I haven't been desperately impressed by her in Parliament, she is an uncontroversial yes-woman who never does anything the leadership wouldn't want (this is evident from her page on TheyWorkForYou, which states that she's voted the same way as the majority of the rest of her party in 98% of instances). She still hasn't responded to my open letter about protecting juries, although she did vote to abolish them in Parliament. But I will say in her defence that she is a genuinely kind person, who has never been anything but polite and respectful to Owen, threatened to boycott a hustings that he wasn't invited to, and praised his campaign in her acceptance speech. Since she won the seat, she and Owen have somewhat stayed in touch, and she's always been encouraging of anything he's done in the community.

There has been very little encouragement like that from this cohort of Senedd candidates. On the contrary, none of them have responded to any emails Owen has sent them (in 2024 there was quite a friendly email thread between all the candidates, keeping one another aware of the different events and hustings and so on). Labour agent Peter Marsh-Jenks has actively been hostile to Owen, both in person and in public. He left a comment on an article about Owen's candidacy saying, 'Typical independent candidate, me me me me me' (which doesn't make sense anyway - aren't candidates meant to talk about who they are and what they'll do?) There was also a deeply unpleasant personal interaction between Peter and a canvasser, that I myself witnessed. We've done as much as we can to encourage disabled people to be part of our campaign and to fight for their own rights - too often, these kinds of people are completely disincentivised to take part and participate in the political process. One of our campaigners is an extremely dedicated young woman who we've become good friends with. On this occasion, she knocked on a door which turned out to be the home of Peter Marsh-Jenks. He very rudely and aggressively said to her, 'Do your research, love, I'm the Labour agent!' and slammed the door in her face. Both of us were quite taken aback by that. It is not the job of our canvassers to find out where the Labour agent lives, and it is rude and disrespectful to speak to someone on a doorstep like that, particularly if (as this canvasser was) they are visibly disabled. I was disgusted and appalled by this behaviour, and I think the fact that someone who behaves like that can hold a senior position on a Labour election campaign speaks volumes about what Labour's priorities actually are, and the fact that they do not have the best interests of the community's most vulnerable people at heart.

As unpleasant as that experience was, I am really hopeful that it's a reflection of how badly Labour is performing. More than support for any particular party, what I have had quite often on doorsteps is people saying 'I'm not voting because I don't trust any of them', and I've responded to that by nodding and saying, 'Yes, I completely understand why you feel that way. That's why my boyfriend is standing, because he didn't want to vote for any of this sorry lot either.' And I've had some really interesting conversations from that, some people who actually did seem to be considering voting independent after initially not planning on voting at all. A week is a long time in politics, and we still have six and a half weeks to go, so I'm certainly not predicting anything; but I am cautiously optimistic that it is possible for Owen to win. The increased warmth from members of the public, and substantially increased hostility from the other candidates (particularly Labour) demonstrate that something has shifted. People don't want shiny and dishonest centrism. They also, contrary to popular belief, don't want nationalism and fascism. People want ordinary folk who are prepared to listen and understand them, and I really hope we see that reflected in the result on 7th May.

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In defence of social media for kids

In recent weeks, there have been continual conversations about children’s internet use, and in particular whether it’s appropriate for children to use social media. Australia banned social media for kids in December, and there’s talk about the same thing happening in the UK. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to implement a 'crackdown' this year. Exactly what such a crackdown will entail remains to be seen, but there’s been talk about a full Australian-style ban, as well as proof of identity required for VPN use (which would defeat the whole purpose of a VPN, the appeal of which is that it’s totally anonymous). It is, of course, also debatable whether Keir Starmer will still be Prime Minister long enough for this to even be implemented, but it seems a public enough conversation that the same may be pursued by any potential successor.

I’m admittedly extremely biased when it comes to this whole discussion. I’m 32 years old. I was part of the first generation to routinely use the Internet in primary school, have been using social media almost daily since I was 14, which is the majority of my life. I have been writing this blog since I was 17 and started becoming politically active (and my earliest blogs are so cringeworthy I can’t even bear to read them anymore - I leave them up for posterity and as a record of how far I’ve come, but like most people I am a little embarrassed by the sort of thing I used to say, even though my overall politics and views haven’t changed all that much). I can’t really imagine my life, including my childhood, without the Internet and social media. For that reason I have to be really cautious with expressing a view on this matter - I always have to ask myself, ‘Are you quite sure you aren’t looking at things through rose-tinted spectacles?’ Especially when we have multiple testimonies from teachers attesting to the fact that social media is ruining children’s lives.

Another thing that I have to acknowledge is the myriad of problems with social media. A few months back I was discussing the situation in Australia with one of my oldest friends, who is Australian and ironically whom I reconnected with on social media when I was 15 - I brought the situation up with that person largely because it felt strange to think that nowadays we may not have been able to do that. My friend had quite a nuanced view, and definitely gave me more understanding of how it is in Australia, but one specific thing they said stayed with me: 'Social media is not what it was fifteen years ago.' And it absolutely is not. Social media nowadays has suffered very much from what is called enshittification - the phenomenon by which online products steadily decline in quality after their initial push to get new users. The Wikipedia article has quite a detailed analysis of how and why this happens. We've had many social media scandals, most notably the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2016, in which online dark ads influenced the outcome of the EU membership referendum. Personally, I rarely see much of what my friends actually post these days unless I actively seek it out - targeted adverts are shown to me instead, and there's no way to change your settings to stop that from happening. And more recently, social media is becoming increasingly infested with AI bots. Just today, I was reading something about how AI could be used to continue to post on behalf of a person who has died, which I think almost everyone would find quite sinister - I have doubts about whether that would be cost-effective for the social media companies in terms of server space, but I really hope this isn't something that's practically on the cards!

But there are quite important things about social media as well, that I don't think we always appreciate. For me as a political writer and campaigner, many of my most important campaigns are things I only learned of due to my social media accounts. Andrew Feinstein's election campaign against Keir Starmer in 2024, and the subsequent movement of independent candidates across the UK of which my partner Owen was part, came about because of a number of conversations on social media. I think social media gives us an opportunity to talk to people who have very different backgrounds and experiences to us, which in real life we don't always get. The Gaza war, for example - it's only been in the last couple of decades that we've been capable of talking in real-time to people who actually live in the war zone, to hear what they have to say without it going through journalists first. I've done that myself, although probably not as often as I should have done, and it's been illuminating in a way that just consuming media from the mainstream is not.

I also want to talk about how it feels to be a teenager. Picture this. You're fifteen years old. It's 11.30 at night. Your family have gone to bed. Because of your teenage hormones, you don't happen to be at all tired, so going to bed is a bit fruitless. All of a sudden, you're struck by crippling loneliness and depression. You want to talk to someone. You can't speak to your family - they're asleep, and you're increasingly of the opinion that they don't really understand you anyway. What you really want is a friend - but you can't call anyone at this time of night, that would be rude.

I think everyone who has ever been a teenager can relate to this feeling, especially since nightlife for teenagers, such as youth centres, were cut in the austerity drive of the early 2010s. And what I found really helpful at that age, and to an extent still do, is that there's a handy tool that tells you who is online, who might be free to talk. And I have had important instances of this not just facilitating my ability to talk to people who are already my friends, but to people who I only know vaguely. Sometimes this can result in more fulfilling conversations than you'll have face-to-face. There's no peer pressure, no one to question why you're talking to this person, no cliques - just two people, a computer screen and what organically occurs. I think that's something essential. I think that's something that previous generations lacked the ability to do, and that we should cherish.

I also want to talk about cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying is a horrific thing, as all bullying is, and I don't want to downplay the seriousness of cyber-bullying. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is not quite as bad as other forms of bullying. There are two very specific reasons for this. The first is that it tends to be a little easier to escape from bullies online - you can block them, delete their messages and then that's that. The second, and this is quite an important one, is that if someone cyber-bullies you, you can prove that it's happening. You can keep screenshots of horrible messages, and show them to someone who will do something about it. This isn't something you can normally do with other forms of bullying, which very often don't happen in front of witnesses and therefore can't be proven. I don't think our constant obsession with cyber-bullying is really rooted in what will concretely keep children safe. I think what this is actually about is overprotective adults being concerned that children's experiences are not things that they can personally relate to, and therefore know how to deal with. In the past, bullying was often restricted to the school playground, so at least adults knew that it wasn't happening when their children were at home. But that doesn't necessarily make it better. I remember when I was about 17, my father (whose view on kids' social media use I don't believe I have ever asked) laughing and saying to me, 'George, I can't believe that you've never been in a fight!' This was my father's view of what teenage boys do to one another, and something that he presumably wouldn't consider to be a serious case of assault. Why is that a more healthy experience for a child to go through than a string of unkind messages online, which can at least then be shown to others so that something can be done about it? I see no reason that it is, apart from that it makes adults uncomfortable.

One thing that has struck me quite a lot in this whole conversation is the way both the media and the Government are taking advantage of Esther Ghey. Esther Ghey's 16-year-old daughter Brianna was murdered in 2023, in a deeply transphobic attack that originated online (and her murderers' online behaviour, and the text messages they'd sent to one another, was part of the prosecution case against them). Ghey is one of the top campaigners for kids to be more restricted on social media. To be clear, I have the utmost respect for Esther Ghey. In every interview I've seen with her, she has been far more restrained, composed and considered than I'm sure I would be if I'd been through what she has. I have no doubt that if I lost a child in such horrific circumstances, I'd be saying exactly the same thing as she is. But Brianna's tragic murder is not the reason we're having this discussion about social media. Brianna died not because of social media, but because of transphobia. There were transphobic murders, and murders because of other protected characteristics, before social media. The most high-profile case of a prejudiced murder of a teenager was of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in 1993, the year I was born, and people didn't have social media then. Social media doesn't cause racism and it doesn't cause transphobia. All social media does is amplify the feelings we already have and put them on a wider platform. If those feelings are racist or transphobic, then we need to do something about that. We need to have these conversations and amplify a different message about dark-skinned people, or about transgender people, or whatever the characteristic is. Banning social media for kids won't stop transphobic attacks - in fact, it may make them more common, because it will mean that trans people and trans allies will be less easily able to find one another and build supportive communities. I think most LGBTQ+ kids, one of which I was, will attest to the fact that when you're first coming to terms with who you are, it's often far easier to learn how to do that online than it is in a physical space. It is disgusting that the Prime Minister and the media are taking advantage of a grieving mother of a trans child to try to further an agenda they already have, and which might in itself harm trans kids, when they are also consistently spreading a transphobic narrative and bringing in guidance that actually furthers transphobia.

In regards to the various issues with social media that I spoke of earlier - I do not believe they are any safer for adults than they are for children. And this kind of approach by the Government says something about their relationship with social media companies and big AI tech - namely, that they are completely cowed by them. Their attitude is ultimately saying, 'We can't do anything about big tech. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can do whatever they like. We aren't strong enough to take on people with that amount of wealth. So we just have to protect children from getting caught up in it.' And this won't protect anyone. How are adults meant to have a healthy understanding of how to use social media appropriately if they didn't learn this when they were growing up? How can we have faith in our abilities not to get sucked into unhealthy AI use if our Government is more willing to restrict our own ability to use it than to restrict its engineers' abilities to use it for harm? Not to mention the complicated range of legal issues this could cause. If, for example, an underage child is groomed by an adult online, in most cases it is rightly assumed that the adult knows the age of the child, and therefore was committing a serious offence. But if children were banned from the platform, and a child who was using it undercover was groomed, what then? Could an abuser quite justifiably say, 'I didn't think they were underage, I thought everyone on this platform was an adult'? Could this actually get a predator off the hook?

I don't necessarily know the answers to all these questions - it's impossible to until we're confronted by the reality. But they are conversations we need to have, and a lot of the time they're conversations that we aren't having. A lot of the discourse comes back to, 'Social media is really dangerous, no one should be on it unless they're over 16', and that is far too basic a position to hold for such a complex issue.

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An open letter to my local MP, Labour's Catherine Fookes, on the importance of jury trials

Dear Catherine,

My name is George Harold Millman; I am a writer and social justice campaigner based in your constituency, and I write about politics under the blog name The Rebel Without A Clause. You probably remember me, as we have met a number of times, and my partner Owen was one of your fellow candidates in the 2024 General Election. Both of us have fond memories of your kindness and encouragement, so I hope very much that you'll be with me on the very important matter I'm going to write to you about.

As I expect you know, the group who in August 2024 infiltrated the Elbit Systems factory in my home town of Bristol, popularly known as the Filton Six, were within the last week acquitted by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court of most of the criminal acts they had been charged with. I think if we are not to beat around the bush, we must both acknowledge that this verdict is somewhat inconvenient for the Government, as its case for proscribing the campaign group Palestine Action in July last year was largely based on this particular case. Your Labour colleague Yvette Cooper, who at the time was Home Secretary and is now Foreign Secretary, commented at the time that the logic behind the proscription would become clear throughout this trial.

I myself am opposed to the Palestine Action proscription and have done my best to stand against it. I don't want to debate that with you just now because I know that there are ongoing legal challenges to it, as well as a number of hunger strikes taking place by people imprisoned as a result, and I wouldn't want to prejudice the outcome of that. However, one thing I really hope we can agree on is that the verdict reached by the jury at Woolwich Crown Court was legal, and taken after having seen far more of the detailed minutiae of the evidence than either you or I have. If there's any doubt about that, I very much recommend Jonathan Cook's analysis of the case (if you're more of a listener, the audio version is narrated by the journalist Matthew Alford), as well as the defence speech by barrister Rajiv Menon.

I wanted to start by referencing this case because it's a particularly interesting recent example of the role of juries in our criminal justice system, and how essential they are to a fair trial. A jury of our peers, that cannot be instructed by a judge or the state to reach any particular verdict over another one, is the only defence we have against misuse of our criminal justice system by the state, whichever Government is in power at any particular point. Juries are composed of our peers, which gives them something more in common with the defendant than judges, lawyers or politicians typically do. When I was a student (both as an A-level law student and as a Creative Performance undergraduate at the University of Essex) I attended a number of court cases for research purposes, and I witnessed first-hand the crucial work that juries do. I have often wondered what it would be like to serve on a jury; I obviously have no control over whether I ever am, but if it were to happen I would consider it an incredibly important responsibility, and one I would take extremely seriously.

This is why I have been dismayed by Justice Secretary David Lammy's proposals to scrap juries for all but the most serious of criminal trials. The justification given for this is that there is too much of a backlog of court cases that we need greater efficiency in getting through. There are two major concerns I have with this. The first is that I am gravely concerned about people's essential human rights, such as the right to a fair trial, being tossed to one side purely for matters of efficiency (there are many important instances as to why jury trials are necessary, but as you were once the chair of Women's Equality Network Wales, I thought you may be particularly interested in this one from Independent Domestic Abuse Services (IDAS), a charity that specialises in domestic violence cases). The other concern I have with this idea is that I do not believe it will actually concretely address the backlog at all. The backlog is caused not by the existence of juries, but by successive Conservative Governments failing to properly address a number of issues with our criminal justice system. In fact, abolishing juries may potentially lead to even more of a backlog, because there may be more miscarriages of justice and therefore more retrials. You may like to read this article by The Secret Barrister, which suggests a number of more effective measures to deal with the problems Lammy raises.

Our justice system certainly isn't perfect, and nor are juries. Juries, as a randomly selected sample of the public, are fallible. Miscarriages of justice have happened in the past, and will happen again. However, they are a necessary cornerstone of our criminal justice system. They do offer an opportunity for the evidence on offer to be examined by a number of people, and a number of people who could not possibly have any ulterior motive. At the very least, they're likely to represent a higher proportion of women, working-class, LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities and disabilities than judges, magistrates or lawyers are, something I think is highly important in a world where we're becoming increasingly aware of privilege divides within our society.

Please will you reassure me as your constituent that you are with me on the importance of jury trials, and that you will use your voice in Parliament to protect them, including from your own Labour colleagues if necessary?

Best wishes,
George Harold Millman

P.S. Please be aware that as a political writer and blogger, I will be making this an open letter, publishing it on my blog, The Rebel Without A Clause. I will do the same with any reply I receive from you, along with my comments on any such reply.

--

I sent this letter on 8th February 2026. I will make public any reply, if any, I receive.

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What if Jeffrey Epstein had been a Muslim?

 Within the last week, the (partial) release of the Epstein Files (a large collection of documents, images and videos detailing the social circle of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who took his own life in 2019) and the sorts of people named in them have sent shockwaves around the UK and the world. It probably isn't necessary for me to mention the names of the politicians and celebrities mentioned in them, simply because it's been so heavily reported on that the biggest culprits seem pretty widely known without my help. I haven't personally got a great amount of information about the content of the Epstein Files aside from the snippets that are being shared around so it's not really my place to speculate too much on the individual detail until I'm more informed - but, I think we can agree that it's quite evident that substantial numbers of very powerful people, if not sex offenders themselves, were at least aware of and associated with people that are/were.

As usual with this kind of thing, I would argue that the shocking thing is not sexual offences committed on children (that should be shocking, but unfortunately it happens so often that it simply isn't). The shocking thing is the level of cover-up involved in this. I've always been fascinated by the Jimmy Savile scandal, and again, the thing about that that deserves talking about and remembering is not the horrific things that Savile did (which truly are horrific, but they're a matter for the unfortunate victims and survivors). It's the fact that huge numbers of people knew about it. During Savile's lifetime, many people tried to report his behaviour, and they were ignored, disbelieved and/or silenced. One testimony that has always stayed with me, ever since I first read it, is of a man who as a child was molested by Savile in his dressing room after a recording of Jim'll Fix It. The man recalled that during the ordeal, the door to the room opened as someone started to come in, and then hastily retreated again and closed the door. This to me is indicative of how much of an open secret his predatory behaviour was. If you walk into a room where an adult is abusing a child, there are three things that can happen: 1) You don't notice what the adult is doing and continue with what you're doing; 2) You notice what the adult is doing and immediately intervene; or 3) You notice and fail to intervene. This is the third one. Someone who didn't notice, or didn't know what a child alone with Savile in his dressing room meant, would not have immediately retreated - they'd have come right in and carried on with what they'd intended to do. Retreating means that you know what is happening, and you're taking the decision to let it carry on. To this day, not one single person has been convicted of anything in relation to the fact that Savile's child abuse was allowed to carry on.

I want to focus on something else here though. On a Facebook discussion post recently, I came across someone observing, 'Can you imagine how different this would have been if Jeffrey Epstein had been a Muslim?' It's quite clear what they meant. Much of the media and many right-wing politicians, most notably Nigel Farage, continually talk about Muslims as though they are likely to be child predators. Muslims tend to be othered as a threat to British society (whatever that is anyway, I'm never clear) and are frequently used as a political football in conversations about important things like war, refugees, climate change and child abuse. For that reason, instances of sexual assault and paedophilia tend to be discussed far more prominently by politicians and in the media on the occasions when the perpetrators happen to be Muslims than when they aren't.

So, it's understandable to think that if Jeffrey Epstein had been a Muslim, the kinds of politicians who make up Reform UK and the Conservative Party would be talking about this far more than they are, right?

Well... no. Not even slightly right. If Jeffrey Epstein had been a Muslim, certain regular people who subscribe to these schools of thought might be bleating about it a little more to justify their own racism, but I do not believe there'd be any difference in the kind of coverage this is getting from powerful people who have platforms at all.

To explain this, we need to look at race, racism and the purpose of racism (and, for that matter, of other forms of discrimination). Racism does not discriminate equally against everyone with a certain characteristic. That's not what it's for. It's not even about the characteristic itself, that's just a smokescreen. It exists to other people. More than that, it exists to pit ordinary people against each other and cause us to be distracted from the fact that we are all continually overlooked, used, gaslit and systematically having our lives destroyed by the most powerful 1% of people. The way to perpetuate abuse is to make sure that the abuse is not all received to the same extent for everyone. The world is a little bit easier to navigate if you're white. It's a little bit easier to navigate if you're male, and if you're heterosexual, and if you're cisgender, and if you're able-bodied. So if you're all of those things, you're laughing because the world is great for you, right? Wrong, because the operative bit here is 'a little bit'. It's not that much easier if you happen to be a straight, cisgender, white, able-bodied man in the UK, just slightly easier than it would be if you weren't those things. Which means that people who don't happen to be straight, cisgender, white, able-bodied men start to overestimate the amount more privilege these people have than they do. And then that feels a bit uncomfortable for those people, who can come back with, 'Well, my life's not really that much of a walk in the park myself, how dare you talk about white privilege?' And then different factions fight amongst each other over who has slightly more scraps. Meanwhile, the people who are actually doing the oppressing, the ones who are allowed to go on TV and talk about whichever talking point is more likely to get people so riled up in the first place, are allowed to get off scot-free. These people exist in an entirely different society to the other 98%.

At any given point, there's some kind of scapegoat for all of society's problems, and right now it tends to fluctuate between Muslims and transgender women (and, incidentally, Muslims and trans people are pitted against each other in this as well - I've heard political figures talk about Muslims and how lacking in understanding of LGBTQ+ communities they supposedly are, and then go and talk about how trans people are getting out of hand the very next week). At the moment, for whatever reason, these groups of people are an easy target. But there are also instances of people like that who aren't being attacked, because they're in that 1% of people who don't count. A good example is the ban from entering or re-entering the United States for nationals of a number of predominantly Muslim countries, which Donald Trump presided over during his previous term in office, supposedly in the name of preventing terrorist attacks. Most of the countries on the list had never been associated with terrorist attacks on US soil. But there was one predominantly Muslim country that is far more closely linked with terrorism than any of these countries and was conspicuously absent from the list, and that was Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country, with some of the largest fossil fuel reserves in the world, and plenty of powerful oligarchs that Donald Trump and various other powerful individuals in the US and elsewhere have business interests with. These people aren't the scapegoats, even if they do happen to be Muslims. They exist in the echelons of society populated by Donald Trump, and Peter Mandelson, and Jeffrey Epstein, and all the rest of them.

So if Jeffrey Epstein had been a Muslim, or if he'd been a trans woman, or had any of the other characteristics that tend to make people become a scapegoat, it wouldn't have counted for him. He was One Of Them, and what constitutes One Of Them is far more about the amount of power and control someone has than about what physical, racial or sexual characteristics they have. It only counts for ordinary people on the ground, to make them turn against each other and forget to stand up against oppression in general.

I really hope that the release of the Epstein Files gives us a chance to finally stand up to some of the most powerful people in our society (and that doesn't just mean politicians and media pundits, it means celebrities too - celebrities very often cause just as much harm if not more, and anyone who doubts that should look no further than JK Rowling). I'm optimistic in the sense that I think this leak has caused us all to talk more about how much harm these kinds of powerful individuals inflict on society, which I think is a conversation we all need to have. But I also think we probably haven't seen anything yet. Not all the files have been released, and there seem to be such an enormous amount of people involved that I think the full knowledge of these things would cause us to have to completely dismantle and rebuild our society. And to an extent I think our society needs dismantling and rebuilding, and probably has done for a long time - but we also have to be aware of the number of things that can go wrong with that. To move forward, we need open dialogue and to listen to people's feelings of betrayal and confusion, and I hope that this blog can help with that.

I hope, so much, that this is the beginning of something.

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What I aim to focus on most in 2026

 I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. Whilst admittedly January certainly brought some much-needed relief after the difficulties I experienced last year which I talked about in the previous blog, I've never thought that coming up with concretely different things you want to do in a new year is very productive.

There are two reasons for this. One is that they very rarely stick - if we all look at what we planned to do last new year, I think very few of us would honestly be able to say we stuck with what we intended. The other reason is that I think we can all resolve to be better people, and these decisions need to be made as and when we realise their importance. There's nothing specific that you have to wait until 1st January to do.

So this is not going to be a list of things I intend to achieve in 2026. This is going to be what I intend to focus on this year. This is different, because there isn't going to be anything here that is remotely measurable - nothing I'll be able to look back at in twelve months time and think, 'Well, that went out the window, didn't it?' Instead, this is just a collection of things that I really hope will make this year more satisfactory than last year was.

1. I want to write more

This is almost redundant, because I write all the time. I'm an absolutely chronic social media user - I'm the original person that never grew out of commenting on everything on Facebook. I also use Reddit continuously, very often to discuss literature, television soaps or whatever takes my fancy.

And I won't describe this as time-wasting, although I know a lot of people would. It is something that's kept me going day by day, particularly over the last year. It reminds me that there's a world out there and stuff going on, and to an extent that I'm capable of formulating a coherent thought and writing it down, which is a useful thing to remember.

That said, there are multiple projects involving writing that I don't follow up. I am writing two different books that I hope to be published eventually - one fiction and one non-fiction. I'm writing a Waterloo Road fanfic (don't ask). I have this blog, which I really hope to update more this year than last year (actually, at two posts this year to zero last year, I've already managed that - give the man a medal).

My partner Owen and I used to have all sorts of play scripts and TV scripts that we wrote together, and we don't do that anywhere near enough anymore. The reason we don't do it enough is that it's so demotivating when no one takes us seriously in the industry (more on that in my next resolution). But writing is not just about the end product - it's also about the process, and I am a much happier and more productive and intelligent person when I'm writing regularly on something structured.

2. I want to progress with the Campaign for Fair Play

I don't believe I have ever written about the Campaign for Fair Play on this blog before (I think Owen and I came up with the idea during my radio silence from blogging).

I will most likely write a whole blog on this project at some point, but just to summarise - the Campaign for Fair Play is a campaign group composed of various creatives that we've worked with at various points, and aims to create a fairer and more accessible situation for struggling creatives in the industry. Owen and I are very jaded by how impossible it is to get anywhere if you're trying to break into the arts. In fact, having done both, we can say for certain that you receive less bullying, less gaslighting and fewer people telling you you can't do something when you're standing as an inexperienced socialist independent General Election candidate in a very tight Labour-Tory marginal than you do even attempting to get a career in the arts. This was the thing that kickstarted this idea for us - in 2024, we temporarily shelved all our creative projects in favour of working on Owen's Parliamentary campaign, and surprisingly, everyone else working on the election, irrespective of their politics, was encouraging, kind and supportive. You don't expect politics to be like that. Going back into the arts after that, with the constant snootiness and rudeness and bureaucracy, almost felt like going back into an abusive relationship.

The demands of the Campaign for Fair Play are: 1) Free legal advice for those working in the arts; 2) A revamp of the Arts Council and of funding decisions more generally; 3) An acknowledgement from the Department for Work and Pensions about how it is to primarily do short-term contract work; 4) A clearer career path and protections from being blacklisted; and 5) Protection for arts venues from having to close down. Something that's particularly important about the campaign is that it comprises people from all areas of the arts. Very often I find that people in different professions end up competing against one another (for example, you get criticised for hiring actors if you're not paying them enough, which on one hand is fair enough because it's hard to earn anything decent as an actor, but at the same time it's often impossible to get funding so without doing that only the very rich end up making anything at all). This is something we should be able to unite on, not fight amongst ourselves.

The Campaign for Fair Play is truthfully the political movement that I currently feel most strongly about. I know this might sound odd, because of all the disastrous and horrible things happening in the world that need to be dealt with, creating a fairer arts industry might not seem like it should be the thing that we focus on most. But I also think that if the arts is functioning well, the rest of the world will follow it. Art can do incredible things. Many of the most amazing political movements were inspired by things people had read, watched or witnessed. If art is a reflection of how everyone, and not just the most privileged, sees the world, it will be easier to campaign for whatever we feel passionate about. That's why there's such a lack of recognition or support of the arts from successive Governments, in spite of the fact that it's one of the few industries in which the UK is still a major global player - it's something that threatens the establishment.

At the start of last year, we were making quite a bit of progress with the Campaign for Fair Play. Unfortunately, my mental health has been so bad that we haven't done very much with it for six months or so, but I aim very much to build it up again this year. Watch this space.

3. I want to promote equality amongst marginalised groups

This I hope is a given for everyone, but one of the things I was most concerned by in 2025 was what I perceived as a radical decrease in recognition of certain groups of people. Perhaps my saying it was a decrease is a sign of my own privilege - maybe these groups were recognised so little to begin with that there wasn't very much to decrease, and in reality the only thing that's changed is my own understanding of it.

There are three parts of this that I've been especially concerned about. The first is, unsurprisingly, an increase in casual racism. The reason this is unsurprising is that I think this has been happening steadily for pretty much the entire time I've been politically aware. Where I live in Abergavenny, there is talk of opening a new mosque in town, and there are a lot of people who are very vocally against this idea. Thankfully, I do think anti-racist movements are increasing in traction a lot - there was one instance where I was at a pro-Palestine movement on the same day as an Islamophobic march took to the streets, and we clearly significantly outnumbered them.

The second is an extremely radical increase in transphobia. Since the Supreme Court ruling on For Women Scotland last April, it feels as though the amount of misgendering and suspicion around transgender people has been almost relentless. I must confess to being a bit shocked by how bad it's become, although perhaps I shouldn't have been shocked. I really hope this year to talk to more people about this and improve cis and trans people's relationships with one another. One particularly interesting thing that happened to me last year was that I went with a friend to a trans rights rally in Cardiff. Across the police line was the counter-protest, the anti-trans group - and what really struck me was that in that group, there was not one single non-white face. Whereas on our side of the divide, we were of all religions, ethnicities and backgrounds. The reason this is important is that so often when we talk about acceptance of different cultures, there's this idea that certain groups of people (read: Muslims) aren't respectful of what we call 'British values', which is usually code for LGBTQ+ people. As an LGBTQ+ person, I can actually say that this is not my own personal experience. The overwhelming majority of homophobia I have experienced in my life (not that I've experienced all that much) has come from white people.

The third is the way we see disabled people. Thankfully I do think this one is moving in a positive direction, even if it's not moving anywhere near fast enough. I think people with disabilities and mental health concerns are getting far better at talking about it, there seems to be much less stigma than there used to be around acknowledging that you're vulnerable (hence why in the previous blog I talked about my nervous breakdown last September). In terms of how it manifests itself for me, I really want to sort out all the issues with my partner's charity, The Gathering, which I referred to in the previous blog. There are plans for this - I really hope it comes off.

4. I want to look after myself and get better

I've left this one until last, but I suppose it's the most important thing on the list. Nothing else I want to achieve will or can happen unless I myself am able to function, and I suppose one positive to having had such a bad year last year is that it's made me far more aware of my own vulnerabilities and how susceptible I am to being harmed if too many things aren't going my way.

I can't really say how I can look after myself. It may come from trying to get more money, or making new friends, or taking part in more quizzes, or reading more about politics, or all of these things, or none of them. You often can't know until you get there exactly what you'll need - but it is important to know yourself and be able to recognise it at the time.

One final point on this - I feel very strongly that the worse your day is going, the more essential it is to be kind to others. There are two reasons for this. The first is that being kind to others can make you happy as well - very often when we're low we can immediately dismiss ourselves as not having time for other people, and that actually doesn't help. But more importantly, I think all the worst things in the world, both in our personal lives and on a wider global scale, are committed by people who are rightly, rationally and intelligently, extremely unhappy and feel hard done by. They feel as though they're the victim. And sometimes they are, but if their reaction to that is to create more victims, we're all worse off from that. It's so important to be able to separate ourselves from that and decide that that domino effect of callousness and insensitivity will stop with us.

So there we are. Four things I want to focus on. Will I manage them all? I have no idea. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

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