There are worse ways to wake up than with the police on your doorstep. But not many.
For Robert Moss, it wasn’t just the shock of a dawn raid that unsettled him. It was the absurdity of what followed. At 7 a.m. one morning in July, Staffordshire Police entered his home, seized his electronic devices, and arrested him. Not for theft or violence. But for saying something critical online about his former employer.
Moss, 56, spent nearly three decades in the fire service. His career ended in 2021 with a dismissal that was later ruled unfair by a tribunal.
Since then, he has continued to speak his mind, particularly in a closed Facebook group where he has voiced concerns about how the service is run.
These posts, according to police, were serious enough to justify arrest and a set of bail conditions that barred him from discussing the fire service, its leadership, or even the fact that he had been arrested at all.
There were no charges.
“I was a critic of Staffordshire fire service, and I had been gagged from saying anything about individuals there, the service itself, and my arrest. That is a breach of my human rights,” Moss said to the Telegraph after finally winning the right to speak freely again.
Until last week, those bail conditions stayed in place under threat of further arrest. It was only when magistrates in Newcastle-Under-Lyme reviewed the case that they concluded what should have been obvious from the start: the restrictions were excessive.
The court sided with Moss and the Free Speech Union, which supported his challenge. Its barrister, Tom Beardsworth, told the court, “These allow the police to arrest and detain someone and then, when they are released, prevent them from telling others what had happened with the threat of further arrest if they do not comply. We do not live in a police state, and Mr Moss should have every right to speak about his arrest.”
That ought to be self-evident.
Staffordshire Police argued that the restrictions were necessary to maintain public safety and order. But what kind of disorder, exactly, is caused by a man posting critical remarks in a private online group?
The arresting officer, DC Isobel Holliday, described the posts as malicious and reckless. In court, however, no one could convincingly explain what real-world harm had been done. The magistrates seemed to agree that there was none.
What remains is a narrower set of restrictions that prevents Moss from contacting certain officials directly. That is one thing. But preventing a man from speaking about his own arrest in the name of order? That is something else entirely.
Sam Armstrong of the Free Speech Union called the case one of the worst examples of state overreach they have seen. “In the more than 4,000 cases the Free Speech Union has handled, this is amongst the most egregious abuses of state power we have encountered,” he said. “Robert’s comments were not crimes, his arrest was not lawful, and the police have been acting like the Stasi, not a constabulary.”
Unfortunately, this is not the first time British police have treated criticism as a public safety risk, and the way things are going, it won’t be the last.
Increasingly, the concept of “order” is being used not to protect citizens but to protect institutions from public scrutiny. That is a dangerous shift.
Moss’s posts were blunt. They may have been irritating to those in charge. But they were not criminal.
In a democracy, people are allowed to criticize their leaders. They are allowed to be wrong, rude, and persistent. They are allowed to be a nuisance. What they should not be is arrested and silenced for it.
This time, the courts got it right. But the fact that it needed to go this far is troubling.
