Street preachers and social-media posters are arrested, held, stripped of their phones, bailed — and then told no further action will be taken. The State loses nearly every case it brings. It does not need to win: the process is the punishment. Fr. Lewis examines an English constabulary that has been told, has paid, and goes on doing it, and asks who is left defending free speech, and why the defence was funded by atheists while the churches watched.

Sixty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine.‍ ‍

That is not the gate at a football match. It is the number of persons arrested in the United Kingdom over five years for what the law is pleased to call communications offences. Of that number, eighteen thousand five hundred and ten were charged and twelve thousand two hundred and ninety-two convicted. Subtract, and you are left with something in the order of forty-four thousand men and women who were seized by officers of the Crown, who in many cases had their doors knocked upon and their telephones carried away in a bag, and who were then released without anybody ever getting round to putting a charge to them.