Jailed for a joke?
A man has been convicted of wearing an offensive Halloween costume. He now faces up to two years in prison.
The novelist Simon Raven once received a telegram from his wife which read: “Wife and baby starving send money soonest”. He replied: “Sorry no money suggest eat baby”. At the risk of sounding callous, I must admit that my first reaction on reading this was to laugh. It was involuntary, like the best of laughter. The reader should rest assured that this does not mean that I in any way approve of cannibalism and infanticide.
There is a brand of humour which relies on its sheer inappropriateness. It’s why we can find ourselves laughing during funerals or other solemn occasions. The social responsibility to take the matter seriously nags at our senses and dares us to rebel. John Cleese understood this all too well when he delivered the eulogy at Graham Chapman’s funeral and noted that his deceased friend would obviously have liked him to say: “Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard. I hope he fries.”
The same principle applies, albeit in a cruder manner, to the convention of Halloween costumes that are intended to shock. It might seem puerile, but rather than donning the costume of a ghost or a vampire, many partygoers now celebrate this season of horror by dressing up as the most appalling human beings in history, such as Adolf Hitler, Myra Hindley, or Jedward.
The “gross out” is the whole point. The more outrageous the better, and the guest who displays the worst taste sometimes wins a prize. This is precisely what happened to David Wootton, who dressed as an Islamic terrorist, complete with Arabic headdress, and a t-shirt bearing the words “I love Ariana Grande”. To top it all, he carried a rucksack with “TNT” and “boom” written on it. This was in reference of course to the horrendous terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017 that killed twenty-two people, including many children, and injured a further thousand.
Bad taste? Offensive? Juvenile? I would agree with all of these assessments. But the partygoers understood the rules of the game, and Wootton later claimed to have been awarded the prize for Best Costume. Once his image was posted online, however, it became a police matter, and he was quickly arrested. He pleaded guilty and now faces up to two years in prison. He has also relocated and changed his name.
I have complete sympathy for anyone who found the images upsetting, grotesque, and not remotely funny. Nobody worth knowing would deny that the terrorist had committed an unforgivable crime. I find it particularly shocking that so many of us seemed to forget all about it with ease, as though we should accept that this kind of atrocity is simply an occasional aspect of living in modern Britain. Personally, I find this far more offensive than any tasteless Halloween costume.
Over 3,000 people are arrested each year in the UK for offensive comments posted online, and attempts at comedy are not exempt. This is because Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 criminalises online speech that can be deemed ‘grossly offensive’, even without a requirement for a prosecutor to prove that there was any intention to cause offence.
The examples are endless. In May 2010, Paul Chambers was found guilty of sending a joke tweet in which he said he would blow up an airport in Doncaster after it closed due to heavy snowfall. (The conviction was later overturned by the High Court in London.) In 2012, teenager Matthew Woods was imprisoned for three months for posting jokes on Facebook about murdered children. In January 2015, Ross Loraine was arrested by police and cautioned for an offensive joke he had tweeted concerning a tragic lorry accident in Glasgow. In April 2018, YouTuber Markus Meechan (aka “Count Dankula”) was found guilty in a Scottish court for posting a joke video in which he taught his girlfriend’s pug dog to do a Nazi salute. In April 2022, Paul Bussetti from Croydon was sentenced to ten weeks in jail for sharing a video of a cardboard model of the Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire.
Our opinions over whether these jokes were funny or offensive are entirely subjective and beside the point. If Wootton does go to jail for his Halloween costume, it will be yet another example of state overreach. It is entirely reasonable to be troubled by those who find humour in barbaric atrocities, but where does this end? I remember after 9/11, it took very little time before jokes about event were being told online and via text message. At the time, many disapproved, but nobody suggested that anyone ought to be arrested.
Since then the law has changed, and the zeal with which the police pursue offensive joke-tellers has escalated. I believe that Wootton’s fate should trouble us all, even those of us who object to the costume. Our profound sympathy for the families of the victims should not blind us to what the incarceration of Wootton represents. We might despise the joke and find it disturbing, but this does not mean that we shouldn’t also find it disturbing that in a supposedly free country a Halloween costume can land you in jail.
Of all the reactions I have to stories like this, the most visceral is "How ******* dare you!" That's directed at the police, not the people making jokes. Who the hell do they think they are? Take a moment to think of the arrogance involved here. "I don't like that joke, it offends me, let's use the full force of the law to shut them, and anyone who might share dark humour, up".
Where are the comedians? Where are the left wing radicals? Where are the free speech advocates? I don't know why, but I'm still shocked by these stories and I'm scared of the day I will no longer be.
The UK is no longer a free country. This is insane. Besides, it isn t clear to whom the man with the costume was "offensive." The concert victims or the terrorists?