Our first political prisoner? No. Locking up dissenters is an ignoble British tradition | Kenan Malik

Voices on the right who now criticise the jailing of rioters for racial hate wilfully ignore history

In July 1967, the Black Power activist Michael X addressed a meeting in Reading. “The most savage human being in the world,” he told the audience, “is the white man.” He was arrested the following month, charged with inciting racial hatred and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment.

It’s worth recalling this small episode in British race relations given the popularity within sections of the right to talk, in the wake of the summer riots, of “two-tier policing” and “political prisoners”. Last week, Peter Lynch, serving a sentence of two years and eight months for violent disorder outside a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers, died in prison, possibly by suicide. Reform MP Richard Tice called him a “political prisoner”, while Daily Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakeshott mourned him as “Britain’s first political prisoner”, no less.

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