Right-Wing Broadcasters Post ‘Absolutely Pointless’ Race Hate Disclaimers on Social Media Amid Jail Terms for Riots Incitement

Several prominent right-wing UK broadcasters have published identical racial hatred disclaimers on social media since riots in Britain led to prosecutions for online safety offences.

X accounts including those belonging to the GB News presenter Beverley Turner, a pro-Tommy Robinson vlogger called David Vance, and the cancelled former GB News host Dan Wootton all took the unusual step within a few hours on Monday night. The posts remained on their accounts on Thursday.

Each posted: “None of the information posted or repeated on this account is known by its author to be false, nor intended to stir racial or any hatred of, nor cause psychological or physical harm to, any person or group of people (howsoever identified).”

While the accounts offered no further context for the posts, a leading barrister believes the disclaimer specifically addresses online safety laws that “largely apply to trolls who target individuals”.

Referring to section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023, King’s Counsel Jamie Hamilton added that the legislation “mixes in elements of offences that relate to intentional stirring up or inciting racial hatred”. 

The riots, which raged from July 30 to August 5, were fuelled by false information shared on social media about the teenager accused of killing three young girls in Southport and – as of Monday – had resulted in 975 arrests and 546 charges, the BBC reported.

Hamilton told Byline Times that, while such public disclaimers are generally used to try and avoid civil liability, rather than potential criminal investigation, they are “absolutely pointless, legally speaking”.

“You cannot issue a general disclaimer to get you out of criminal liability for an offence you go on to intentionally commit,” he explained.

The disclaimer posts follows the imprisonment of two men for incitement online during the riots. Earlier this month Tyler Kay, 26, and Jordan Parlour, 28, were sentenced to 38 months and 20 months respectively for stirring up racial hatred on social media. The men are among 118 jailed so far.

Cardiff-born Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 18, is awaiting trial charged with murdering three girls and 10 counts of attempted murder after eight other children and two adults were seriously injured in the attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The day after the tragedy, Dan Wootton – a disgraced former star of GB News exposed last year by Byline Times as a serial catfish and sexual blackmailer of men – used a social media vlog watched more than 36,000 times to claim the murders were connected to “mass immigration”.

Wootton, who promoted the vlog on his X account, said: “We are importing extremism into our streets to the point our children are not safe at a Taylor Swift dance class. It cannot go on. 

“Our politicians will still not talk about what we know led to this massacre – mass immigration and the failure of multiculturalism.

“What else explains a 17-year-old teenager with Rwandan parents causing terror at a dance class he knew would be attended by young girls? Assimilation is failing and our streets are no longer safe.”

It has since emerged that the main suspect in the continuing case has an “autism spectrum disorder diagnosis”, with a court hearing he was a recluse “unwilling to leave the house and communicate with family” leading up to the atrocity. 

On the same night as Wootton and others posted the disclimer, riots broke out in Southport during which a mosque was attacked, sparking the worst week of civil disorder seen around the UK since 2011.

On 16 August, as Britain remembered VJ Day, Wootton – who was cancelled as GB News’ top-paid presenter last year after an on-air misogyny storm – doubled down.

He accused new Prime Minister Keir Starmer of taking away “freedom our veterans fought for [in WW2]” because “you’re locking up English folk for Facebook and X posts”. The post appears to be in reference to those jailed for inciting racial hatred and causing civil disorder on the internet during the riots.

A source who analyses hard right social media accounts told Byline Times: “Beverley Turner posted the ‘disclaimer’ first, which was seen as a ‘cover her arse’ post, and then she suggested other people also post it. 

“Dan Wootton and then a couple of others followed with their own copy-and-paste posts.

“It was a pretty unusual thing to see, and appears to be the result of legal advice. There are some nervous right-wing commentators out there, it seems.” 

The posts were all made within a few hours of one another on the afternoon and evening of 19 August. The words appeared to have been written by a lawyer, and sought to distance the posters from having had any influence on the riots.

Legal commentators have dismissed the words as worthless from a legal perspective.

Anonymous legal author and blogger The Secret Barrister told Byline Times: “I have no idea where this ‘disclaimer’ has sprung from, but in legal terms, it is utterly meaningless. 

“You cannot ‘disclaim’ yourself free of the obligations of the criminal law. Baldly asserting that you are not committing a crime does not give you a defence if you are, in fact, committing a crime. 

“If any of these individuals find themselves prosecuted for encouraging violence or publishing material likely to incite racial hatred, it will not assist them one jot to point to a tweet declaring themselves not to have committed a crime, any more than a bank robber can evade liability by wearing a T-shirt reading, ‘I am not robbing this bank’.”

In reference to some of the other potentially inflammatory content Wootton posts on X, The Secret Barrister added: “The best thing Dan Wootton could do, legally speaking, is to simply stop being Dan Wootton.”

Byline Times has reached out to Turner, Wootton, and Vance for comment but are yet to hear back.