A 100-year-old World War II veteran mourned the state of Great Britain on Friday and stated that his sacrifice was “not worth the result.”
Alec Penstone said on “Good Morning Britain” that the freedoms that the British soldiers fought and died for during the war are not present in the country today. His remarks came as the country celebrates Remembrance Day, which is observed to honor all those who died in conflict.
“My message is I can see in my mind’s eye there were rows and rows of white stones of all the hundreds of my friends and everybody else that gave their lives for what? The country of today,” Penstone said. “No, I’m sorry, the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now. Oh, well, I’m sorry … What we fought for, and what we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now is a darn sight worse than what it was when I fought for it.” (RELATED: JD Vance Warns UK Not To Go Down ‘Dark Path’ Of Censorship That Occurred Under Biden)
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In recent years, the British government has censored speech, arrested its citizens for their social media posts and even criminally charged people for praying in public. In October 2024, military veteran and father Adam Smith-Connor was charged and convicted for silently praying outside within an abortion clinic “buffer zone” in November 2022 and had to pay 9,000 euros in prosecution fees.
The United Kingdom passed the Online Safety Act in 2023, which regulates what is defined as hate speech, harmful content and misinformation. Police in the U.K. made an average of over 30 arrests per day in 2023 for online communications that were deemed “offensive,” which amounted to over 12,000 arrests throughout the year, the European Parliament reported in April.
In the summer of 2024, the U.K. implemented several digital speech laws that regulate speech in response to riots that broke out in the streets. The country also threatened to arrest and extradite U.S. citizens who made any online statements that could allegedly cause violence, according to CBS Austin.
In August 2024, more than a dozen British citizens were jailed for allegedly causing “unrest” on social media while two citizens were sentenced to over a year in prison for stirring up “racial hatred” online, the BBC reported. Authorities arrested an army veteran in August 2022 for denouncing LGBTQ and transgender activists online, which authorities said caused somebody “anxiety.”
The Muslim population in Britain has grown significantly and has become visibly widespread through the nation. Several citizens have been arrested for making statements that were deemed “Islamaphobic,” including a veteran who was sentenced to two years in prison for making anti-Islam remarks on Facebook.
An Afghan migrant has been charged with murder after 49-year-old Wayne Broadhurst died from a knife wound while interfering in an attack on a father and son in late October.
Late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk described the “tragic” deterioration of Britain after he spent three days in the country in May, lamenting the decline of free speech in the country and referring to the nation as a “totalitarian third world hellhole.”
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