A female journalist is visited at home by two policemen and told that she is being investigated for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a social media post a year ago.
She says they wouldn’t divulge which particular tweet they were looking into. Nor did they reveal the name of her accuser. One of the policemen referred to this person as a ‘victim’.
Where could this threatening scene be taking place? China, perhaps? Or Russia? Even North Korea? No, it occurred in Britain on a Sunday morning.
Since their visit to journalist Allison Pearson, Essex Police have said that they have opened an investigation under Section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986 relating to material ‘likely or intended to cause racial hatred’
Allison Pearson, pictured, doesn’t know which tweet aroused the interest of Essex Police but surmises that it may have been written in ‘the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the anti-Semitic slogans being brandished and chanted at pro-Palestine marches’
And on a day, sacred to this country, when we remember those who fought and died for us in the name of freedom: Remembrance Sunday.
I am so shocked by this story that if I weren’t acquainted with Allison Pearson, the journalist in question, and didn’t know her to be a respected columnist who works for the Daily Telegraph, I might wonder whether it was really true.
Essex Police – the force to which the two officers belong – have issued a statement claiming that a report in the Telegraph about Allison’s experience, and an accompanying column by her, are ‘factually wrong and contain wholly inaccurate information presented as fact’. However, they don’t bother to justify their serious accusation.
Until or unless Essex Police can show that Allison’s account is false, I’ll continue to assume that it is true.
What has happened to our country? How can two policemen visit a journalist unannounced and frighten her with unspecified charges? If it could happen to Allison, it could happen to any journalist.
Even more to the point, if a journalist can be treated in such a way by the police, so can any citizen. This is about something even bigger than the freedom of the Press. It concerns the right of all of us to freedom of speech.
This story also touches on the increasing tendency of the police to target law-abiding citizens while ignoring and sometimes indulging real criminals who shoplift, steal cars, snatch mobile phones or break into people’s houses. We have a two-tier justice system, which has become even more inequitable since ‘two-tier Keir’ (aka Sir Keir Starmer) arrived on the scene.
Let’s examine the details of Allison Pearson’s case. She doesn’t know which tweet aroused the interest of Essex Police but surmises that it may have been written in ‘the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the anti-Semitic slogans being brandished and chanted at pro-Palestine marches’.
It’s just conceivable that the tweet was truly incendiary, and therefore worthy of the police’s attention. We must accept that even in a free society some extreme statements should be judged unacceptable as they foster division and discord.
But knowing Allison a little, I doubt that she tweeted anything other than a strongly felt and deeply held opinion expressed in a forthright way. According to her, the police who came around to her house said that she was being investigated over what is called a ‘non-crime hate incident’.
By the way, why were two officers required to deliver their message? The police often bellyache about a lack of resources – an excuse they routinely use to justify their failure to investigate many burglaries – and yet turn up mob-handed when it suits them.
Since their visit on Remembrance Sunday, Essex Police have said that they have opened an investigation under Section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986 relating to material ‘likely or intended to cause racial hatred’. Allison has still not been told what she is alleged to have done. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has weighed in on her side.
Allison has still not been told what she is alleged to have done, but now Elon Musk has weighed in on her side
The amazing and depressing truth is that her experience is not unusual. In January 2020, ex-police officer Harry Miller was interviewed by Humberside Police over tweets questioning whether transgender women are real women. It was recorded on the national database as non-crime hate speech.
Mr Miller subsequently won a case in the Court of Appeal, which concluded that recording non-crime hate speech interfered with the right of freedom of expression.
Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman responded by raising the threshold for police recording non-crime hate incidents. The current Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is reportedly considering undoing Mrs Braverman’s changes, and restoring the requirement for police officers to record all such incidents.
Another disquieting case concerned Bernie Spofforth. After the Southport killing of three children in July, this law-abiding woman retweeted a post that wrongly identified the alleged attacker as an asylum seeker. She realised her mistake and deleted the retweet within an hour.
Nonetheless, six police officers arrived at her house in three vehicles. She was taken to a police station and held for 36 hours. Police informed her that the term ‘asylum seeker’ is racist.
Another shocking case concerns an autistic girl, whose family called the police last year because she was intoxicated and possibly at risk in Leeds city centre. As officers drove her home, she allegedly remarked that a female officer resembled her ‘lesbian nana’. She was arrested on suspicion of a homophobic public order offence before being released on bail. The police apologised nearly seven months later.
And so it goes on. Again and again police armed with woke prejudices bear down on blameless individuals – there are cases of people silently praying outside abortion centres being carted off – while they often go easy on real criminals. How much easier to target someone for writing a silly but harmless tweet.
It’s instructive that, in the year to August, Essex Police only solved 6.3 per cent of burglaries – an appalling record that is close to the national average. At the same time they boasted a clear-up rate of 15.9 per cent for hate crime.
I’m sure the burghers of Essex would prefer their police to spend more time investigating burglaries and less time looking into hate crime. But the police, who now appear to be imbued with progressive views not traditionally associated with the boys in blue, take the opposite view.
This sort of two-tier policing has been going on for a long time, but it has worsened under Labour. During the August riots, Sir Keir Starmer called for tough sentences on miscreants.
In many cases these were richly deserved. But it’s very hard, for example, to defend a sentence of 31 months in prison for Lucy
Connolly, who called for ‘mass deportation’ in a social media post on the day of the Southport attack, adding ‘set fire to all the ****ing hotels full of the b******s for all I care’. An awful thing to write, but the woman hadn’t left her keyboard!
But it’s the bullying of law-abiding people I care most about – those whose views may not accord with those of the Prime Minister and chief constables but are nonetheless held by millions of respectable people.
Essex Police should search their consciences. Do they really believe that it is decent or fitting – or British – to despatch two policemen on the morning of Remembrance Sunday to an apparently blameless woman, thereby intimidating her?
Another disquieting case concerned Bernie Spofforth. After the Southport killing of three children in July, this law-abiding woman retweeted a post that wrongly identified the alleged attacker as an asylum seeker. She realised her mistake and deleted the retweet within an hour.
Nonetheless, six police officers arrived at her house in three vehicles. She was taken to a police station and held for 36 hours. Police informed her that the term ‘asylum seeker’ is racist.
Another shocking case concerns an autistic girl, whose family called the police last year because she was intoxicated and possibly at risk in Leeds city centre. As officers drove her home, she allegedly remarked that a female officer resembled her ‘lesbian nana’. She was arrested on suspicion of a homophobic public order offence before being released on bail. The police apologised nearly seven months later.
And so it goes on. Again and again police armed with woke prejudices bear down on blameless individuals – there are cases of people silently praying outside abortion centres being carted off – while they often go easy on real criminals. How much easier to target someone for writing a silly but harmless tweet.
It’s instructive that, in the year to August, Essex Police only solved 6.3 per cent of burglaries – an appalling record that is close to the national average. At the same time they boasted a clear-up rate of 15.9 per cent for hate crime.
I’m sure the burghers of Essex would prefer their police to spend more time investigating burglaries and less time looking into hate crime. But the police, who now appear to be imbued with progressive views not traditionally associated with the boys in blue, take the opposite view.
This sort of two-tier policing has been going on for a long time, but it has worsened under Labour. During the August riots, Sir Keir Starmer called for tough sentences on miscreants.
In many cases these were richly deserved. But it’s very hard, for example, to defend a sentence of 31 months in prison for Lucy
Connolly, who called for ‘mass deportation’ in a social media post on the day of the Southport attack, adding ‘set fire to all the ****ing hotels full of the b******s for all I care’. An awful thing to write, but the woman hadn’t left her keyboard!
But it’s the bullying of law-abiding people I care most about – those whose views may not accord with those of the Prime Minister and chief constables but are nonetheless held by millions of respectable people.
Essex Police should search their consciences. Do they really believe that it is decent or fitting – or British – to despatch two policemen on the morning of Remembrance Sunday to an apparently blameless woman, thereby intimidating her?
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