Britain’s liberal reputation has been trampled by the bleak reality of our DEI police state

PCCs were supposed to hold the force to account, but instead they have made excuses for the end of free speech

Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Pundits often assert that this or that measure “is making us an international laughing-stock”. The claim is almost never true. Whatever is exercising British commentators rarely, in my experience, moves the Burmese or the Bolivians to hilarity.But the decision by Essex Police to feel the collar of my Telegraph colleague, Allison Pearson, really has provoked amused pity around the world. It has been the subject of local radio talk shows from Brisbane to Baltimore. 
I am writing this column in North Carolina, where three people this week – only one of them a politico – have separately commiserated with me after hearing my accent. Believe me, sympathy from foreigners in these situations, however kindly meant, makes you wince.
What made Allison’s through-the-looking-glass experience go global? Partly an online push from Elon Musk, but mainly the fact that it reinforced the unflattering view that the world was already forming of Britain.
We are seen, bluntly, as a country run by student union activists, a place where violent criminals are released from prison to free up space for people who have posted nasty comments online. If you’re British, you might protest that things are more complicated than that, but you must also concede that our critics have the big picture right. 
This really has become a country where freedom of expression is subordinated to the presumed sensibilities of minorities, and where saying the wrong thing, even if you have plainly not incited anyone or risked public disorder, can bring the cops to your door.
If you doubt me, consider what happened to Allison. Someone dug up a year-old tweet, long-since deleted, and complained about it. Why would you go to all that trouble to find something to be upset by? Good question. Toby Young of the Free Speech Union, who has himself been on the receiving end of this nonsense, calls it “offence archaeology”.
In this case, the online agitator found a remark that Allison had posted soon after October 7, when she believed she’d seen a picture that showed that the police were being unduly chummy with anti-Israel marchers. It was a mistake. Allison realised her error and deleted her comment. 
A year later, the offence archaeologist found a screenshot of the image, telling The Guardian: “Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different.”
Seriously? People glimpsed that image and it made them direct racist abuse at strangers? How could you possibly know?In a sane world, the police would have spotted someone with an axe to grind, and sent him or her away. But no, the Saffron Walden Clouseaus decided to investigate this supposed threat to public order. Perhaps they wanted to happrehend Hallison after ’er remark about fellow hofficers.
When Allison wrote about her experience, the rozzers doubled down. First, they whinged that while it was fine for them to knock on her door without telling her what the accusation was or who was making it, it was inappropriate for her to mention their visit. Then, bizarrely, they called in their Gold Command, which deals with questions of public disorder and terrorism. 
Journalists and MPs rushed to support the Telegraph columnist – whom her readers know as a writer of deep humanity, capable, yes, of sharp asides, but never unkind. Kemi Badenoch, her local MP, described the police action as “absolutely wrong”. Eventually Essex Police dropped the case.
If only there were some way to bring the police’s priorities back into line with those of the public they are supposed to serve. Oh, wait, there is. Since November 2012, each constabulary has answered to an elected Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).
As the original proponent of what I wanted to call “sheriffs”, I have been driven to distraction by their unwillingness to do their job. There are exceptions – my local PCC in Hampshire, Donna Jones, is a cracker – but many take their salaries without ever asserting themselves. When the police do something idiotic, their PCCs usually hide behind the claim that “it’s an operational matter”.
But here, I thought, was such an egregious failing that the PCC would have to intervene. I took to X (it seemed the appropriate medium in this instance) to ask the incumbent, a Conservative called Roger Hirst, what he planned to do. He replied, “No attack on free speech, just due process”. He went on to back his constables’ action, adding “perhaps we need to think about how our black and Asian communities are hearing this debate”.
I’m going to go out on a limb, here, Roger, and suggest that “our black and Asian communities” (a tellingly collectivist phrase, as if they all thought the same way) want the same as most white people, namely coppers who concentrate on stopping burglaries and assaults rather than harassing newspaper columnists. 
I’m going to go further and suggest that, if you won’t act in a case like this, you are not earning your £91,600 salary and should resign. You may be a fellow Tory, but this is one of those “you had one job” situations. 
If the duty of a PCC, the core shrieval function, is to hold the police to account, the role of the press is to uphold free expression. Yet, once again, Leftist writers declared themselves “in favour of free speech, but…”
The Guardian ran an ugly column by John Crace, mocking Allison for claiming victim status and portentously declaring that “the legality is for others to determine.” The New Statesman declared that free speech was all well and good, but (one hell of a reach this) not if “your child is subject to Islamophobic or anti-Semitic abuse on their way to school”. 
This ambivalence about censorship should surprise us more than it does. The tribunes of free speech down the years, from John Milton to J S Mill, were seen, at the time and afterwards, as progressives. What has changed?
Perhaps there was never a golden age of free speech, only an interregnum between the old religious ascendancy and the new trinity of Diversity, Equality, Inclusion; an uneasy stand-off when neither side held the commanding heights. 
Britain last jailed someone for mocking Jesus in 1921. But in 2022, a former policeman was sentenced to 20 weeks for mocking George Floyd. There was no question of public disorder: his comments were on a private WhatsApp group. That’s the thing about blasphemy codes. They are about sniffing out sacrilege, not preserving peace.
The country that gave the world Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights is now a repressive outlier. Recent elections in Europe and the US have punished politicians associated with wokery, and Canada will surely follow suit. But here, in the nation of John Lilburne, John Locke and John Wilkes, we’re going in the opposite direction.
The people of Essex voted for Hirst, and the people of Britain for Keir Starmer, whose ruling principle is the supremacy of human rights lawyers. But the real problem is our standing bureaucracy which subordinates almost every other principle to DEI.
Kemi Badenoch has made hostility to identity politics her chief cause. She must surely now fight the next election on a promise to scrap the laws on which this nonsense rests, starting with the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. She stood up admirably for her constituent; now let her stand up for the country.
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email