A police force has been accused of “trampling” over democracy after detectives allegedly told a local Conservative party that a colleague wrongly accused of a ‘hate crime’ for speaking out against the arrest of a Christian street preacher was “in their opinion… not a fit person to be a councillor”.
Last December, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped its case against Anthony Stevens, a Conservative councillor in Northamptonshire, who had been arrested some months previously for an alleged ‘hate crime’ after retweeting a video criticising how the police handled the arrest of Oluwole Ilesanmi, a Christian street preacher.
Officers from Northamptonshire Police Force – which currently fails to identify a suspect in 75% of all theft investigations, and 90% of all burglaries – initially arrested Cllr Stevens at his home in August 2023, and then hauled him off for questioning down at the local police station over the video, which shows a police officer snatching Mr Ilesanmi’s Bible after the preacher was accused of being ‘Islamophobic’. Mr Ilesanmi was later awarded £2,500 for wrongful arrest.
Having been held for nine hours, Cllr Stevens was told by police officers that the original tweet he had shared had been posted by a member of Britain First, the far-Right (but not proscribed) political party.
The officers, who seemed fascinated yet baffled by the liberal democratic notion of ‘the pluralist public sphere’, then sought to check Cllr Stevens’ thinking around a separate online post, questioning why he tweeted his support for Cllr King Lawal, a fellow North Northamptonshire councillor, who had been cancelled for expressing his Christian beliefs in relation to LGBT issues.
Unsurprisingly, Cllr Stevens was eventually released and told that no further action would be taken against him.
However, the Mail on Sunday has now learned that days before Cllr Stevens was arrested, a Northamptonshire Police detective, Detective Constable Amelia Thompson, phoned Jonathan Ekins, a former local Tory mayor for Wellingborough, and allegedly told him his colleague was about to be arrested “for a serious offence”.
DC Thompson allegedly went on to tell Mr Ekins that Cllr Stevens’ criticisms of the police for arresting a Christian street preacher, allied with his public support for a colleague’s perfectly lawful criticisms of LGBT orthodoxy meant that “in their opinion” he was “not a fit person to be a councillor”.
It is claimed that in a later call, DC Thompson told Mr Ekins police had acquired intel that Mr Stevens had attended a meeting at the same time as a Labour councillor thought to have complained about his tweets.
This, Dc Thompson said, was a breach of his bail conditions and she warned him officers would arrest Mr Stevens “on the spot” if he turned up at another meeting attended by the Labour councillor.
Mr Ekins said: “My response was, rightly, to remind DC Thompson that she would be welcome to try but that, as chair of the committee, I have the right to … instruct security officials to remove the police for public disruption of a democratically constituted meeting.”
It’s not the first time Northamptonshire Police Force’s treatment of Cllr Stevens has prompted accusations of political interference.
When Cllr Stevens first revealed details of his arrest in the media, he received a letter from a Detective Inspector with the Force, advising him to seek “legal advice prior to any contact with media sources of making comment within [a] public forum about the case”.
In response, Cllr Stevens’ lawyers wrote to the police stating: “The arrest of our client, a democratically elected officer-holder, for social media posts about matters of public interest, is self-evidently a matter for legitimate media attention, public debate and criticism.”
It’s a point backed up by a recent legal ruling that could have significant implications for freedom of expression around contentious political issues of this kind in the UK. In R v Thomas Casserly [2024] EWCA Crim 25, the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction of a man found guilty under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 of sending a “grossly offensive” email to local councillors during a political dispute.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal makes clear that in cases where freedom of speech in a political context is engaged, the threshold at which communication may be regarded as meeting the criminality threshold is set very high, and a court must always make a bespoke assessment of the proportionality of a conviction given the particular circumstances involved.
In a free and democratic society, the Court’s ruling states, political speech is to be given particular weight, and Strasbourg jurisprudence — which UK courts are still required to “take into account” — identifies “a hierarchy of speech, with political speech at its apex”.
Northamptonshire Police Force would do well to acquaint themselves with the judgment.
