One of Britain’s most prominent feminist writers has revealed that police visited her home to warn they were investigating one of her tweets – which they didn’t identify – as a ‘hate crime’ – the category of which they didn’t specify – following a complaint from a member of the public – whose identity they wouldn’t reveal, reports the Telegraph.
Julie Bindel said she received a knock on the door on a Sunday afternoon from two Scotland Yard officers, who told her a “transgender man” from the Netherlands had reported one of her social media posts.
The case bears a striking resemblance to the ongoing police investigation into award-winning Telegraph columnist and Free Speech Union (FSU) member Allison Pearson, and will add to growing concerns over the curtailing of free speech in Britain. The report continues:
Ms Bindel, a longstanding campaigner on violence against women and critic of gender ideology, said she was not allowed to know which tweet had prompted the investigation, under what category of hate crime it was being investigated, nor the identity of the complainant.
The officers asked her to voluntarily attend her local police station to make a statement, she said, but she refused.
She described the visit as as “Orwellian” and said detectives “could better use their time investigating rape and domestic violence”.
Last night, a former head of MI6 criticised hate crime investigations into journalists as “ridiculous” and a waste of police time.
Pearson is currently being investigated by Essex Police over an unspecified tweet she posted a year ago.
Two officers visited Pearson’s home on Remembrance Sunday over what they described as “an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online”.
Ms Bindel said: “Police coming after those of us that do nothing more than speak the truth about gender madness and refuse to bend the knee to the crazy cultists, are doing a massive public disservice.
“Unless there is a very good reason not to, we must all publicly protest this terrible infringement of our human rights.”
Speaking of the visit, which took place in 2019, she added: “Police have limited time to investigate actual crime, but are instead being tasked with ticking off the likes of me for daring to tweet that ‘trans women are not women’ or whatever the person in Holland had objected to.”
Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, said the investigation into Pearson was “ridiculous” and officers “shouldn’t be wasting their time on these sorts of issues”.
He said: “I think those of us who have grown up in an era of free speech just can’t understand the way things have developed. It’s extraordinary.
“There are other ways of tracking extremism, and I don’t think doing stuff which prejudices people’s freedom of speech is a sensible starting point.”
“If it’s the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the UK or serious stuff to do with Hamas, that’s what they should be looking at,” he added.
Baron Stevens, a former Met commissioner, said that police forces should be using scarce resources on violent crime.
“We need officers on the streets for prioritising things like knife crime and violence,” he said. “Public safety should be the biggest priority.”
Two former home secretaries said hate crime investigations were distracting the police from their core duties.
Suella Braverman said: “The time has come for this insidious practice to be scrapped. Police the streets, not tweets – that’s what the British people expect.”
Her successor in the role, Grant Shapps, said: “These incidents, where no actual crime has been committed, feel like the kind of thing that both waste police time and reduce the public’s trust in policing. It would surely be better for law enforcement to focus on actual crimes.”
Essex police defended its handling of the case in a statement on Saturday, saying it had been launched because “a complaint of a possible criminal offence was made”.
The force said: “We police without fear or favour and that’s why we respond to alleged offences which are reported to us by members of the public.”
Worth reading in full.
