The Free Speech Union (FSU) has just learnt that Essex Police have decided to take no further action against Allison Pearson, following the intervention of Luke Gittos, a top criminal lawyer paid for by us.
As widely reported, two police officers turned up on the Telegraph columnist’s doorstep at 9:40am on Remembrance Sunday to question her about a tweet, although they wouldn’t say which one or who had complained.
It later emerged it was more than a year old and had been deleted by her the next day.
In the offending tweet, Allison accused the Metropolitan Police of having double standards because they’d refused to pose with her holding up a British Friends of Israel flag, but had posed with a couple of South Asian men holding up a green and red flag whom she described as “Jew haters” – and she attached a picture.
When she learned it was taken a year earlier in Manchester, not London, and the flag holders were in fact delegates of Imran Khan’s political party, not Hamas-supporting pro-Palestinian protestors, she deleted it.
The post was reported to the Metropolitan Police as a potential breach of the Malicious Communications Act in November last year. The case was then passed to Sussex Police, which marked it as a possible non-crime hate incident (NCHI).
Sussex Police passed it to Essex, where Pearson lives.
It is understood Essex made two assessments of the complaint before opening an investigation under section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to material allegedly “likely or intended to cause racial hatred”.
The officers who attended Allison’s home told her that she’d need to make an appointment to go to the local police station, where she would be interviewed “under caution”.
Allison is a member of the FSU, and we immediately got Luke Gittos on the case. Thanks to his intervention, Essex Police have decided to drop the whole thing.
Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, the National Police Chiefs’ Council hate crime lead, will now conduct an independent review of the force’s handling of the case.
Speaking following the force’s announcement, Toby Young, head of the FSU and a friend of Allison’s, said: “Essex Police should never have investigated this tweet in the first place. It didn’t come close to being a criminal offence, which they’ve now effectively acknowledged. I hope the public outcry over this huge waste of time and resources means Essex Police will go back to policing our streets, not our tweets. It’s not their job to investigate newspaper columnists for wrongthink.”
Writing on X, Luke Gittos said: “I am very to get the right result for Allison Pearson in this ridiculous case, with support from the Free Speech Union. We must use this win to turn the tide against policing speech. Enough is enough.”
If you think there’s a risk the police will turn up on your doorstep about a social media post, join the FSU. We’ll have your back.
