Award-winning Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson is taking legal action against Essex Police after officers visited her home in November following a complaint over a social media post. Pearson initially believed that she was being investigated for an NCHI, and the incident resulted in a public debate about their use. Writing in The Telegraph, Pearson confirmed her decision to pursue legal action. Here’s an extract from her piece.
What do we have to do to make the police obey the law, the rulings of the highest courts in the land? It is extraordinary that such a question needs to be asked, but ask it we must. In the past few days, I have been astonished to hear that senior members of the College of Policing have suggested a response to public “confusion” over non-crime hate incidents, partly triggered by my own case, is to – wait for it – change the name of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). Yes, you read that right, folks. A sinister sanction on free speech that has widely been described as Orwellian will disappear momentarily and come back exactly the same but called something else. Orwell Squared. I have a suggestion: why not call them Less Obvious Oppressive Nonsense (LOONs for short)?
The public does not find the concept of non-crime hate incidents “confusing”, I think. They are just appalled they exist at all. Why do we need records of “hostility” which are completely subjective and fall short of a crime, but can still give a law-abiding person a record that shows up on background checks? Following my own visit from two constables last Remembrance Sunday, we now have another outrageous example of police turning up at a person’s home over social media posts that someone claimed to find offensive.
Helen Jones, a 54-year-old grandmother, had posted that Cllr David Sedgwick should resign from his Heatons North seat in Stockport after unpleasant comments were spotted in a Labour WhatsApp group. (An elderly constituent had sent Sedgwick a letter of complaint about her bin collections and Andrew Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, said he hoped the pensioner would die before the next election.) In one post on a closed Facebook group called 4Heatons Hub, Mrs Jones said of Cllr Sedgwick: “Let’s hope he does the decent thing and resigns. I somehow think his ego won’t allow it.” In a second group, she wrote: “Not looking good for Cllr Sedgwick!!!”
For these perfectly legitimate, indeed notably restrained, observations about her obnoxious elected representative, Greater Manchester Police saw fit to dispatch not one, but two, plain-clothed officers to Mrs Jones’s door. Helen was out babysitting her grandson at the time and she was understandably alarmed when her husband Lee called to say the police had told him, via the intercom, that they wished to talk to her.
Fearing the worst, she rushed home. Later, Helen got a call from an officer who said the police had received a complaint about her recent social media posts. “From who?’, she demanded. “Well, I can’t tell you that,” the policeman replied. (I had exactly the same surreal exchange with Essex Police.) When Helen asked if she had committed any sort of crime the officer admitted that she hadn’t. They were “just giving advice”.
Sorry, there is no “just” about it. Police do not “just” turn up at a person’s door, not without causing shock and fear at any rate. Police do not “just” advise a blameless grandmother that a complaint has been made against her when they know she has done nothing illegal. (Why didn’t they “just” tell the complainant to get lost and stop wasting their time?) We might speculate that the two coppers (on the instruction of a superior officer, most likely) were using – I would say misusing – their powers to suppress criticism of a Labour councillor while putting Helen Jones on notice that, should her comments continue, they might return to arrest her.
Claims this was “just giving advice” are disingenuous in the extreme. It deliberately underplays the chilling effect any interaction with the police can have on even the strongest person. I’ve lived through it myself, and it’s awful. Mrs Jones says the officers’ visit was so intimidating she is terrified to ever post on social media again. As was the intention, I bet. In this way, the authorities are protected from criticism and the “just” is stealthily taken out of justice. Despite the best efforts of Sir Keir Starmer and his human rights mob, the UK is not yet North Korea.
This is not simply a question of warped, woke priorities. Even if they didn’t have hundreds of thousands of unsolved burglaries and assaults on their books, the police are not allowed to harass citizens over their speech. NCHIs remain lawful but only where there is a clear risk of escalation to a serious crime. Time and again, the highest courts in the land have made it clear that, when it comes to posts on social media, the right to freedom of expression, as a cornerstone of democracy, is paramount.
The Free Speech Union, such a huge support to me during my own ordeal, estimates that an average of 65 non-crime hate incidents are recorded by police every single day. That’s 65 men, women and even children – how dare they call another child “smelly”! – penalised for speech which our most senior judges insist is not just lawful but vital in a healthy society. Commenting on the Helen Jones case, Lord (Toby) Young, founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union, says: “There’s something particularly sinister about the police going round to someone’s house and putting the frighteners on them. It feels awfully like something you’d expect to happen in the German Democratic Republic, not the birthplace of freedom of speech.”
Supporters of NCHIs say they are essential because there has been “an explosion of hate and an explosion of technology.” But, as far as we know, police forces have never done any analysis to establish which online “hate crime” might escalate into the physical crimes the public cares about. So the police continue to distribute NCHIs like toffees for the expression of views which would be considered perfectly normal in any hair salon or saloon bar in the country.
The High Court and the Court of Appeal have said that free speech is of the utmost importance, a pillar of our democracy, but the police ignore them. So what can we do to protect our precious liberties, to defend the right to speak as we find and to cause offence?
After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided to take legal action against Essex Police. To be honest with you, I could do without the stress. Last week, I was going over the details with my solicitor and two barristers and I surprised myself by becoming distraught. What happened to me was shocking and utterly wrong as well as preposterous. No way had I committed a criminal offence under the Public Order Act (as was confirmed when the Crown Prosecution Service rapidly said there was no case).
Let’s look at one comparison. Last week, Dr Menatalla Elwan, an Egyptian NHS doctor, who “glorified the terrorist attacks by Hamas” in a series of repugnant tweets, won a legal challenge against deportation because it breached her right to freedom of expression and family life. The judge said the doctor’s posts were “short-lived” and a “one-off”.
My single tweet criticising two-tier policing of Pro-Palestine marches came nowhere near the level of offensiveness of Dr Elwan’s and was also “short-lived” and a “one-off”. Why did police officers not visit Dr Elwan and place her under criminal investigation for inciting racial hatred? Is it because, like Helen Jones, I am white, British, law-abiding and therefore fair game for a justice system that rates diversity above freedom?
Worth reading in full.
