I’m bruised but vindicated – and going to war with the police
I stand proudly before you this week as a Non-Crime Non-Hate Non-Incident. Not quite victorious – still a bit too bruised and vulnerable for that – but entirely vindicated. After 11 horrible days, last Thursday afternoon Essex Police admitted what any sane person had known all along. “No Further Action,” the email to my solicitor said. There was no case against me, and never should have been. Sending two officers to my home on Remembrance Sunday to inform me I was accused by some anonymous “victim” of “stirring up racial hatred” in a year-old deleted tweet was such outrageous police over-reach that it made headlines around the world. “Britain Polices Speech but Not Much Else”, the Wall Street Journal observed tartly. “The British ‘bobby’, previously armed with only a nightstick and common decency, has become an Orwellian snooper,” wrote Dominic Green in the article.
Other reactions from the Land of the Free were equally incredulous. Elon Musk called the UK “a tyrannical police state”, which may yet have damaging, real-world consequences with our biggest trading partner. (President-elect Donald Trump has already announced tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China; it could happen to Starmer’s Stasi Britain if right-hand-man Musk encourages Trump to play hardball against the enemies of free speech.)
As my friend and colleague Daniel Hannan wrote on Sunday from South Carolina, Americans simply cannot believe that the home of Magna Carta is pursuing “two-tier” justice, allowing the bad guys to run free while hounding innocent civilians for saying something that hurt someone’s feelings.
I was blessed, of course, to have high-profile figures like Lord Hannan, Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, Sarah Vine, Lionel Shriver, Toby Young and the brilliant Free Speech Union (they offered wise counsel and paid for my excellent lawyer Luke Gittos) speaking out with ringing clarity on my behalf. (The Tory leader rang to congratulate me on Thursday evening and I was in such a state of elated relief I was jabbering and could barely hold a conversation with her. Sorry, Kemi.)
The wholehearted support of The Telegraph’s editor, Chris Evans, and our phenomenal news desk showed the coppers at Chelmsford HQ what great investigative work should look like. Seemingly more interested in drag queens than drug dealers, the irredeemably woke higher echelons of Essex Police were taught a short, sharp lesson: don’t mess with the real boys in blue – our crack team of reporters who exposed the force’s pitiful crime-solving statistics. Our campaign has elicited calls from some of the most distinguished coppers in the land for the use of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) to be urgently reviewed, if not banned altogether.
A great news organisation like this one can shine an unforgiving spotlight on wrongdoing even – make that especially – when the wrong arises in an arm of the state which has a duty to exercise its power with caution and common sense. It may have been my name in the headlines this past fortnight but, make no mistake, The Telegraph was fighting, and continues to fight, for freedom of speech and to protect tens of thousands of men and women (even children for crying out loud) from these ludicrous, draconian instruments. (Do you think there is a bet among police to see who can record the nuttiest NCHI? If so, the dirty pants on a washing line incident has just taken a commanding lead.)
The support of you, my readers, Planet Normal listeners and well-wishers meant the world. True to form, many of you managed to extract bitter comedy from the sinister absurdity imposed on me by the police. Bill wondered: “It’s so deeply unfunny that I have to ask whether it’s a crime to hate Non-Crime Hate Incidents?” Careful how you go, Bill; jokes are on their little list!
Earlier this week, when the Prime Minister announced that “perpetrators of spiking will feel the full force of the law” Melanie commented: “When I first saw that I thought Starmer said “perpetrators of speaking” and I wasn’t even surprised.”
Anna reminded me that one of the tests during witch-hunts in the 16th century was for the accused woman to touch her accuser. If the person said they felt pain at her touch the woman was declared a witch and put to death. “Not much change, then,” said Anna wryly.
Unsurprisingly, trust and respect for the police are in freefall. Several of you joked that you would have more chance of getting elusive coppers out to your burglary/car theft if you posted something “offensive” on X (formerly Twitter). Al, a longstanding Telegraph subscriber, spoke for many: “In my sixties, white, male, worked hard, paid taxes all my life. As a young man always had a healthy respect for the police. I now feel contempt and hate towards them. Why is that? It should concern them because it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”
It really should concern them. Essex Constabulary, and other forces, would do well to remember that, in this country, they police by popular consent. Sir Robert Peel established the nine principles of policing, which were described by Charles Reith in his New Study of Police History as “unique in history and throughout the world, because it derived, not from fear, but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public”.
If the British people believe their police are acting to silence unhelpful dissent among the majority in order to cosset minorities with “protected characteristics”, at the behest of a repressive state, then friendly co-operation will be withdrawn, and we should all fear what chaos follows.
While prosecutions against mainly white, working-class Southport rioters (and trigger-happy tweeters) were railroaded through in record time, no charges have yet been brought against the men involved in a fight with police at Manchester Airport in July this year, in which a woman police constable had her nose broken.
Police chiefs are fretting about “community tensions”, I suspect. (This has led Reform UK to take the extraordinary step of threatening to bring a private prosecution.) I’m afraid this looks a lot like the opposite of their job description: policing with fear and favouritism.
Responding to widespread criticism of the way officers are recording NCHIs, Lord Herbert, the chairman of the College of Policing, told The Telegraph that trust was “being damaged by the perception that forces were getting involved in mere disputes” at the expense of tackling crimes. It is not a perception, my Lord. It’s now generally accepted that the police show more zeal in tackling bad thoughts than bad men. Officers have largely ignored the statutory guidance introduced in 2023 by Suella Braverman when she was home secretary. “I said police should only intervene if there is a serious threat,” Braverman told me.
We agreed that, although your columnist can get a bit excitable on occasion, serious threat to society she is not. At the very least, I think I am owed an explanation from Essex Police and Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington. So, here are eight questions:
Who thought it was appropriate to send two officers to my house on Remembrance Sunday?
Why was my original Non-Crime Hate Incident escalated to a criminal investigation under the Public Order Act? Who thought that was a credible charge when two former home secretaries, a law lord, a former solicitor general, three KCs, two very senior police officers and the nice man who works in Coral the bookmakers beneath my office all looked at my tweet and said it didn’t “come near the threshold” for criminal investigation?
Why did Essex Police say it was “unethical” for me to write about my deeply upsetting experience and why did you report The Telegraph to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) as if the paper didn’t have a perfect right to to expose your behaviour? I understand you confirmed which tweet of mine had supposedly caused offence and the identity of my accuser to the Guardian. Do you think that was ethical? Oh, and why was the redacted transcript of my doorstep conversation with officers leaked to The Sunday Times in a clear attempt to discredit my account?
Instead of apologising for what Labour MP Graham Stringer called the “Stasi-like” behaviour of Essex Police, why did you double down in a further attempt to scare and silence me, announcing that Gold Command was taking over my case? How was that proportionate?
Do you feel proud of using police powers to scare a law-abiding middle-aged woman when people in our county can’t get your attention for actual crimes?
Why did Essex Commissioner for Police Roger Hirst give an interview to LBC in which he talked about “crimes” like mine attracting prison sentences of up to seven years. I wasn’t charged with any crime, was I?
Whose decision was it to declare No Further Action? Did the CPS tell you that there wasn’t a chance in hell of obtaining a conviction because no one in their right mind thought my tweet incited hatred?
More generally, your force records 700 NCHIs every year and that number has been increasing. Do you think that is a good use of police time or do you think the taxpayer would prefer you to track villains not opinions?
Eventually, I will have answers from the police to all those questions. The case is now in the hands of my superb solicitors. But what can we do about the metastasising cancer of Orwellian “hate crimes” that have such a chilling effect on people’s ability to speak and post freely?
Actually, there’s quite a lot we can do. (Look what people power achieved after Nigel Farage’s debanking scandal.) If you or a family member or a friend has been approached by the police over a hate crime, please get in touch with me. Don’t feel ashamed or stigmatised; you’re almost certainly not the one who needs to feel shame. Where appropriate, I will draw public attention to specific NCHIs. Together we will fight these insanities one by one, putting the onus onto the police to justify their actions.
You can submit a Subject Access Request (Sar) to your local police force to find out if you have ever been investigated for a hate crime or had an NCHI recorded against your name. If you have, join the Free Speech Union (FSU), which has had quite a bit of success getting them removed from people’s records (I recommend joining the FSU anyway – this nightmare could happen to anyone).
That mirthless munchkin Yvette Cooper was apparently all set to lower the bar for NCHIs so even more unwary tweeters and cheeky kids in the playground could have their collars felt. But the Home Secretary quickly changed her tune after my case drew embarrassing attention to officers wasting their time on trivial cases. She now says police will be told only to record NCHIs when there’s “a clear risk” to community tensions under new “common sense” guidance.
Twaddle. Such guidance already exists and is ignored by police who are keen to boost their results by nabbing low-hanging fruit like me. How else do you explain an imam who called for attacks on Jewish homes being ignored while I am the one accused of inciting racial hatred? Farcical.
Police should not record any episodes as NCHIs if they conclude no crime has been committed because it will show up if a person has to do an enhanced DBS check when they apply for a job. The police should also be consistent when it comes to which reports of possible hate crimes they investigate: stop treating some ethnic or religious groups as more worthy of protection than others.
One officer, among the scores of police who emailed to commiserate with my predicament, described his foundation degree in policing thus: “It was as though they had gathered every Left-wing nut-job they could find and forced us to listen to them and then parrot back what we had been subjected to. One of the main messages permeating through all of it was the need to protect the strands of diversity. I think they had identified seven or maybe nine groups at the time. Black people, religious groups, women and so on. These were like protected species, this diversity drive was massive and constant, we were hardly prepared for day-to-day policing.”
Instead of teaching police their job is to protect specific groups from the wicked majority, the College of Policing needs to make sure police are better trained when it comes to understanding the vital importance of free speech and what legal protection it enjoys under the law. Free speech is not a nice add-on; it is the core of who we are as a nation.
Personally, I want to see NCHIs scrapped altogether, and I won’t rest until that happens. I’ll be damned if they’re going to upset someone like they upset me. Non-crime hate nonsense is fundamentally un-British and encourages a snitch society which is inimical to our national character. Relying on an allegation of “hate” from a third party and then allowing individual officers to decide what is “proportionate” is a recipe for injustice as well as a serious threat to liberty. I agree with Young when he says, “We should repeal all the laws that have created speech crimes and revert to the English Common Law principle that all political/contentious speech is permitted unless it’s overwhelmingly likely to lead to an imminent breach of the peace.”
As for me, my mood goes up and down; sometimes happy it’s over, angry it ever happened at all. On Thursday night, I am giving a talk at a sold-out charity do for the Sick Children’s Trust. Normally, I would go along in high spirits to such an event, glad to meet lots of readers and be of use for a great cause. The truth is, after what Essex Police did to me, I will look out over the audience and think, “Are there people who think I am the person my anonymous accuser said I was?” That’s what a hate crime allegation does.
If I have just one tiny regret at not getting to go for my voluntary interview at the police station, it’s that Allison’s Army never got a chance to assemble outside Chelmsford HQ. Our riot would have been the politest in history, wouldn’t it? Sandwiches, thermos flasks, canvas fold-up stools, poo bags. “After you, no after YOU!” Jolly cross with the police, mind you.
Luke the solicitor and I had planned what we would do when the police asked me questions about the long-forgotten tweet. Instead of saying, “No comment,” I would reply each time: “It’s a free country.” “It’s a free country.” “It’s a free country.”
And we must go on saying it for as long as we have breath, or they’ll take it away. Let them try.