Why I've decided to take legal action against the police
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.
When Harry Miller, a former police officer, was visited by Humberside Police in January 2020 over alleged transphobic tweets (Harry said he didn't believe a man could become a woman), which had offended one Mrs B, it was recorded as a non-crime hate incident. A robust, no-nonsense Englishman with firm views on how police time should be spent, Harry was incensed.
He went on to win a resounding victory in his legal challenge against non-criminal hate speech. In his High Court judgment, Justice Julian Knowles found that Mrs B's 'emotional response' did not justify the police action against Mr Miller. The police had 'effectively granted her a heckler's veto'. What Mr Miller wrote was lawful, he was entitled to speak on transgender issues and it was important those views were aired. Free speech, said the judge quoting a previous, landmark case, 'included not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative… Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.'
The judge found that the police's treatment of Harry Miller had 'disproportionately interfered with his right to freedom of expression'. Humberside Police were sent away with a flea in their ear. That should have marked the end of British coppers showing up at a person's door over a post on social media which someone didn't like. Only it didn't. The police doubled down.
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.'
For a while, it looked like the backlash to my case – in which a non-crime hate incident recorded by Sussex Police escalated unaccountably to a criminal investigation by Essex Police under the Public Order Act – had caused a welcome rethink over NCHIs. Even our authoritarian Prime Minister felt under pressure to tell reporters that police 'should police crimes not tweets'.
That commitment to free speech is barely skin-deep in our increasingly Stasi state. Last week, Harry Miller attended a committee meeting in the House of Lords where a number of concerned peers grilled Lord (Nick) Herbert, chair of the College of Policing, and Tom Harding, its director of operational standards. The pair said the public were confused about non-crime hate incidents and seriously suggested that, to solve the problem, NCHIs could be called something else. Several peers laughed in disbelief.
'This is a case of renaming the t-rd in the hope we don't notice,' says Miller drily. But he is not joking when he continues, 'My worry is that eventually someone is going to end up killing themselves following one of these knocks on the door. I know I came very close to it myself.'
Me too. I certainly had suicidal thoughts during that period last autumn when, day after day, I glimpsed my name in scores of headlines alongside words like 'racist' and 'hatred'. While you cling to the knowledge that you have done nothing wrong, like a drowning woman hanging onto a piece of driftwood, the rising tide of dread takes its toll. And I was blessed to have a Praetorian Guard in the form of The Telegraph's incredible News team and support from so many readers who said that they stood with me. It is easy to imagine how someone alone and with fewer resources could succumb to despair.
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.
You know, the wretched truth is NCHIs provide a handy shortcut to stigmatise people like Harry Miller, Helen Jones and your columnist without the bother of convincing a jury. They do away with pesky things like the presumption of innocence and the right to a defence. I can see why the College of Policing is so keen on them: they replace objective evidence with perception which makes life so much easier for police with targets to meet.
JD Vance was right. The UK has become a country where the police can intimidate a private citizen for posting criticism of an elected official. We have a quango, the College of Policing, which, without any debate in Parliament, entrenched NCHIs into policing practice. Its diktats mean that I was informed by police on Remembrance Sunday that the anonymous person who accused me of posting an offensive tweet must be called 'the victim'. Even if they had turned out to be a politically-motivated nutter. Any attempt to apply common sense or reasonableness to a perception of hate is itself an instance of hate. I kid you not.
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 and Harry Miller, I am white, British, law-abiding and therefore fair game for a justice system that rates diversity above freedom?
'Those of us with the strength and mental fortitude to hold these t- - -s to account have an obligation to do so,' says Harry Miller. Maybe he's right. It's a public duty. I also think of all the police officers, both serving and retired, who wrote urging me to take a stand on something they know is bringing law and order into disrepute. Including one officer who works for Essex Police. 'Hate is a growth industry in policing, they need higher figures to justify the diversity mission,' he wrote. 'Allison, we need your help to fight this nonsense.'
Well, I'm going to give it a go. Once more unto the breach, dear friends... I'll keep you posted. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
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