Our cretinous police must answer for their tyrannical behaviour in court

Telegraph

13-05-2025

After I wrote about the VE Day celebrations last week, rather a lot of people said how glad they were that their fathers, their mothers, their wonderful Uncle Joseph who fought so bravely and died aged 22, did not live to see what Britain has become. A prime example of that dear country changed beyond recognition popped up just a few days later in the story of Julian Foulkes. As you may have read, wiping the disbelief from your eyes, 71-year-old Mr Foulkes was arrested and handcuffed at his home in 2023 by six officers from Kent Police – the same force Julian served for 10 years as a volunteer. His 'crime', ahem, was to post a lightly satirical response to a pro-Palestine protestor on Twitter who was complaining about Suella Braverman's characterisation of 'hate marches'. Mr Foulkes had, quite rightly, become concerned that his Jewish friends no longer felt safe since the October 7 Hamas massacres and he was simply drawing attention to the danger of rising anti-Semitism in the UK.
You would have to be very stupid or politically motivated to see Julian Foulkes's tweet as in any way threatening, I think. It most certainly did not approach the threshold for a criminal investigation, as far as I can see, let alone justify half a dozen officers barging into his pleasant Gillingham home. (Ironically, Kent Police thought Mr Foulkes's tweet was attacking the Jews, when it was doing the exact opposite.)
'It felt to me like probably how I would feel if my house was burgled. That my home and my castle had been violated,' said Mr Foulkes, who started to cry at the memory of an officer rifling through treasured mementoes of his daughter who was tragically killed 15 years ago by a hit-and-run driver.
After being taken to the police station and held for eight hours, Mr Foulkes accepted an unconditional caution. Although he knew he hadn't done anything wrong, he was terrified that, if he refused, he would end up with a criminal record which might prevent him travelling to visit his other daughter in Australia. Losing access to his surviving child would have been too devastating, he said. I'm afraid this is part of a sickening pattern whereby, after a total absence of common sense in decision-making, the police nudge an accused person to accept a caution so they can log a result without the effort of a court case.
Here we go again, folks. Yet another in the long-running series of 'thought crime' farragos. Readers will know about my own visit from two Essex Police officers on Remembrance Sunday in connection with a tweet deleted a year earlier. My tweet, not by coincidence I think, had also drawn attention to anti-Semitism and what I perceived to be the two-tier sympathies of police. Compared to Julian Foulkes I got away very lightly. Officers did not enter my home or arrest me, although the experience was still humiliating and deeply upsetting. You feel like your character is being assassinated while you are trapped in a sticky web of police investigation that manages to be both bonkers and sinister. In response to my article about what had taken place, Essex Police doubled down, triggering something called Gold Command, which is normally used for terrorist incidents and other national emergencies which don't generally include national newspaper columnists, although we can be annoying.
In Mr Foulkes's case, we have the bodycam footage which police recorded as they searched his home, including his wife's underwear drawer. (Solicitors for Essex Police have demanded I agree not to tell anyone if I see the video of my visit. I cannot accept that block on my freedom to speak so I have refused to look at it. My solicitor will challenge this.) Most revealing is seeing the Kent officers's arrogant conviction that there is nothing remotely over the top about them all being there in force (as if it was some kind of drugs bust), even when the accused (accused of what exactly?) has rightly pointed out it is ridiculous.
Disgracefully, a female officer mutters darkly about the contents of Julian's bookshelves, which feature a hardback by the international bestselling author Douglas Murray (highly recommended!), some copies of The Spectator (ditto) and what she calls 'very Brexity things'.
Now, that I find deeply suspicious. How did the youngish police officer know who or what Douglas Murray and The Spectator are? Most people her age wouldn't have a clue. Had she perhaps received training about 'far-Right' material in which mainstream Conservative reading habits are considered evidence of extremism? Either way, that WPC had no business making an impertinent and judgmental remark about the largest democratic vote in British history. Such bias is profoundly worrying in a police force which only retains public confidence because it is sworn to conduct itself without fear or favour.
At the very least, this search which caused such distress to Mr Foulkes appears to me to have broken the police's own rules. PACE Code B outlines the restrictions on premises searches. 'Searches must be proportionate and only conducted to the extent necessary to achieve the purpose of the search, and the search must not continue once the object of the search has been achieved or the officer in charge is satisfied that what is beng sought is not on the premises... the number of officers involved should be reasonable and necessary.'
Is there anyone outside the numbskull precincts of Kent constabulary who believes that sending six – count them! – officers to arrest a mild-mannered pensioner was in any way proportionate, reasonable or necessary? Given the non-offence nature of the offence, a letter through the door might have been a bit much.
After The Sunday Telegraph made the Orwellian treatment of Julian Foulkes front-page news, Kent Police issued an apology saying that a subsequent review of his case had concluded that 'the caution was not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued. Kent Police apologises to Mr Foulkes for the distress caused and how the report was investigated. We have expunged the caution from his record and are pleased to facilitate this correction... a further review of the matter will now be carried out to identify any learning opportunities.'
This may come as a shock to Tim Smith, Chief Constable of Kent, but blameless members of the general public are not there to provide 'learning opportunities' for his unthinking subordinates. No apology could begin to atone for the frankly sinister, state-sponsored assault on Mr Foulkes's right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act. Yes, even we 17.4 million Brexity people are legally entitled to hold our own opinions and to express them without government interference!
'Free speech is clearly under attack'
One of the biggest shocks since my encounter with Essex Police has been finding out how officers are often entirely ignorant of Britons's crucial rights in this area. They are unfamiliar with the case law which, again and again, sees the higher courts find in favour, not only of free expression, but of the right to cause offence 'without which free speech is not worth having,' as one wise judge remarked.
'Free speech is clearly under attack,' Julian Foulkes told The Telegraph. 'Nobody is really safe… the public needs to see what's happening and be shocked.' He's right. It is deeply shocking that the free country that hundreds of thousands of mainly young men gave their lives to preserve 80 years ago has fallen under this dark shadow of authoritarianism. (As I told the two police officers at my door back in November.) But we need to do more than be scandalised. This latest victim of outrageous police over-reach is showing the way. With the invaluable help of the Free Speech Union (currently performing a vital role protecting the public from the police), Julian Foulkes will now sue Kent Police for wrongful arrest and can expect a substantial payout. In the course of that legal action, we hope to learn more about the chain of command that led to his cruel and unfair arrest while unmasking the warped ideology, sanctioned at the highest level, that lay behind it.
I hope that Mr Foulkes will also make formal complaints about the chief constable, his officers, and anyone else involved in his case. A custody sergeant will have been presented with the grounds for arrest and made the decision to authorise detention. A custody sergeant can legitimately say 'No' if the grounds are flimsy – so he or she will have some explaining to do.
The case of Pal v the United Kingdom (concerning an unnecessary police action against a freelance journalist) highlighted the need for an investigating officer to record the grounds and justification for interfering with a person's human rights under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act and the privacy intrusion under Article 8. Were such decisions documented in the shameful harassment of Julian Foulkes? Over to you, Chief Constable Smith.
Kent Police may have to hand the case to the Independent Office for Police Conduct where, I am told, they could be investigated for possible misconduct. Only when chief constables and those under them start being punished and sacked will they think twice about behaviour which is abhorrent to most of the decent people who pay their salaries.
In general terms, policing the law, as one senior officer told me, is increasingly secondary to a form of progressive social engineering which prioritises 'protected characteristics' at the expense of the majority British population. By virtue of religion and race, the Jews whom Julian Foulkes championed but was so wrongly accused of attacking, should be a 'protected characteristic'. Unfortunately, my source tells me 'they're widely regarded among too many police forces as white supremacists'.
Well, at least that explains why a Jewish reader who complained to Essex Police about a virulently anti-Semitic tweet was told to go away because 'feelings were running high at the time' of his tweet, while mine, also posted at a time when feelings were running high but in support of Jewish people, was afforded no context and police came to my door.
If this induces feelings of helplessness, there is cautious cause for optimism, I think. Recently, we saw how trans activists, who demanded free speech be cancelled and society re-arranged in their image, were stopped in their tracks by a court judgment. If it is true that police have become a law unto themselves, and a threat to good men like Julian Foulkes, then the law itself must be used against them. Let justice prevail.