Leeds former head teacher's terror arrest shock over protest cartoon
Mr Farley told the BBC officers "made a beeline" for him as the silent demonstration passed Kirkgate Market and handcuffed him before taking him to Elland Road Police Station. Upon being told he was being arrested under the Terrorism Act because of the placard, he said he offered to show the police the original cartoon from a copy of Private Eye in his backpack, but that officers refused.The cartoon commented on the banning of Palestine Action after two RAF planes were sprayed with red paint last month, by highlighting it alongside the killings of civilians seeking aid by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Mr Farley, who is from Leeds, said: "I couldn't quite believe it was happening."They carried me to the van and all the way I'm saying, 'It's a cartoon from Private Eye. This is daft'."Mr Farley described the experience as a "miserable" one and that he was close to tears while being questioned by counter-terrorism officers.
"The interview just felt absurd," he said."I just thought, these are counter-terrorism officers. Surely you're looking at me and knowing I'm not a threat to anybody."West Yorkshire Police said a 67-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of demonstrating support for a proscribed organisation but that a review found the alleged offence was "not made out". A spokesperson said: "We are sorry that the man involved is unhappy with the circumstances of this arrest."As this is a new proscribed organisation, West Yorkshire Police is considering any individual or organisational learning from this incident."
'It worries me'
Mr Farley said he would like a "proper apology" from the force."They got it wrong and I'd really like to see if they will learn from this," he said."They made a mistake and everybody makes mistakes, but it felt like 'action first, think later'."If I'd been a threat or looking like I was going to harm somebody, then (I would understand)."It worries me. Obviously people have to obey the law and I was, but we have to have discussions and to question things."The government isn't always right is it?"Mr Farley said he was planning to attend another a Palestinian solidarity march in Leeds this weekend and that he was grateful for the many messages of support he had received.He also said he felt "vindicated" by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, who told The Guardian the arrest was "ludicrous"."It was wonderful to read that because he is in a position of influence and I've always had a huge amount of respect for him," Mr Farley said."It was a relief, frankly, to see someone talking common sense about it."
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Daily Mail
17 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
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A 15-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was yesterday convicted of Harvey's murder following a five-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court. Unusually, the teenager had denied murder, arguing instead his actions that day were manslaughter due to a loss of self-control; the 'end result of a long period of bullying, poor treatment and violence', as his barrister put it. A jury was unconvinced. The teenage killer's story has proved so alarming precisely because it does not conform to the all-too-familiar script of the country's knife crime epidemic. It was not an act of gangland revenge, nor a drug dispute, nor the horrifying crescendo of a feud between two violent young offenders. Indeed, it was little more than a schoolyard spat - but one turbocharged by the spectre of knives in their adolescent psyches. The fear of knives; the status on offer to those carrying one. Another unusual feature of the case was that the victim - Harvey - barely featured in the whole sorry tale until virtually the moment he was stabbed. To understand the violence of that day, the trial spent much time tracing the long, lonely spiral of the boy who wielded the knife. There was no dispute he had been bullied for many years. From primary school through to secondary school, he was serially targeted over a medical condition. On one occasion, he was beaten up so badly that he was taken to hospital. 'It makes me not confident, I'm upset all the time,' he told a jury from the witness box. One teacher who spoke to the boy last year spotted, with eerie prescience, the impact this bullying appeared to be having on his state of mind. 'I made an assumption: I said since the incident where (the defendant) was badly hurt he changed, he has become more reactive and angry perhaps because he doesn't feel safe and wants to prove he is strong,' the teacher said. He described how the boy stayed quiet for a moment, before replying sheepishly: 'Yes.' This was all complicated by a tough home life. His mother struggled with mental health issues, leaving him to do all the cooking and cleaning. He claimed his father would often beat him for minor indiscretions. As he got deeper into secondary school, a shift seems to have taken place. Suddenly, his school record started to feature more and more references to knives. On one occasion, he and his friends were reprimanded for joking about stabbing each other, on another he was placed in seclusion for the 'dangerous use of craft knife during a DT lesson'. Put simply, the evidence presented at his trial suggests that he and his friends had started to think that having a knife was cool. The allure was perhaps obvious. After years of humiliation, it offered a quick and easy way to claw back respect, status and a long-forgotten sense of personal safety. 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For a boy who had so long struggled to fit in, friendship with someone as popular as Harvey must have seemed a lifeline. Ms Willgoose, who had no prior knowledge of the boy, was left with the impression he was in 'awe' of Harvey after hearing the evidence at trial. It no doubt made his sense of betrayal all the more visceral when, that weekend, Harvey decided to express support for Pupil A on social media. In a group chat with other pupils, Harvey threatened to fight anyone that had a problem with him and began arguing 'non-stop' with the defendant, the trial heard. Ms Willgoose believes this was cynically exploited by the defence to suggest, wrongly, that her son was a violent bully. 'He used to big himself up, but he wasn't a fighter,' she said. 'Harvey was a bit of a busybody and it cost him his life.' His intervention could not have been worse timed. Unbeknownst to him, the defendant had recently entered a state of intense paranoia after seeing Pupil A's violent cronies loitering in his neighbourhood, staring at him. It meant that, when both boys went to school on the morning of Monday, February 3, only one went armed. It was the defendant's first day back since Pupil A's alleged stabbing threat and teachers knew his history with weapons. The risk he might arm himself was clear. Tragically, no search was carried out, with assistant head teacher Morgan Davis happy to accept the boy's word he had not 'brought anything with him'. 'If you've got a reason to ask, you've got a reason to search, as far as I'm concerned,' Ms Willgoose said. A series of escalating confrontations took place between Harvey and the defendant that morning, culminating in them squaring up in a science class. Then, when Harvey left the class, he told teacher Eleanor Kidder the defendant had been pretending to take something out of his trousers. He was 'acting like he had a knife', as he put it to a friend. The teacher, however, made no attempt to raise the alarm - something Ms Willgoose finds particularly hard to understand. 'Harvey took himself out of the science lesson as soon as this child walked in and he told the teacher 'the way he's acting, it's as though he's got a knife' and within that hour, Harvey was stabbed to death,' she said. 'How many warnings have they had?' Ms Kidder's failure to escalate Harvey's concerns would be seized upon by the defendant at trial as he denied acting like he had a knife that morning. He said: 'Why wouldn't Ms Kidder report it? Because that's a big thing to be accusing me of.' What happened next, by the defence's telling, was a boy snapping after years of bullying. Harvey's aggression, they said, was simply the final straw. Prosecutors argued it was as an act of retribution for Harvey's betrayal. 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an hour ago
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