Corbyn says police ‘picked on him to silence democratic rights' as case dropped
The former Labour leader and John McDonnell were called for interview after a pro-Palestine protest in London earlier this year.
Mr McDonnell revealed in the Commons that police had dropped their investigation into the pair, but said the Metropolitan Police had originally tried to charge them because MPs were held to have 'a greater culpability'.
Nine people face no further action after a demonstration on January 18, according to the Met, which has told the PA news agency it will not confirm whether either politician was involved.
Raising a point of order, Mr McDonnell told the Commons: 'You may be aware that (Mr Corbyn) and I were called for interview by the Metropolitan Police following our participation in a demonstration in January calling for peace and justice for the Palestinian people and an end to the genocide in Gaza.
'It was alleged that we failed to follow police restrictions on the protest. This is untrue, and at all times we followed police instructions.
'We can now report that the police have dropped the case against us and there will be no charges.'
Mr McDonnell alleged that 'the Metropolitan Police informed us that our case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) because as MPs we were to be held to have, and I quote, 'a greater culpability'.'
The independent MP for Hayes and Harlington, who was once Mr Corbyn's shadow chancellor, added: 'This is an unacceptable practice which flies in the face of the principle that we are all equal before the law.'
Mr Corbyn, now the independent MP for Islington North, said: 'I don't intend to let it rest just there.'
He told MPs: 'If there are elements in the police and possibly in the Crown Prosecution Service who want Members of Parliament to be held to a different standard of account than the general public, that removes us from the normality of law in this country.
'And I think that would be a very, very bad step indeed.'
He later added: 'We have to all – all of us – have the right to take part in public protest about human rights abuse, about war, about peace, about anything else. That is what democracy is about.
'And I saw this whole effort as being a means to try and silence the democratic rights of everybody in our society by picking on us two as Members of Parliament, and I'm grateful for the decision that's been made today.'
Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh said he had 'not often taken part in demos in central London' but spoke to 'show that opinion in this House of Commons is absolutely united'.
'We've always proclaimed what is very much the British way that Members of Parliament are no different from any other member of the public,' the Conservative MP for Gainsborough said.
'If they do wrong, they will be held to account, but they should not be subject to some greater test of culpability just because they're Members of Parliament.'
A Met Police spokesperson said: 'No further action will be taken against nine people who were interviewed as part of an investigation into alleged breaches of Public Order Act conditions during a protest on Saturday January 18.
'The decision in two cases was taken following a review of the evidence by the Crown Prosecution Service, while the remaining seven cases were decided on by police officers.
'While we are aware of names being attributed to those who were the subject of our investigation, we will not be confirming their identities given that matters did not result in any charges.'
Two individuals have been charged with breaching the same conditions as well as inciting others to do so, according to the force, with a further two individuals still under investigation.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Dumb and Dumber To or Idiocracy? What to watch instead of Trump's big boy birthday party
What are you up to this weekend? If you're American, then there's only one right answer to the question: celebrating the 79th birthday of our lord and saviour, Donald John Trump. As you will know, and already have marked in your calendar, there's a big military parade happening in Washington DC on Saturday 14 June. Nominally this is to mark the US army's 250th anniversary, but thanks to the machinations of time and space it happens to fall on Trump's birthday: the parade has been widely branded as a big boy birthday party for the president. If you can't get to DC to physically watch Trump's parade then I'm sure you're desperate to watch it on TV. ABC News, which recently dropped its correspondent Terry Moran for a social media post calling Stephen Miller, the Trump administration deputy chief of staff a 'world class hater', plans to cover the parade across programs and platforms, beginning 6pm on Saturday. Networks such as CBS and NBC seem to have relegated coverage to their streaming channels. Fox and NewsNation, meanwhile, will be going all out for dear leader's celebrations. Which will be lavish: the event is costing as much as $45m, not including all the damage that military vehicles are going to do to the roads in DC. And the best part of all this? You, the taxpayer, are footing the bill! Who needs money for schools and infrastructure, eh? We the people want to see big tanks, goose-stepping soldiers and missiles that go boom. In the event that you, in fact, do not want to see these things then I do have some alternatives for you. Please find below a helpful list of things to watch on Saturday other than Trump's birthday parade. As I'm a little brown woman on a green card I'd like to make very clear that I am not encouraging you to snub Trump. Nope, all of the below are their own sort of homage to the man we are so lucky to have as president. Ulrich Mühe's Oscar-winning drama is set in East Berlin in the 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Capt Gerd Wiesler is a Stasi (secret police) officer who is initially loyal to the regime until he starts to empathize with the people he spies on. Wiesler must choose between loyalty to an oppressive regime and being a good person. Eventually he chooses the latter. The movie reportedly had some real-life consequences. In 2014, 43 Israeli intelligence veterans refused to serve in Palestinian territories because of the widespread surveillance of innocent residents. According to the New York Times, one of the Israeli captains had a moral awakening after watching The Lives of Others. 'I felt a lot of sympathy for the victims in the film of the intelligence,' the captain said. 'But I did feel a weird, confusing sense of similarity, I identified myself with the intelligence workers. That we were similar to the kind of oppressive intelligence in oppressive regimes really was a deep realization that makes us all feel that we have to take responsibility.' Much like Trump 2.0, this Jim Carrey romp is a terrible sequel that should never have happened. There is a meandering plot involving a kidney transplant and a pork chop but the real drama here actually comes from how the film was made. From 2009 to 2015, more than $4.5bn was 'misappropriated' from a Malaysian government fund and laundered in various ways across the world. In 2016 and 2017 the justice department claimed millions of dollars from that fund were funneled to a production company to make The Wolf of Wall Street, Dumb and Dumber To and Daddy's Home. Now that 'daddy' Trump (as Tucker Carlson likes to call him) is home in the White House, it looks like money laundering is going to be made great again. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's policy blueprint for Trump's second term, calls for Congress to 'repeal the Corporate Transparency Act', which makes money laundering harder by requiring limited liability companies to disclose their owners. Asif Kapadia's drama-doc takes place in (you guessed it!) 2073, 37 years after 'The Event', which is an unspecified disaster that changed the world. The film opens with dystopian footage from Gaza with the chilling insinuation that soon everywhere will look like Gaza; soon all of us will be treated like Palestinians. Trumps loom large in 2073: it features Ivanka Trump celebrating her 30th year ruling over a dystopian police state. 'That [sequence] where Ivanka Trump is celebrating her 30th year in power is there because the idea of a two-term American presidency, I don't think, will be around forever,' Kapaida told Variety. Big military parades, however? Those might be around forever even if we're all living in bunkers or (as is the case in 2073), the ruins of shopping malls and trying to dodge drones trying to detect everyone undesirable to the state. A bunch of middle-aged friends go on a camping trip and are murdered by a disillusioned door-to-door orange salesman whose weapon of choice is his prosthetic hook and a bag of oranges. I know it sounds ludicrous but suspend your disbelief. We live in ludicrous times. This dystopian thriller is set in 2027 when decades of pollution-induced human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. '[W]hat would happen to us all, psychologically, if the end of the world was at hand?' the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw asked in a review of the film. '[One character says] that he personally gets by from day to day by simply not thinking about what is happening, and his stunned, bleak acquiescence in the creeping horror of global death is symptomatic of the vast spiritual sterility which ushered in the catastrophe in the first place.' If that sounds bleak then the good news is that, come 2026, we might get a remake called Children of Musk where humanity is saved by Elon Musk donating his sperm to everyone and sending all his kids to Mars. This documentary on El Salvador's civil war is available on a number of platforms. Probably good for people in the US to know a thing or two about the country in case you end up getting shipped there. Stanley Kubrick's famous satire deals with a mad-dog American general called Jack Ripper who goes rogue and initiates a nuclear attack ('Wing Attack Plan R') on the Soviet Union. (Like many people in the Trump administration, by the way, General Ripper is absolutely obsessed with fluoride, believing it to be part of a communist conspiracy to '[pollute] our precious bodily fluids'.) An ineffectual president called Merkin Muffley convenes a crisis meeting to try and stop a doomsday scenario. I won't tell you how it ends. But I will say that you should probably just stop worrying and learn to love all of Trump's big, beautiful bombs. In Mike Judge's anti-corporation cult hit, the meek don't inherit the earth, the morons do. An average Joe called Joe is placed in hibernation via a US army experiment and wakes up in 2505 where the most popular show on The Violence Channel is called Ow, My Balls! and everyone is … how do you say in English? ... unintelligent. In a 2017 interview, Terry Crews, who played President Camacho in the film, called it 'so prophetic in so many ways it actually scares people'. And its Urban Dictionary entry reads: 'A movie that was originally a comedy, but became a documentary.' Elon Musk, meanwhile, has shared the opening scene to try and scare intelligent-identifying people into having kids. Perhaps Musk has watched the film too many times, however, because he appears to have morphed into one of his characters. When the billionaire, sporting sunglasses indoors, theatrically wielded a chainsaw at CPAC earlier this year it drew numerous comparisons to President Camacho's machine-gun-waving showmanship in the movie. And that showmanship, of course, will be nothing compared to the big guns at Trump's birthday parade. Goodbye the rule of law and a government of the people; hello dumbocracy.
Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Hate crime probe into ex-Labour MP dropped in two-tier policing row
A fresh two-tier policing row has erupted after a force failed to bring charges against a former Labour MP who said Israel has forfeited any right to exist. Chris Williamson was hugely criticised when he made the comment on X, formerly Twitter, just days after Hamas launched its October 7 attack in 2023. Mr Williamson told his 149,000 followers on X: 'The people of the world now know that Israel has forfeited the right to exist and that resistance to the genocidal Zionist entity is the only option. Yet our political leaders still collaborate with this vile regime. So make them pay at the ballot box.' The former Jeremy Corbyn ally became the subject of a hate crime probe after Derbyshire Police received multiple reports about his comments. Around 18 months later, the force said no action would be taken. The decision has sparked fresh allegations of 'two-tier policing', a term used to describe the potential for different standards of policing based on an individual's background or politics. It contrasts with several other cases that have seen individuals who have made comments on social media calling for violence or destruction face arrest, charges and jail time. Last month, a Jewish protester was arrested and charged by the Metropolitan Police after briefly holding a placard satirising a Hezbollah terrorist leader. Allison Pearson, a columnist at The Telegraph, was questioned by police at home last year following a post on X following pro-Palestine demonstrations. Julian Foulkes, a retired special constable, was wrongly cautioned by Kent Police over a social media post warning about the threat of anti-Semitism in Britain. There is also mounting anger over the case of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for saying hotels housing migrants should be set on fire. Mr Williamson was criticised after refusing to condemn the attacks when he appeared on Radio 4's Today programme after The Workers Party of Britain, of which he is deputy leader, won the Rochdale by-election with George Galloway, the former MP. During his BBC interview, Mr Williamson said: 'You can't expect to live in a situation where people have been oppressed for 75 years and not expect a reaction.' He also claimed that most of those slaughtered on October 7 had been killed by Israeli forces. But the police said they had now completed their enquiries and that no action would be taken. A spokesman for Derbyshire Police said: 'Derbyshire Constabulary recorded a non-crime hate incident in October 2023 after receiving reports about a tweet regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. 'Enquiries then began to establish if a crime had been committed. 'During the course of these enquiries, which included consultations with the Crown Prosecution Service, officers found that the evidential threshold for a crime to have been committed was not met. 'The incident was subsequently filed with no further action and all relevant parties were informed.' Peter Bleksley, the former Met detective, said: 'This is two-tier policing, plain and simple. One rule for one, one rule for another. 'There is no consistency with these cases and that creates bigger issues for policing as a whole. 'It's a very worrying time.' A Jewish man in Derby, who did not want to be identified, said he was 'appalled' at the comments. He said: 'Police need to make their minds up on what action and direction they are taking.' Mr Williamson, 68, was the former Labour MP for Derby North and the shadow local government minister from 2010 to 2013. He was suspended from Labour in 2019 after he claimed the party had been 'too apologetic' in response to allegations of anti-Semitism. Labour's National Executive Committee blocked Mr Williamson from standing as a Labour candidate in the 2019 general election. He resigned from the Labour Party and stood as an Independent, losing the seat. In July 2023, he joined the Workers Party of Britain.
Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Grooming gang review to link illegal immigration with child abuse
The grooming gang review is expected to link illegal immigration with the exploitation of British girls. The Home Office will publish Baroness Louise Casey's review into the sexual abuse of girls and young women by gangs next week. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced the three-month national audit in January to establish the current scale of grooming gangs across the country, explore the 'societal and cultural drivers' and look into the ethnicity of the gangs. A link between undocumented arrivals to the UK and grooming gangs will be made in the review, sparking fears in the Home Office it could trigger civil unrest, a source familiar with the report told The Sun. Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to be told that white British victims were ' institutionally ignored for fear of racism ', The Times has said. The new report will also recommend the Prime Minister launches a new national inquiry to explore the issue of the perpetrators' race and allegations of a cover-up. Recommendations have also been made regarding the licensing of taxis, as many of those who were later found to have abused girls were cab drivers. Sir Keir Starmer's Government has previously resisted calls for a national inquiry from the Conservatives, Reform UK and some Labour MPs. The Tories have added an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to require ministers to start 'a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs' within three months. Police forces and prosecutors have historically failed to take action against groomers, some of whom are of British-Pakistani origin, amid fears they would be branded racist or Islamophobic. While head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir admitted in 2012 that in 'a number of cases presented to us' there was 'an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed', saying that prosecutors must not 'shy away from that'. The Home Office has not denied the inclusion of illegal migration in the report. A government spokesman also refused to deny the report would be linking the grooming scandal with illegal immigration. They said: 'Nothing is more important than protecting vulnerable children, and we are determined to crack down on vile grooming gangs once and for all. 'That's why we ordered a rapid national audit to uncover the true scale of this horrific abuse. 'This report – alongside our response – will be published shortly.' 'No excuse left' for Starmer Responding to reports that Baroness Casey will advise the Government to launch a national inquiry into grooming gangs, Kemi Badenoch said: 'If Baroness Casey is now calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, it proves what I've been saying all year: only a full statutory inquiry will expose the truth, bring justice for survivors, and stop this evil from happening again. 'Yet every time we've called for action, Keir Starmer has said no. He's put process over justice, legal caution over moral clarity. If Casey joins survivors and the Conservatives in demanding an inquiry, the Prime Minister will have no excuse left. 'Starmer must stop being a lawyer and start being a leader.' Group-based grooming, which is classed by police as a form of child sexual exploitation, accounted for 717 offences reported to police in 2023 and 572 in the first nine months of 2024. Grooming represents 17 per cent of group-based child sexual offences, with the biggest threats to children being abuse within the family or by other children. Group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 4,228 offences, or 3.7 per cent of all 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes in 2023, including online. It comes as seven men were convicted on Friday of sexually exploiting two white teenage girls in Rochdale, Lancashire. They preyed on the vulnerabilities of victims who had 'deeply troubled home lives' to groom them as 'sex slaves' from the age of 13 on various dates between 2001 and 2006, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard. The men, aged between 41 and 67, plied the girls with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes before expecting them to have sex 'whenever and wherever' the defendants and other men wanted in flats, cars, car parks, alleyways and disused warehouses. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, called for the case to push Sir Keir into announcing a new national statutory inquiry 'to get to the truth'. He told The Telegraph: 'I will push this to a vote in Parliament next Wednesday. But so far Labour has refused to have one, which simply continues the cover-up. If they vote against a proper inquiry next week, it will be a day of shame for Labour.'
