What is going on in this country? There seems to be an extraordinary breakdown in the concept of policing by consent and defence of free speech.
So what’s happened? Well, last week, the Metropolitan Police raided a Quaker meeting house to make six arrests.
The Hertfordshire Police kept two people in custody for eight hours to quiz them for being on a school WhatsApp group, where they had criticised the school and then told them an a counsellor not to get involved.
Otherwise the counsellor might be in trouble.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has questioned the police
GB NEWS
And just today, it’s in the time saying that the West Yorkshire Police have told a couple that they mustn’t get in touch with one of their local councillors because that is harassment.
So what is going on? First of all, with the poor old Quakers and the Quakers are the most peaceable, easygoing people. They’re not a dangerous bunch of criminals. They may sometimes break the law.
I’d say they have a history. Sometimes even a bad manners. But that doesn’t require 20 policemen to go into their place of worship.
From the reign of Edward the Confessor to the reign of James the First, just a few yards from here. There was a place of sanctuary by Westminster Abbey, which was inviolate even for criminals.
There has long been a tradition in this country of taking the view that religious spaces should not be invaded by the forces of law and order, unless absolutely necessary.
And the question must arise. Would the police have behaved thus if it had been a mosque rather than a Quaker meeting house? And could it possibly have been proportionate to send 20 policemen on this raid?
And then let’s move to Hertfordshire, because six police to arrest a single couple with no history of violence, not dangerous. Gangsters, not gangland criminals, not the mafia bosses of Hertfordshire, but perfectly law abiding people who dared to criticise the bureaucracy, criticise their school.
And this further intervention to tell an elected official not to intervene. What can be going on there? If you’re an MP, you’re protected because anything you say in Parliament is protected and the right to petition is a protected right under the Bill of rights.
Councillors don’t have this protection, but they’re part of the democratic system of our country. And the police should never be telling them not to get involved.
It’s their job to get involved. And then, of course, you have this latest case where a couple in West Yorkshire are told that they mustn’t contact a councillor, what a councillor is for you may ask.
It seems to me we need to promote freedom of speech and policing by consent.
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