A cautionary tale for policemen

The silence in Breadwardine’s office was broken by Crabtree’s warbling mobile.  He squinted at the screen and starting out of his seat.  “It’s the Home Office.  I must take this,” he announced, and disappeared out into the corridor.  Breadwardine was left alone with the black woman.  He wondered if she might offer at least some comment on the thoughts he had articulated a few seconds earlier.  A modicum of agreement perhaps.  Instead, she fished out her own mobile from her bag, and was instantly captive to its fascinations.  There are people in this world, Breadwardine reflected, who do not care in the slightest about, or even recognise the existence of, profundity; and here were two of them.

Three miles north-west by police helicopter, where the wheels of government were turning, was a third.  As Minister of State for the Police and Fire Service, Charley Tout MP had what was widely regarded as the cushiest job in government.  His opposite number in the Ministry of Defence ran him close – all those regimental dinners and photo ops ensconced in a Challenger at Castlemartin.  But these were thin times for an Armed Forces Minister presiding over a losing war with the Treasury, which had precipitated a subsidiary conflict for the scraps between the manpower advocates - basically the army chiefs - and the big price tag junkies of the RAF and the RN. 

Charley’s ministerial life, however, was serene.  After Grenfell, it was politically impossible for the Treasury to take an axe to fire service funding, while crime was far too much the perpetually hot political potato.  Charley, a nimble operator, had learned that his most judicious course was to talk up the ever rising tide of criminal activity across the land while projecting an image of high-energy, on-the-button competence in dealing with it.  With Charley, PR also stood for politicians’ relations.  Going manic with talk of teamwork was another good, option; because this created the impression of spaces into which all that energy disappeared.  It all helped to put off the evil day when some Treasury bean-counter conducts a proper audit of his office and concludes that, actually, the police and fire service run themselves perfectly well, and Charley Tout doesn’t have a real ministerial function at all.

Among the bubble-dwellers Charley was seen as a social liberal and an economic conservative, and generally sympathetic to Brexit.  But, like any politician worthy of the name, he himself did not recognise these labels.  To him the divide was never about issues, much less principles, but about the getting and keeping of power.  The divide was between those who had an entitlement to it and those who had to graft for it.  Charley was a grafter.

An absolutely essential element of grafting is to have an edge at all times over the wielders of entitlement, so that in any encounter with them they are always on the back foot, always struggling to sound relevant.  Accordingly, Charley grafted away at knowing what might interest the incumbent upstairs at any given time, and that meant getting close to her SpAds.  It was with them that the really pro-active policies, with which all politicians want to be associated, had their genesis.

So it was that Charley paid one of his regular mid-afternoon calls on Jessica Chen, who, at 23, was the youngest of the Home Secretary’s seven SpAds by some distance and, he had discovered, the most pliant.  He found her frowning at something on her computer monitor.

“OK, Jess, so you obviously need me to help you with that, whatever it is?” he stated cheerily.

She turned towards him, all smiles.  “My favourite minister!” she announced obligingly, and then, “Do you know about this?”  She angled the monitor towards him.  “It’s a digest of a rant by some white racist guy.  It originated with the Met but the mail came from a couple of people in the Petty France building.  The point is to find a flaw in the legal argument.  I mean, it is kinda logical in a weird way.  When you actually delve into it.  It shouldn’t be, of course.  But it is.”

As he read, Charley’s face also took on a frown.

“I forwarded it to Samuela as soon as I saw the police connection,” Jessica assured him.

“So this thing’s going viral out of my area of responsibility and my own Deputy Director hasn’t told me about it?” he said, “Do you think Amanda might have seen it?”

Jessica shook her head.  “She’s not back yet from her PR at that mosque in Morden.  You know, the one that burned down a couple of years ago.”

“Not much glad-handing, then,” said Charley, dryly.

A 3.45pm the door of John Holly’s cell opened wide.  He stood up, stretched his back, and picked up his copy of his crime report, which he rolled gently to fit his hand.  He was ushered by a constable out of the custody suite, not to an interview room but up two flights of stairs and along a corridor to the canteen.  Every table but one was empty, and at that sat two senior officers and a black woman.

“Ah, Mr Holly,” said the older officer, “Please come and take a seat.”  He introduced himself and the others.  “I’m afraid,” he continued, “the kitchen isn’t open at present but we can provide tea or coffee, or a soft drink, if you prefer.”

“A glass of water would be fine,” Holly replied.  The officer nodded to the constable.

Holly was expecting another conversation with a lowly detective.  Such high-ranking attention was disconcerting.  He needed to know what it meant.

“Well, good afternoon, John,” said the younger one, Crabtree.  He modulated his voice to the appropriate setting labelled Calm, Friendly Authority.  “We thought this would be a more relaxed environment to, ah, clear the air before your release.  Technically, you are still under caution.  But we are not seeking to discuss the accusation that has been made against you.  This is not a formal interview or a re-interview in any way.  You can still have a duty solicitor present if you are concerned about that, but there is actually no need.  It is your complaints against the other gentlemen we want to talk about.”

“Then let’s talk,” said Holly.

“Yes, minister, I know exactly which document you are talking about,” said Samuela Freedman, her voice a flat sea of calm in contrast to Charley’s sales babble, “but that,” she gestured at the single sheet Charley had just waved accusingly at her, “isn’t it.  Or all of it.  That’s just a few representative paragraphs pulled together by some mischief-maker at Justice.  Obviously, they don’t have anything better to do over there.  Why they’re involved at all I don’t know.”

She transferred her attention to the monitor on her desk and pulled up a Word document, “Now, the whole document,” she said, “is this one.”

“Oh bloody hell ... Crabtree!” Charley exclaimed on seeing the email header.  “Why is it always Crabtree?  Oh, and at Peckham, OK.” he said, seeing the crime report header.  “Right Sam, let’s get some background on the whole thing.  Can we find out what Crabtree knows.  And who else he has sent this to?  That’s important, and might come in handy this evening.”

Crabtree was talking, “Well John, you’ve made multiple allegations of racism against this Prakash Ghosh and four others who are unnamed except by their internet identities ... deepjabi, totach, and so on … but whom you assume to be his associates.

“Fifty instances, to be precise; and the other four accused ... I believe them to be three males and one female ... are his associates.”

Crabtree continued, still Calm and Friendly, “You see, John, there’s the first problem.  I mean, resources are not unlimited, and their allocation has to be according to public interest.  Do you have any idea how many officer-hours it would take to investigate fifty separate allegations?”

“They are not separate.  They are inter-related, and intrinsic to a long-run programme of racist activism by the five people concerned.  And the requirement for investigation is minimal, because the proofs are all in the files I have provided.  For example, among the screenshots and URLs I supplied you will find evidence from various hard-left and anti-fascist sites of conversations between themselves and with others in which they openly and triumphally state their association and describe their methods.”

“I haven’t seen any screenshots,” said the black woman, defensively.  Breadwardine hadn’t seen them either, and made a perfunctory apologia about looking into it immediately.

“Don’t bother,” said Holly, “There’s one hundred and twenty-six of them, all numbered and cross-referenced to my text on the memory stick which I handed over to the WPC this morning.  She couldn’t print them out because you have no spare colour cartridges anywhere in the station, and the stock delivery isn’t for twenty-four hours.”

“But one hundred and twenty-six when one will do for the purposes of prosecution!” Crabtree protested.

“The Assistant Chief Constable is right,” said Breadwardine, “We have to consider the wider operational circumstances.  I have to tell you that this is a very busy station, and my CID officers are already fully-committed.  The word-count for your report is 12,470, no less.  That’s over an hour for one of my officers to read casually.  Given the inherent subjectivity of these cases, and given the complexity of the material, just to formulate an overview with full regard for statutory definitions and guidelines, case-building, referral requirements and the rest, it’s going to take two days solid for someone.  That doesn’t take any account of actual investigative time.  Now, if we go forward with just one complaint …. so, the strongest in legal substance ...”

“One will not do,” Holly insisted, “We are not dealing here with an individual offence or even serial offences.  We are dealing with a programmatic attack on advocates for one ethnic group in this country, and through them the ethnic group itself.  The provisions of the 1986 Act do not exclude that ethnic group from the protection it affords.  It is there in black and white, so to speak, in Part 3, Section 18.  I require you to do an effective job of enforcing it, with no pulled punches for any reason … not political correctness, not spurious cost reasons or manpower reasons.”

“Surely, you are stretching the point when you speak first of an attack on those you call advocates then on the group,” Crabtree said in protest, “I mean, an attack on racism isn’t an attack on any group, is it?”

“I will answer you in two ways,” Holly replied with an obvious and ominous authority, “First, the racial nature of the attack, its grotesque generalisation, is demonstrated throughout my testimony but probably most vividly in the fiftieth and final example from an exchange online a few days ago at the Western Marxist journal, Spiked.”

“Never read it,” said Crabtree., “Does anybody read it?”

Holly opened his bundle of A4 sheets at the back page and pushed it across the table towards Crabtree and the woman.  They looked at it morosely.  But it had to be read.

Dan Facto
A world without white people means a world without the most toxic form of racism. It’s just a simple fact but in the crazy world of white nationalism critics of racism are always attacked for racism.

John Holly • Dan Facto
Keep coming with the hate speech. One day, you will regret it.  The legal tables will be turned on your group, and your campaigning days will be over.  You are not somehow uniquely free to post race-hate.

Dan Facto • John Holly
Against whites I can. Anyone can. You have no rights. Jacob ?

John Holly • Dan Facto
The Pubic Order Act 1986, Part 3, Section 18 says we do and you can’t.

Dan Facto • John Holly
Yes I can CRACKER CRACKER CRACKER CRACKER CRACKER

John Holly • Dan Facto
You could always plead insanity, I suppose.

Dan Facto • John Holly
No I am utterly sane I hate white people for what they have done to every other people. I consider them and actually we all consider them a blight on the face of this earth.Their extinction is long overdue and will be welcomed with joy.

Crabtree sighed the sigh of a defeated man and shook his head.  He had prepared a last line of defence, which was to draw a distinction between the Ghosh group’s objective, which he considered admirable, and their methods, which were clearly not.  By that means, he could argue that the five were guilty only of over-zealousness.  So the whole thing could still be handled as a simple racist incident, logged, and forgotten.  But in that final entry Dan Facto, whoever he was, had provided an objective beyond the formal objective, and it was legally indefensible before any jury.

“Alright, I accept that these five and their organisation will have to be investigated.  On the face of it a prosecution would be in the public interest.  The Chief Constable and I will have to discuss the way forward and consult with Anique’s office.  We will keep you informed.”

Holly thanked him, but wasn’t quite finished.  “There is still this other point I want to make, to demonstrate how, to quote you, an attack on racism becomes an attack on a group.

“The racism you have just seen,” he said, “has been possible only because of a quite unexamined presumption against my group’s ethnic interests.  We are a native people.  This is our homeland.  Stripped of all the usual bien pensant talk, our relationship to the other groups now in this land is that of the colonised to the coloniser.  As such, our ethnic interests run wholly counter to the ethnic interests of those groups.  Likewise, our ethnic interests run wholly and inescapably counter to the assimilatory and racially heterogeneous model which has been the lodestar of the political class for at least five decades.

“It is this natural tension, and not some Original Sin, which the whole structure of, quote, racism, unquote, or anti-racism, seeks to de-legitimise and suppress.  There are many layers of suppression.  Many forms of words are employed in it.  But the whole effect is to create a faux-moral environment in which our natural group interests are deemed interchangeable with racism and hate.  That is your answer.

“Are you a bloody lawyer or something?” Crabtree asked, oblivious of the lawyer sitting dumbly beside him.

“If I was I would ask if the 1986 Act is truly an equalitarian instrument.  If it is, we must have the right to speak and act in our own group interest, free of any auto-association with offences genuinely described by the Act and its amending acts.  Just as every other ethnic group does.  The fact that our interests run contrary to the interests of those groups and to Establishment interests is completely immaterial.”

It took very few minutes for Samuela Freedman to identify the source in the Justice Ministry for the emails.  It was a somewhat excitable 22-year old, first year research assistant name George Weg.  Not many minutes later again, Samuella had extracted – and recorded – the sum total of his wisdom on the matter, and made it available to her boss.

It all looked good for Charlie.  At the end of each month the five junior ministers in the department, or as many of them as were available, were expected to attend an informal get-together after work in the Home Secretary’s suite.  Just a glass or two of wine and some ministry small-talk.  This being December, with the break imminent, that gathering was tonight.  Someone, almost certainly his adversary Donna Scott-Walters – a leading member of the Home Office’s entitlement faction who held the immigration brief - was bound to mention the Weg email, perhaps even Crabtree’s original.

For the third time he played the recording through, memorizing the blue-sky thinking enunciated in demotic style by young Weg.

Yeah, so it’s true.  I sent a few guys an email about a race-hate complaint that is with the Met right now, and which I had seen … you know, a copy of the formal statement ... elsewhere in the department.  In the subject header of the email I put “Is the government’s racial diversity project about to be cancelled in the courts?”  Because, y’know, basically that’s the logical outcome of this complaint being upheld.  It doesn’t require precedent … nothing very special.  It would only take the Public Order Act to be applied equally to the native Brits to make it illegal to wilfully employ anti-racism or pee-cee or any form of social costing to suppress their will.  Which means that the government and everyone, actually, who supports a multiracial society would have to defend it like any other policy.  And here’s the thing, the more I read that guy’s race-hate complaint the more I realised it cannot be defended.  At least, in moral terms that people understand.  It’s just not possible.

“So, yeah, to prove the point I asked some guys to find one coherent and principled argument why what many people believe, and government knows, actually, is the replacement of the native Brits ... see ... why that’s OK and how their objections can be morally wrong.  I had some very aggressive responses but absolutely nothing substantive.  The aggression didn’t surprise me at all.  Because, obviously, following the verdict of the court all that would be left ...

“... would be the government’s monopoly on violence.  Well, in a democracy that could not be sustained,” Charley stated with supreme confidence.  His boss, the Home Secretary, Right Hon. Amanda Roach, listened in horror.  She even had to put down her wine-glass so she could place her right hand across her open mouth.

“The whole political, legal and economic focus would have to change to begin reflecting the natives’ real wishes.  Anti-racism would be dead, of course.  Hate speech legislation would become non-viable.  The racial equality legislation would struggle.  Immigration would end.  The racial juggernaut would have become morally vitiated, devastated, and decayed; and all because of this one unanswerable complaint.  In theory, of course.”

“Not that I take any of this seriously for one moment ...” Roach said laconically.  Charley waited for the ‘but’, and was not disappointed. “ “But we have to protect our values.”

“Oh indeed, Home Secretary.  Values.  Absolutely.”

“There really is a case coming before the courts, or likely to?”

“There is a complaint, certainly.  I will talk to Andy Crabtree tonight and check its status for you,” our hero said.

“Thank you, Charley.  Most interesting.”  And Roach glided away to talk to someone else.  Charley was deeply satisfied.  Better still, he caught a venomous glare from Scott-Walters.  It doesn’t get better than that.