Allison Pearson, the highly respectable Daily Telegraph middlebrow columnist, was naturally startled when, on Remembrance Sunday morning, two police presented themselves at her door to tell her that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in connection with a social media post on X and invited her for a voluntary interview. She was not allowed to know which post, exactly, was being investigated nor who was her accuser.
I have to say when I first heard the news my first reaction was that the world has actually gone mad; my second: how brilliant for Allison Pearson. As a columnist, can there be anything better calculated to promote your standing than being investigated by the police on this utterly fatuous basis? If the Essex police were in a benign conspiracy to promote her brand, really they couldn’t do better than present her as a martyr for free speech. If, on the other hand, there was a malign conspiracy to discredit the force as being dumb and dangerous to common liberties, they couldn’t do better either.
The most sinister aspect of the case is that Miss Pearson is not allowed to know the exact nature of her offence
I fear it’s neither; the Essex police, which bravely declared in a statement that it would follow up all complaints “without fear or favour”, is governed by preoccupations which do not – how to put this nicely? – correspond with the concerns of most Essex citizens, which is that they should be out there catching burglars, and if they’ve got two police to spare, how about going after proper crime as most of us would understand it?
This paper today carries an interview with Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, who makes a powerful plea for greater resources for policing. The Commissioner is plainly not responsible for his genius colleagues in the Essex force but can there be anything more calculated to diminish the respect for the police and the urgency of appeals for greater funding than to find police investigating journalists for what would appear to be the exercise of free speech?
As for the most sinister aspect of the case, that Miss Pearson is not allowed to know the exact nature of her offence nor who her accuser is, it will remind us all of the disagreeable excesses of the French Revolution when citizens were encouraged to accuse each other anonymously of thought crimes.
It is meant to have a chilling effect on free speech
I think I can guess the sort of person or group who might be responsible for this sort of charge; I think we all can. But it’s the sinister effect that the charge seems intended to have which should worry us. It is designed to intimidate; to make people like Allison Pearson think twice before they sound off about matters to do with race or religion. It is meant to have a chilling effect on free speech, which is why the Free Speech Union has provided her with a solicitor to accompany her to her voluntary police interview.
That the police should not see this seems mad to me. Does common sense or proportionality not cross their minds in deciding when to launch criminal investigations (they confirmed it’s a potential criminal charge) or do the magic words “hate crime” make them a tiny bit trigger-happy? Perhaps we should all flood social media with provocative remarks about – I dunno, Belgians – in order to make the point that hate crime (a problematic category in itself) should not be misused to suppress opinions we just don’t like.
How can Essex Police spare two officers to knock at the door of a female columnist on a Sunday morning?
As to the question Essex council tax payers will be asking themselves, viz, do their police not have better things to do, I can answer that. According to its own report, in the Essex police area 12,148 offences were recorded in the month of December 2023, an increase of 2.4% (288 more offences) compared to the previous year (11,860 offences). In the same 12 months, all theft offences rose by 9.3% (4,182 more), compared to the 12 months to December 2022, driven by increases in shoplifting (2,287 more), vehicle theft (890 more), residential Burglary (646 more) and thefts from vehicles (379 more).
So, they can spare two officers to knock at the door of a female columnist on a Sunday morning? How?
Meanwhile, Mr Rowley can gloomily reflect that people will be that little bit less receptive to his plea for more police funds on account of how the force next door uses theirs.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for The Standard
