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#PostOfficeScandal: Vennells hands back CBE after petition takes a million signatures

Paula Vennells: was she shamed into returning her CBE? Why was she given it in the first place?

The former chief executive of Post Office Limited, Paula Vennells, has handed back her CBE after a petition calling for her to do so was signed by more than a million people.

It is an entirely symbolic gesture. Neither she nor any other Post Office employees – or staff at Fujitsu, the company that provided the faulty and insecure Horizon software that was used to wrongly incriminate hundreds of sub-postmasters – are facing any charges of wrongdoing related to what happened.

And her statement suggests that she knows this.

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She has said: “I continue to support and focus on co-operating with the inquiry and expect to be giving evidence in the coming months.

“I have so far maintained my silence as I considered it inappropriate to comment publicly while the inquiry remains ongoing and before I have provided my oral evidence. I am, however, aware of the calls from sub-postmasters and others to return my CBE.

“I have listened and I confirm that I return my CBE with immediate effect.

“I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system.

“I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.”

Vennells was a strong supporter of Horizon while sub-postmasters were being prosecuted and during their court case to prove that it was at fault and not them. She avoided giving evidence at that court case.

It seems likely to This Writer that she has spent the last few years preparing ways to justify her inexcusable behaviour when she does appear before the public inquiry that is belatedly being held into the circumstances of the scandal.

But – as stated explicitly in the TV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office – as chief executive, the buck stopped with her. It was her responsibility to know everything about Horizon and how it was being used to criminalise sub-postmasters. She should not be able to evade her responsibility for what happened to them.

When she does appear before the inquiry, This Writer hopes she will be forced to explain one significant aspect of the scandal.

We know that the Horizon software wrongly made it seem that sub-postmasters were stealing tens of thousands of pounds from their Post Office branches – money that never actually existed.

We have heard that, because the software was insecure, staff at Fujitsu were able to enter any sub-postmaster’s account and change the figures to falsely make it seem they had stolen money. This, it seems, is what made it possible to commit the most widespread offence to justice in UK history.

It seems clear to me that these were deliberate, pre-meditated acts.

The question I want answered is simple: why did the Post Office and Fujitsu do it?

What was it all for?


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‘Strip former Post Office boss Paula Vennells of CBE’ petition passes a million signatures

Paula Vennells: why was she given a CBE in the first place – and should she give it back, now that a million people have demanded it?

Here’s a good question: how many people nominated disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells for her CBE? And how many of us have to demand that she be stripped of it before that actually happens?

I ask that because a petition calling for her to hand it back has passed one million signatures now – including that of This Writer.

Having been through a lengthy (four-year) court case involving another public figure, I would also like to question the circumstances in which she was nominated.

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My opponent was given an MBE shortly before the case went to trial. Ms Vennells was given her CBE in similar circumstances.

I question whether this is a tactic to make these people less vulnerable to justice? “They’re members of the Establishment now; we all have to stick together” – that sort of thing.

I wonder how many other undeserving recipients have been given honours for the same reason – and how many should have their award reviewed in the light of what’s happening here:

More than a million people are demanding a former Post Office boss is stripped of her CBE following her involvement in the Horizon scandal which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted.

Paula Vennells oversaw the Post Office while it accused around 700 subpostmasters and mistresses of fraud and theft, denying faults with its Horizon IT system which was eventually found to be behind discrepancies in the company’s finances.

Following the release of Mr Bates vs the Post Office – an ITV drama which tells the story of injustice based on evidence from a faulty computer system – over 1,047,000 have signed a petition urging the government to remove Ms Vennells’s CBE.

The petition itself states:

Evidence has been produced that the Post Office engaged in a mass cover up which led to the wrongful prosecution of 550 Post Office Staff many of whom were subsequently jailed, bankrupted and in some cases, sadly took their own lives.

The initial Post Office investigation in 2012 failed to find any issues and as a result in 2012, Second Sight, an independent investigative firm were brought in to investigate complaints that the Horizon system used in post offices was inaccurate, buggy and could ‘lose money’. Despite pledging full co-operation initially, Post Office subsequently withheld documents from the investigation and Paula Vennells later failed to answer a select committee when challenged on why these documents had not been produced as requested. The damning report, marked as ‘confidential’ stated that the Horizon system was ‘not fit for purpose’ and among their discoveries were 12,000 communication failures every year, software defects at 76 branches and that the system was failing to track money from lottery terminal, tax disc sales and cash machines properly. It concluded that rather than investigate the cause of such errors, Post Office instead accused sub-postmasters of theft. The Post Office dismissed the report which was subsequently leaked to the BBC in 2014.

Despite Paula Vennells assertion that Post Office “have been working with Second Sight over the last few weeks on what we agreed at the outset. We have been provided the information” to Parliament at her select committee appearance in 2015, the lead investigator for Second Sight, Adrian Bailey, when asked if this was the case said categorically, “No, it is not” which meant that he could not access files to back up his suspicions that Post Office Ltd had brought cases against sub-postmasters with ‘inadequate investigation and inadequate evidence’. The requested files had still not been handed over to Second Sight 18 months later.

In March 2015, on the eve of the Second Sight report publication, Private Eye reported that the Post Office had instructed Second Sight to end their investigation, destroy all paperwork and scrapped the independent committee that had been convened.

In 2019, a class action case, Bates & Ors v Post Office Ltd, was settled by the Post Office in favour of the 550 sub-postmasters for over £58 million.

Mr Justice Fraser, the judge in the case concluded that the approach of the Post Office: “amounted, in reality, to bare assertions and denials that ignore what has actually occurred, at least so far as the witnesses called before me in the Horizon Issues trial are concerned. It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat.”

Mr Justice Fraser, so concerned by what he had seen in the case, has passed a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In the Lords, Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom said in November 2019: “My own suggestion is that the government should clear out the entirety of the board and senior management of the Post Office and start again, perhaps with the assistance of consultancy services from Second Sight, who know where the bodies are buried.”.

Having been handed a CBE for services to the Post Office, and moved out into other senior positions in government and healthcare, it is only right that this award is now withdrawn through the process of forfeiture.

Paula Vennells has subsequently refused to answer questions from these staff as well as the media and has refused to apologise for the cover-up, misery and trauma caused which has brought not only herself but the Post Office, the honours system and government into disrepute.

Source: Petition to strip former Post Office boss Paula Vennells of CBE passes 1 million signatures | ITV News


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Met police apologises, compensates women arrested at Sarah Everard vigil

Orwellian: police at Clapham Common weren’t actually stamping on Patsy Stevenson’s face, but they might as well have been.

It seems Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley wants to draw a line under his service’s shameful treatment of women. It may not be that easy.

But while the Met has issued an apology and “substantial” payouts to Patsy Stevenson and Dania al-Obeid, who were arrested at a vigil for Sarah Everard in 2021, both have said they will continue to “speak up about police abuse”.

Ms Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by then-serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, who is now serving a whole-life prison sentence for his crimes.

Ms Stevenson and Ms al-Obeid attended the vigil on Clapham Common while Covid-19 restrictions were in place in March 2021 because they felt women had been “badly let down”, and the Met has now officially admitted that this was “understandable”.

In letters to the two women from Commander Karen Findlay, the Met acknowledged that even during Covid, their “fundamental right to protest remained”, but noted that the pandemic “presented an extremely difficult challenge for policing and the officers present”. It added: “That aside, I appreciate the anger, frustration and alarm your arrest undoubtedly caused you, exacerbated by the subsequent proceedings.”

Ms Stevenson tweeted:

The Guardian reported,

On Wednesday, Stevenson expressed relief that this chapter of the “tiring” fight was over, but said that while the apology was welcome, it was “half-arsed”. She added that the controversial Public Order Act had “further eroded and undermined” citizens’ fundamental right to protest.

“Every step has been a huge hurdle, so I appreciate what they’ve said, but […] even if you go through a [legal battle], they still won’t hold themselves accountable for what they’ve done. But this is a very big win for us, and for everyone who attended the vigil.”

And Ms al-Obeid was reported as receiving the information in the following way:

Al-Obeid, who was handcuffed and arrested at the vigil, discovered that she had been convicted behind closed doors under the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) only after being contacted by media.

She challenged the conviction on the grounds that she had no opportunity to plead not guilty, and the case was then dropped by the CPS and her “crime” removed from the record. She called the apology “empowering”, but said victims of abuse needed more support that could not be provided by the police.

“The police are not the right organisation to be on the frontline for victims of violence. They just end up re-traumatising them,” said Al-Obeid, herself a victim of domestic abuse. “There is a real need for specialised resources to deal with these situations.

“I will continue speaking out about the abuse that goes on in police forces and their lack of support for victims of abuse.”

The covert conviction under the Single Justice Procedure is deeply concerning in itself.

How many other people have been convicted of crimes without even knowing they had been accused?

That in itself suggests that the apology from the Met is hollow.

Also in the news today is this:

Scotland Yard has admitted overusing its power to strip-search children after four of its officers were told they would face disciplinary proceedings over allegations that their search of a 15-year-old black schoolgirl known as Child Q was inappropriate and amounted to discrimination owing to her race and sex.

Remember this story?

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said three of the officers faced accusations of gross misconduct over the search, carried out at a school in Hackney, in east London, in December 2020. A fourth officer faces lesser misconduct action over the absence of an appropriate adult.

It is alleged that the decision to carry out the strip-search, while the girl was having her period, was inappropriate; that Child Q was treated differently because of her race and sex; that there was no appropriate adult present; and that the officers did not get authorisation from a supervisor.

So disciplinary proceedings are to begin, nearly three years after the incident.

This Writer can’t see the result affecting the careers of those involved.

At the rate the case is proceeding, they will all have retired long before any verdict is reached.

Source: Met police pays damages to women arrested at Sarah Everard vigil | Metropolitan police | The Guardian


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Why did Met Police strip-search so many children – and then lie about it?

Police: was it really necessary for them to strip-search so many children?

There cannot be a good explanation for this:

In 2021, the Met Police carried out 269 “More Thorough Searches that expose Intimate Parts” on children. It previously reported the number as 99.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said last month the Met had “misused” the power.

The issue was recently scrutinised by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England.

She found that across the country, there were “systemic problems with transparency, scrutiny and non-compliance with guidelines when children were being strip-searched under stop-and-search powers”.

Pastor Lorraine Jones, CEO of the Dwayne Simpson Foundation, a Brixton-based organisation that aims to steer young people away from crime, called the misreported figures a “disgrace”.

She asked what kind of aftercare and compensation was given to such children and questioned how the Met could regain community trust over the issue of intimate searches of minors.

It can’t, as far as This Writer can see.

It tells us that the officers who carried out these searches may not be serious officials carrying out a duty, but are more likely to be a bunch of paedophiles who’ve put themselves in uniform to force youngsters to accept mistreatment that they otherwise would not have to.

Can anyone prove me wrong?


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Investigation launched against four Met Police officers who strip-searched black schoolgirl

All four Metropolitan Police officers who strip-searched a 15-year-old black schoolgirl while she was on her period are now being investigated for gross misconduct, it has been revealed.

It had been claimed that the girl, known as Child Q, smelled strongly of cannabis and may have been in possession of drugs.

So police were called to her school and subjected her to an intimate body search without any other adults present.

The incident took place almost two years ago but only came to light in March this year after a safeguarding report was published. This Site has previously reported on the incident here.

The Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review found that the strip search should never have happened, was unjustified, and racism “was likely to have been an influencing factor”.

“Four constables have now been advised that they are being investigated for potential breaches of the police standards of professional behaviour at the level of gross misconduct,” the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) said.

However, it added that this “does not necessarily mean that disciplinary proceedings will follow”.

“We are looking at complaints that her mother was not given the opportunity to be present during the strip search, and that there was no other appropriate adult present,” it added.

“We are also considering whether the child’s ethnicity played a part in the officers’ decision to strip search her.”

If the officers are found to have breached policing standards, they could be dismissed from their jobs.

Source: Investigation launched against four Met Police officers who strip-searched black schoolgirl

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Lords upset Tory plan to strip people of UK citizenship without warning

Priti Patel: does she look like a reasonable person to you? No? Then she’s not likely to persuade the Lords to accept her racist plan to change immigration law.

Here’s a sticky mess for the Tories – their hugely controversial plan to strip people of their UK citizenship, without warning, has been overturned in the House of Lords.

According to the BBC,

The Nationality and Borders Bill would allow the UK authorities to strip someone of their British citizenship without warning.

But crossbench peer Baroness D’Souza, who argued this would be “unjust”, submitted an amendment which was passed by a majority of 44 votes.

The bill will now go back to the House of Commons.

Until the two Houses can agree on the final wording of the bill, it cannot pass into law.

This is known as “Parliamentary ping-pong” – a frivolous phrase for a process that can cause a huge amount of harm to a huge number of people.

In practise, the government would normally steamroll over the Lords’ objections – but it seems Priti Patel doesn’t have time for that.

The current Parliamentary session is expected to end within the next few weeks, and all its business will end with it – whether it has been concluded or not.

So Patel will need to work out whether she’ll need to make compromises before the Lords give up.

She is adamant that the change is needed as a matter of national security, but we can all see that this is nonsense – can’t we?

Minority groups say the Bill is an attempt to turn them into second-class citizens, to be dismissed from the UK at the whim of an uncaring (racist?) Tory government.

So the Lords are unlikely to cave in if they have a good chance to kill this legislation, and Patel is not known for giving ground in a reasonable way.

This will be worth watching.

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Child Q: is ‘lack of urgency’ minister waiting for inquiry to get police off the hook?

Kit Malthouse: does he look like he cares about anything?

Policing minister Kit Malthouse has been – rightly – slammed for repeatedly saying the Government must wait for the outcome of a police watchdog report into the traumatic strip search of a black schoolgirl.

In December 2020, police – two male, two female – were called by teachers at a secondary school in Hackney, who believed a girl was carrying drugs because they could smell cannabis.

She was subjected to what seems clearly a deliberately humiliating strip-search. She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough.

She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.

No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer.

The experience left the girl traumatised, in therapy and self-harming.

Answering an urgent question in Parliament, Malthouse condemned the “distressing” incident, saying she “could have been any one of our relatives”.

But he insisted that the government had to wait for a report into the incident, on which the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has already been working for 10 months.

He said the police officers involved had a right to “due process”, which is all well and good – but justice delayed is justice denied, and doesn’t Child Q have a right to justice?

And despite a safeguarding review into the matter producing a series of recommendations for the Government and police to act upon, Malthouse insisted there was doubt whether the police have a specific problem or a systemic problem relating to their policies and practices.

“It is the role of the independent police watchdog – the Independent Office for Police Conduct – to investigate serious matters involving the police and the IOPC has said it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this particular case,” he said.

“We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We would, of course, expect any findings to be acted upon swiftly but it’s vital that we don’t prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process – so it would be wrong for me to make any comment on the case in question at this time.”

This Writer wonders whether Malthouse is simply hoping the IOPC will find a way to exonerate the officers involved (one of whom, it seems, was male – in a gross violation of police rules).

And he did not respond to a call to publish data on the number of times children are strip-searched. Why not?

Other MPs saw matters differently – not that he should not comment until the inquiry had been completed but that he should life a finger or two to bring the matter to that conclusion:

Labour MP for Eltham, Clive Efford, criticised Mr Malthouse for having a “wait and see attitude”, and said: “I feel like we’ve woken the minister from an afternoon nap to come in and make this statement”.

He added: “There’s a complete lack of urgency in his approach. It is quite clear that there are areas now where the Government can act; why isn’t the minister coming to this house to explain to us just exactly what he’s going to do, rather than this wait and see attitude?”

It seems clear that Malthouse’s fellow Tories felt no need to enact justice for Child Q. Only one Conservative MP turned up to the discussion – Jackie Doyle-Price – and her contribution was to ask what the minister would do to ensure the Metropolitan Police changes its practices.

Underlying this lack of activity there must be the same question that underlies the reasons for the humiliation and trauma of the strip-search of a menstruating teenage girl.

Is it because she is black?

Source: Child Q: Minister slammed for ‘lack of urgency’ over police strip-search of Black girl

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After black girl was strip-searched at school, can the Tories really deny structural racism?

No to racism: but Boris Johnson is widely-held to be a huge racist himself, so his government’s response to accusations of structural racism in the UK’s institutions may not be a surprise.

Let’s set the scene:

One investigation by the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership has happened and its report has formed the basis of news coverage. Another, by the Independent Office of Police Conduct, was started in May and is in the process of being finalised. The three officers directly involved – one of whom, it appears, was male – remain on full duties. Why?

This incident occurred in December 2020, when police – two male, two female – were called by teachers at a secondary school in Hackney, who believed she was carrying drugs because they could smell cannabis.

She was then subjected to what seems clearly a deliberately humiliating strip-search. Labour MP Diane Abbott puts it straight:

She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough. She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.

No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer. Her mother told the local child safeguarding review that the experience had left her daughter traumatised. Her aunt added: “I see the change from a happy-go-lucky girl to a timid recluse that hardly speaks to me.” She said the girl was now in therapy and that she self-harms.

The search took place without the presence of an appropriate adult – a person to safeguard the interests, rights, entitlements and welfare of children who are suspected of a criminal offence, by ensuring that they are treated in a fair and just manner and are able to participate effectively. Teachers were outside the room and parents of the girl, known as Child Q, knew nothing about the incident at the time.

The report by the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) contains the following further findings:

  • The police officers involved should have contacted superior officers for permission before carrying out the strip-search; there is no evidence that this happened.
  • The person conducting the search must be of the same sex as the person being searched; if three police officers are under investigation but only two of those who arrived at the school were female, then we must question whether a male officer was involved.
  • Searches involving exposure of intimate parts of the body must not be conducted as a routine extension of a less thorough search, simply because nothing is found in the course of the initial search; this one was.
  • Searches involving exposure of intimate parts of the body may be carried out only at a nearby police station or other nearby location which is out of public view (but not a police vehicle); it appears this one was not.
  • It is likely that school staff knew a further search of Child Q would be undertaken by the attending officers, but it is unlikely that the school was informed by the attending police officers of the intention to strip-search Child Q.
  • It is likely that the importance of the Appropriate Adult role was insufficiently explained to either Child Q or the school staff present.
  • There is no evidence that Child Q was resistant to the search undertaken by school staff or that there were any indicators in her behaviour that she might be hiding drugs on her person.

We now discover that the IOPC investigation began in May last year – 10 months ago – after a referral from the Met to check whether “legislation, policies and procedures” were followed. The three officers concerned were informed that they were being investigated for misconduct.

One wonders why it has taken 10 months – so far – and still failed to come to a conclusion.

In such situations – where discrimination has been alleged – statutory guidance calls for an investigation into gross misconduct, rather than just misconduct – and this has now been requested by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

There is so much wrong with this case that it is hard to know where to start.

Paramount must be the question of whether Child Q would have suffered anything like the same traumatic experience if she had been white.

The CHSCP report makes it clear that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search”.

And this all came into public knowledge right before the government announced its response to an inquiry that found that there is no structural racism in the UK’s institutions.

The document, ironically (it seems) entitled Inclusive Britain, took a panning from the pundits on the BBC’s Politics Live yesterday. This is a seven-minute clip but it is well worth watching in full:

 

The report contains 70 recommendations but they are vague: the government will stop using the acronym “BAME” (Black And Minority Ethnic), it will create a few panels and do some research, have some pilot schemes and create some frameworks.

Stella Creasy’s comment from the top of this article was taken from this discussion. She made it clear that after what happened to Child Q, politicians “pontificating about whether or not we have an issue with structural racism doesn’t feel very real”.

The report, as Ms Creasy said, does not accord with what people in communities are saying.

Its measures do nothing to deal with racism but are simply “tinkering round so the government can feel like it is doing something”.

And apparently it even denies that slavery happened!

Given the humiliation and traumatisation of Child Q because of a smell, one cannot see this as anything but another slap in the face of people who suffer racism – and of those of us who want to end it.

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Patel plan to secretly strip people of UK citizenship is ‘offence to justice’ after court ruling

The Court of Appeal has struck down a Home Office decision to remove a British woman of her citizenship without telling her.

Home Secretary Priti Patel had tried to argue that notification had been given to D4, who has been detained in the Roj camp in Syria since January 2019, by simply placing a note on her Home Office file.

D4 was born in the UK in 1967 and had British nationality from birth, along with Pakistani nationality. The decision to strip her of British citizenship was made on December 27, 2019 but her solicitors were only informed when they wrote to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in September 2020, asking for help in repatriating her.

The Home Office’s claim relied on regulations that had been introduced by statutory instrument, without parliamentary approval.

But the court said the British Nationality Act 1981 required written notice to be given to someone of a decision to strip them of their citizenship and only parliament could decide to alter that requirement.

Lady Justice Whipple said: “The 1981 act does not confer powers of such breadth that the home secretary can deem notice to have been given where no step at all has been taken to communicate the notice to the person concerned and the order has simply been put on the person’s Home Office file. To permit that would be to permit the statute to be subverted by secondary legislation.”

Whipple said the purpose for requirement to give notice in the 1981 act was that “the person needs to know that a decision has been made; the person is entitled to know the reasons for that decision; and the person is put on notice of their appeal rights”.

This should have serious consequences for Patel’s current plan to remove the requirement to give notice – including retrospectively – as described in Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill.

The ruling states that British justice requires a person to be told their nationality has been removed, to be given the reason for that decision, and to be told how they may appeal.

Failure to provide that information is an offence to justice.

Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, the charity representing people who suffer extreme human rights abuses (and note that this means the Home Office subject D4 to extreme abuse) said the decision confirmed that stripping a UK national of their citizenship in secret is illegal.

“But the government is already cynically attempting to circumvent the courts by using Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill to render this ruling moot, making a mockery of the rule of law.

“Ministers should change course and recognise that depriving people of their citizenship without even telling them is an affront to British principles of justice and fairness.”

And what are ministers actually doing?

They are seeking permission from the Supreme Court to appeal against the ruling. The UK’s government has nothing but contempt for the rule of law.

Source: UK unlawfully stripped woman of citizenship without telling her – court | Home Office | The Guardian

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Priti Patel has stuffed her anti-protest Bill with even MORE dictatorial attacks on liberty

Priti Patel: beneath that smug smile lurks nothing but pure evil. And nearly 14 million people wholeheartedly voted for her to strip them of their human rights and liberties.

Who knew that Boris Johnson’s Tory government, elected on a landslide because it promised us “sunlit uplands” of freedom, would prove to be the greatest threat to liberty in the history of the United Kingdom?

Well… Vox Political did, obviously, because I wrote about it before the 2019 general election. Perhaps people were deterred from reading it by the constant lies about This Writer being an anti-Semite, or the lies that only the Tory-biased mass media could possibly be able to give you the facts.

At the time, I wrote: “Page 48 of the Conservative Party manifesto… states: “We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government.” It means: We will remove your right to protest against our dictatorship and if you try to stop us, we will use the police and the armed forces to PUT YOU DOWN.

“If you vote Conservative on December 12, that is what you are demanding.”

And nearly 14 million people, led by the nose by people like Laura Kuenssberg, Andrew Marr and Robert Peston, merrily voted away the hard-won liberties enjoyed by the other 54 million of us as well.

Now we find that, having already introduced dictatorial anti-protest measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill last March, Home Secretary Priti Patel has apparently decided, halfway through its progress through Parliament, that it is not harsh enough and has amended it to make it even worse.

And this is a Bill that proposes outlawing protest that makes any noise or disturbs, in any way, a single person (thereby obviating the point of any protest, which is to draw attention to the issue under protest)!

Here’s Nadia Whittome with the headlines:

So “stop and search” powers, currently used by police if they have “reasonable grounds for suspecting” someone is carrying certain items or something which could be used to violate certain laws, like burglary or theft – and habitually abused by them to victimise people of colour – are being expanded, rather than restricted.

The Bill proposes that they now be used “whether or not the constable has any grounds for suspecting that the person… is carrying a prohibited object” in order to avoid “serious disruption” or a “public nuisance”. So police will be able to stop and search anybody, for any reason that comes into their heads.

Anyone obstructing a stop and search during a protest risks imprisonment for nearly a year. This is how dictatorships behave.

Two new amendments appear to be intended to stop the Insulate Britain protesters who have been supergluing themselves to roads – but the wording is so loose that it may be used indiscriminately against the general public.

So Amendment 319A creates an offence of “locking on”, or carrying equipment which might facilitate it, targeting anyone who attaches themselves to “a person, to an object or to land”. It could equally be applied to protestors who link arms during a sit-down protest, or even hold hands – or to people walking past a protest, having nothing to do with it, who just happen to be carrying a fixative of any kind. Such a person could also find him- or herself in prison for 51 weeks.

Isn’t it handy for Patel that outlawing the kind of protest carried out by Suffragettes a century ago means she’ll be able to get on and deport all those black people she hates so much, without being stopped by people blocking the road outside detention centres. She knew what she was doing.

And then there’s the new ASBO for people who want to protest against Tory dictatorship:

The most far-reaching and alarming part of the legislation is called an SDPO, or Serious Disruption Prevention Order. It is one of the most egregious assaults on individual freedom we’ve seen in modern legislation.

An SDPO is basically a protest Asbo. It can be imposed on anyone convicted of a “protest-related offence”. This category alone is extremely broad. It potentially applies, under the provisions of the bill itself, to the examples above – possessing superglue near a demonstration, or holding hands during a protest.

even that is not enough. Amendment 342M.2.iii allows it to be imposed on people whose activities “were likely to result in serious disruption”. In other words, you do not even have to have been convicted of a crime. You do not even need to have caused disruption. It’s enough that you might have.

Once the order is imposed, it eradicates your rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Those under an order can be forced to report to the authorities whenever the courts demand it, as often as they demand it. They must “present themselves to a particular person at a particular place at… particular times on particular days”.

They can also be prohibited from being at a certain place, or possessing certain items, or participating in certain activities, or socialising with certain people, for up to two years. They can be blocked from using the internet to “encourage” people to “carry out activities related to a protest”. Someone who used their social media account to promote a demonstration could be found in breach of the order. The SDPOs are a full-scale assault on the individual’s human rights. And they can apply even if they’ve never been convicted of a crime.

So that’s be it for This Writer; I have written in support of many protests in the past, including those attacking Tory government crimes against liberty.

And if the people who voted this dictatorship saw reports of protesters being jailed under these proposed new powers, what do you think they’d say?

They would say the protesters – or innocent bystanders – deserved it because their protest was against the law – as though it always had been.

These people never seem to learn from their mistakes.

Imagine their surprise and shock when the Tories take their houses away from them to pay for social care (or name any other recent Tory attack on poor/working class people) and they feel the same law applied to them when they try to oppose it.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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