When I rang Northamptonshire Police in regards to the allegation that certainly one of their officers had threatened to disrupt a committee meeting of democratically elected local councillors, a recorded message told callers that they might be asked about their “protected characteristics” under the Equality Act.
Christian Concern’s legal arm is supporting a criticism by Conservative councillor Anthony Stevens to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in regards to the alleged behaviour of Northants cops.Â
Christian Concern said on May 20 that the criticism launched by Cllr Stevens, 51, from Wellingborough, called for an investigation into the “methods, motives and conduct” of officers at Northamptonshire police.
“The evidence included a series of incidents where officers openly stated that they desired to ‘remove’ Cllr Stevens as an elected councillor due to his free speech beliefs,” the organisation said.
“The story involves arrests, interrogations, media censorship, and collusion between cops and Labour party activists.”
The Mail on Sunday had already broken the story of the IOPC criticism a day earlier: “Anthony Stevens, a Conservative councillor in Northamptonshire, was arrested last yr after posting a picture from a video – first revealed by The Mail on Sunday – of a Christian preacher having his bible wrested off him by police on the street.
“The father of two was held for nine hours, during which he was also quizzed about his online support of one other politician (King Lawal, a Conservative member of North Northamptonshire Unitary Council) who criticised gay pride events. Mr Stevens, 51, a member of Wellingborough Town Council, was released and later told that no further motion could be taken against him.”
The paper went on to report that days before Mr Stevens was arrested, a Northamptonshire Police detective phoned the previous local Tory mayor for Wellingborough, Jonathan Ekins, and allegedly told him Mr Stevens needs to be “removed” as a councillor “due to his views”.
In a press release to the IOPC, Mr Ekins claimed that Detective Constable Amelia Thompson had told him Mr Stevens was about to be arrested “for a serious offence”.
In a later call, it was alleged that Mr Stevens had breached his bail conditions by attending a council committee meeting similtaneously a Labour councillor who had complained about his tweets. Mr Ekins says he was told that if Mr Stevens were to show up at one other meeting attended by the Labour councillor, he could be arrested “on the spot”.
Mr Ekins said: “My response was, rightly, to remind DC Thompson that she could be welcome to try but that, as chair of the committee, I actually have the fitting to…instruct security officials to remove the police for public disruption of a democratically constituted meeting.”
A Northants police spokeswoman sent me the identical statement she gave The MoS: “This investigation is subject to a live criticism and until that matter is concluded, we’re unable to comment further.”
I asked her whether an officer could be suspended if she or he had been accused of threatening to disrupt a Stonewall meeting. She said quite reasonably that complaints are handled on a case-by-case basis. But we could say for a moment that this had happened and that a criticism against an officer had subsequently come from an LGBT group. Can any objective journalist seriously doubt that this is able to lead to a direct suspension in any UK police force?
Northants police could also be more blatantly politically correct than most forces with its upfront message about “protected characteristics” under the Equality Act, however the recent behaviour of many cops across the country surely indicates how far forces have departed from Peelite principles, which were ethically Christian in character.
It is well price reading historian Norman Gash’s description of Robert Peel’s founding of the Metropolitan Police as Home Secretary in 1829, especially in view of the choice by police forces to permit antisemitic marches across the country for the reason that October 2023 Hamas terror atrocity in Israel. The extract below may ring a bell with victims of the police pampering of eco-fanatics that has prevented law-abiding members of the general public from attending to work and elsewhere:
“On the evening of 29 September 1829 Londoners saw the brand new Metropolitan Police, of their blue uniforms and iron-framed top hats, on their beats for the primary time. They were inevitably objects of interest and, with some sections of the general public, of outright hostility…Once the early difficulties and unpopularity were over, the respect and trust which the London police won from the general public was proof of the worth of the ‘preventive’ principle just because the nickname of ‘Bobby’ or ‘Peeler’ was a tribute to the person who was the founding father of the force. From being a hated and ‘un-English’ importation, the Bobby on the beat by the early Victorian period had been accepted half-humorously, half-affectionately as a British institution, an immediately identifiable figure within the mythology of popular jokes, cartoons, and street ballads” (Peel, Longman, 1976).
Commenting on the criticism against Northamptonshire Police, Christian Concern chief executive, Andrea Minichiello Williams, summed up why the organisation is supporting Cllr Stevens: “The idea of the police storming and arresting a councillor during a planning committee meeting is farcical, but on this case it was a real and real threat and due to this fact terrifying for those involved. Be assured that if this is occurring in Northampton, it’s going to be happening in other parts of the country. The culture being set within the police force needs to alter.”
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
