Essex Police may come to regret sending two of its officers to the door of a respected and award-winning journalist to inform her she was being investigated for a year-old tweet, now that this visit has triggered a wave of both national and international horror. Not least because it took place on Remembrance Sunday, when Britons commemorate those who died for freedom, among other things.
Allison Pearson was still in her dressing gown when she answered the door to the officers, whose time would have been much better spent elsewhere, and her neighbours were watching from the other side of the street while she was accused of committing a “non-crime hate incident” (NCHI).
The officers were not allowed to reveal which—allegedly “racist”—post on Twitter/X Pearson was being investigated for. Only that it was a year old.
Nor did they reveal the name of the person who made the complaint against her—or, as they put it, the “victim.”
Even these two upholders of the law were a little dumbfounded by the whole situation, as Pearson reported in her latest column in The Daily Telegraph:
The two policemen exchanged glances [after Pearson asked how she was supposed to defend herself without knowing which post had caused the anonymous “victim” offence]. Clearly, the Kafkaesque situation made no sense to them, either. I think, even by then, they dimly surmised they had picked on the wrong lady.
They would have been right to think so.
Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk led the backlash after Pearson went public with her story, describing it as “insane” and posting—as many others now have since:
Make Orwell Fiction Again.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also said:
On Remembrance Sunday of all days, when we remember those who fell for democracy and freedom of speech, it is outrageous that Allison Pearson had to face police officers on her doorstep as the result of a freely expressed opinion.
This is Orwellian in the extreme. I’m absolutely appalled that Allison and others like her have to live in fear for months without ever being told what has been said against them. People must be worried sick. We are very much in the territory of a thought crime here, where the accusers are called ‘victims.’
William Clouston, leader of the economically left-leaning and culturally traditional Social Democratic Party, fumed that it was particularly difficult for the police to defend their pursuits of so-called non-crime hate incidents “amid the stabbings, machete attacks, unsolved thefts and street robberies.” Indeed, Pearson has revealed that since her story went to press, Essex residents have got in touch with her to say that officers declined to come out to them when they suffered at the hands of actual criminals, simply giving a crime number over the phone instead.
“Maybe,” she joked, “if they posted an irate tweet the police would show up.”
Broadcaster Sue Cook stressed that “we have to fight back against this crazy tyranny before it’s too late.”
The Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath, meanwhile, has suggested “the left-wing human rights project so beloved of Tony Blair and [Labour prime minister] Keir Starmer” is partly to blame for witch hunts like these. Starmer really must now speak out against this case and put a stop to NCHIs altogether, unless he wants the backlash to get worse. But there is likely no one who believes he will follow this course.
