As I’ve stated here before, I’m neither a member or a supporter of the Britain First (BF) group as I’m not comfortable with their background in Ulster loyalist politics, their party’s policies, their funders or their style of activism. However, no matter what I or anyone else think of them, I think it would be fair to say that they do not pose as much danger to either the nation or the general public as that posed by the thousands of Islamic extremists that exist and operate in the United Kingdom.

Therefore I was surprised to see that vital and valuable assets from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) were apparently assigned to babysit Britain First leader Paul Golding over an extremely questionable claim that he had breached his bail conditions by wanting to travel to Northern Ireland for the start of the Protestant ‘marching season’. The use of highly trained SO15 officers to do a job that a normal warranted police constable could do strikes me as a massive waste of specialist police resources. These resources could and should have been put to far better use in dealing with the massive problems that Britain has with Islamic extremists.

The diversion of specialist officers to deal with Mr Golding’s case regarding the alleged breach of bail conditions strikes me as overkill. It looks even more like a waste of resources when one realises that when Mr Golding challenged this allegation of a breach at a Magistrates court using documentary evidence, the magistrate threw the Crown’s case out of court.

As I said, I’ve little personal time for BF, it’s not a club I would wish to join, but I can’t help thinking that this breach allegation looks more than a little like police and state harassment of Mr Golding. Dealing with Mr Golding and the claim that he had broke his bail conditions could have been done by any competent warranted police officer. There was little need as I see it for this to be an SO15 matter. Mr Golding may not be to everyone’s taste, some such as myself may disagree with his politics or activism style and some others may even think that he’s a bit of an arsehole, but he doesn’t seem to be a terrorist of any description. He’s not trying, in the words of the Terrorism Act 2000, to endanger life and property or threatening to do so. He wanted to travel to the Orange Parades which although they are something that some people may disagree with, are at the end of the day, legal events. I can, to some extent, see the logic from the Crown’s side that the presence of Mr Golding may have intensified tensions in the province of Ulster, but I doubt that Mr Golding would have really added much more to that tension which is already there.

It does appear that Mr Golding is being kept on a much shorter leash than similar offenders would be kept on by the police and the criminal justice system and that is something that should give everyone who is concerned that our justice system should be equitable, cause to worry. The use of SO15 officers in this context really does seem inappropriate in the extreme. I wonder how many investigations into potentially explosive ‘Abdul’s’ or ‘Mohammed’s’ have been robbed of specialist manpower because of the use of these officers to babysit a man during a case that was proven to be completely specious? Whilst I concur that Britain needs specialist police officers to deal with the problems of terrorism, shouldn’t they be used for this purpose rather than following Paul Golding around for a day? I hope nobody dies in an Islamic terror attack because vital specialist officers were taken away from more worthwhile work to do a job that an officer fresh out of Hendon could do.

Here’s Paul Golding’s video explaining from his viewpoint his experience with the officers of SO15