Update: It looks as if the Met have been publicly shamed into reopening this case. More details HERE. Whether the police will actively push ahead with this case once the initial fuss dies down is another matter though.
As many regular readers will know I’m somewhat of a free speech fundamentalist. Individuals should be able to say what they damned well want in the vast majority of cases. Because I’m a free speech fundamentalist I’ll stand up for the free speech rights of some of the most awful people around, people whom I vehemently disagree with and quite frankly want nothing to do with.
But there is a couple of caveats to my fundamentalism. The first is that there must be some remedy or sanction against those who commit gross and knowing libel and who originated rather than innocently shared such libel. The second caveat is the threatening of immediate and credible violence, not merely edgy rhetoric, against persons or property. I believe that in order to make Britain’s speech laws as free as practical then Britain’s libel laws need to be similar to those of the United States and which have a quite high bar to legal libel action when compared to the UK. Also there needs to be, as in the case of the USA, only those restrictions on speech that are considered essential such as a prohibition on inciting immediate and credible violence.
Sadly I believe that it will be a long time before Britain cleans up its libel laws and ceases to be the place for the few who are ultra wealthy to go in order to silence their critics whilst leaving libel actions unaffordable for the many. However we do already have laws that prohibit making threats of violence. The problem is that these laws are either being ignored by some police forces or in the case of London’s Metropolitan Police, using these law extremely selectively.
A good example of the Met Police using the law selectively according to what social demographic an alleged offender belongs to was to be had at the weekend during ‘Trans Pride’. On this occasion it appears that the Met Police have failed to arrest or question a trans activist who called for women who disagree with the gender cult to be ‘punched in the face’.
According to various reports online the threat to women who disagree with him was made by a man with the moniker of Sarah Jane Baker. Mr Baker (yes he’s a bloke I will not use female pronouns for him) is not just your regular violent troon activist, of which there are many, he’s an ex-con troon activist who was imprisoned for kidnap and torture offences, but who was released on licence after serving a considerable number of years inside. This deranged individual also cut off and ate his own testicles whilst in prison because of his own all consuming paraphiliac belief that he ‘should be’ a woman.
Baker got up onto a platform at Trans Pride, an event I need to point out that has been publicly supported by the Greater London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and said: ‘If you see a TERF then punch them in the face’.
What this troon did was not merely edgy rhetoric such as saying ‘politician x from party y’ should have his head on a spike’ it was both a credible threat of violence and an immediate one because of the long recognised propensity of trans activists to get violent with opponents. The Metropolitan Police should have acted upon this threat both because of its inherent nature, the credibility of it and because of the nature of the individual, a convicted violent criminal, making this threat.
Unfortunately for Londoners, and for women in particular, the Met Police doesn’t seem that interested in acting against a violent ex-con threatening violence against women who disagree with his delusion that he isn’t a man. When a user of the Mumsnet platform put in a complaint to the Met about their lack of action against the violent troon Baker, the user got back from the Met a load of guff about freedom of expression (which inciting violence is not) and which included a misreading of what a protected characteristic is and saying that although it might be possible that this troon might be committing a Section Five Public Order Act (threatening behaviour) offence, the police were not going to progress the case any further.
Here is the reply that the Mumsnet user allegedly received from an acting Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police.
What the Met have done is a gobsmacking example of double standards. Many will be well aware that the Met is extremely swift in arresting people for making comments both online and in real life that are orders of magnitude less serious than threatening to punch women in the face. The Met, along with many other forces unfortunately, have no problem with going after people who misgender trans activists and trans individuals or make disparaging remarks about certain religions favoured by the State. The Met also have an ongoing bad reputation for policing double standards at Speakers Corner where violent and aggressive Muslims are rarely if ever arrested or otherwise sanctioned.
In addition the Metropolitan Police have a bad PR image where women are concerned. There have in the last few years been at least three Met officers or officers who have served in the Met who have been convicted of rape and other sexual offences. There have also been serving and former Met officers who have been implicated in CSE offences. Also there is the ongoing fall out from the presence in the Met of an officer who then went onto murder a woman who was walking alone on a street and where the former officer used his warrant card and his police status to intimidate the victim into complying with him.
The Met could have improved it’s incredibly dire public image with women following Baker’s threat of violence at Trans Pride. This man Baker could have been arrested and charged under Section Five at the very least but the police refused to do so. The Met basically refused to act against an individual with a known record of violence inciting others who have a known reputation for using violence instead of debate. If London’s women wanted to know whose side the Metropolitan Police are on then the Met’s failure to act against a credible threat of violence to women must surely give them the answer, even if it’s not the answer that they should be getting.
This case of the Met failing to act against violent trans activists is now going very viral indeed with negative comments about this inaction by the Met starting to come in from all over the place. There have also been calls for Baker to have his licence revoked and to be recalled to gaol because of the threat that he issued.
It might be the case, hopefully, that more senior officers other than an Acting Sergeant, get hold of this case and take action against Baker. But the Met is now so utterly politically bent and so welded to identity politics, including trans identity politics, that I will be surprised if the Met do what they are supposed to and crack down on men who threaten violence against the women who disagree with them.
It probably fails because no named individual was mentioned. They are in all likelihood acting within the law, which however much you & I agree is week in this matter ( and others) is still the law.
There is a law of Unintended Consequences. Prosecute him for this and the risk exists that somebody with whom we agree will be prosecuted for making the same vague incitement to violence.
Your point would have had more validity if the Met had not a bad reputation for going after people who have made less worse comments about stuff than this man Baker has. The Met are quite willing to come down hard on those who merely criticise Islam or the cult of trans for example but sit by when there is a credible threat of violence coming from Baker. They’ve also had to be pushed to act in other cases as well such as the pro ‘Palestine’ lot who threatened to rape Jewish women and when a BLM protestor desecrated the Cenotaph.
I’m well aware that there could be unintended consequences of legislation but surely reasonable people should agree that inciting violence is not on no matter who does it.
This “Julian Le Good” is a regular and deceitful pain. Calling on others to physically attack people because of their beliefs, supposed beliefs, or for any reason whatever – is “incitement to violence”. If anyone called for attacks on a religious group or on vegans, cyclists etc – they would be arrested, and JLG knows this. (I have seen footage of a trans-activist loudly threatening women while a police officer stood there and did nothing: High time that the public became aware that – like MSM “journalists” – too many police officers are now little more than highly-partial, deeply-prejudiced, Left-wing political activists.)
We should be playing the ball not the man here. However I don’t believe that he understands that what Baker said at Trans Pride really is incitement to violence and could have been actioned under the Public Order Act as mentioned in the ATL text. It may be that JLG is unaware of the long history going back at least a decade and a half of policing being politically biased. Those of us who have looked at the (very many) examples of the police doing nothing about the harassment of women who are only calling for their rights to be protected and then looked a how causes that are not favoured by the state are policed and policed often very harshly, know that the police not just in London but many other places are politically bent.
Anybody and the promoters of any cause, no matter who they are, if they credibily incite violence, should face the same penalty and thesame action. Unfortunately that’s not the case. If you are a trans activist then thefirst response of the Met to a TRA making threats of violence is to try and downgrade it and say ‘it’s nothing’ but if you were marching for example for better controlled borders or free speech or about the various rape gangs that operate in the UK and someone made a call for violence you can bet your last penny that the police would be sitting up and taking notice.
Well no, every demo attracts a few bad eggs and a small number of unrepresentative hand drawn posters which are then used by the opposition to demonstrate “that is what they are really about”.
Whilst I agree that you get bad eggs at demos such as the ‘bombs not jobs’ crew who used to turn up at CND demos or the Stalin society who attach themselves to left wing demos or the Communists who glommed on to the Wapping protestors or the muttering jackboot lickers that turn up for more right wing stuff, the difference between these oddballs and the violence inciting troon Baker is that the aforementioned loonies were not the centre of the protest. They might have exploited the protest but they were not the key part. Baker on the other hand he was being platformed by the organisers and being applauded by a worryingly large section of the crowd from what I can make out.
Unfortunately violence is too often not the last resort when it comes to Trans Rights Activists, it’s their first resort and but for the police there would be a lot of injured women from the various Let Women Speak protests with the injuries caused by the TRA’s.
In my very long experience of attending, recording and occasionally organising demonstrations I’m well aware that they attract nutters like a dog turd attracts flies. But CND didn’t platform the ‘bombs not jobs’ anarchist crew and neither did the anti Thatcher demos give the Stalin Society a great welcome nor did the mainstream Wapping protestors give the revolutionary Marxists a centre stage position and Tommy Robinson did not back in the day knowingly platform the neo-Nazi headcases. When it comes to the Trans Pride event, the organisers were quite happy for Baker to do his schtick and call for violence and that makes for a massive difference.