A statement from Essex Police:
Officers attended an address in Essex and invited a woman to come to a voluntary interview.
They said it related to an investigation into an alleged offence of inciting racial hatred, linked to a post on social media.
…As this was a call to set up an interview, no extra details were given. That’s because we have to follow the law and make sure that everyone’s rights and entitlements, in particular to seek legal advice, were respected.
This is the right way to do things – it’s the correct procedure as set out by the Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE).
Fuller details of an alleged offence are always provided prior to the commencement of a voluntary interview, under caution. That allows those present to seek appropriate legal advice and representation if they wish to.
As part of our investigation, we’re liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service regarding an alleged offence which was reported to us by a member of the public. This is an investigative stage review – nothing more.
As has been widely reported, the above refers to a police visit to the Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson last Sunday – an incident that has prompted reams of apocalyptic commentary about the how the UK is now comparable to the USSR under Stalin or (inevitably) to George Orwell’s dystopian vision. Pearson has endorsed Richard Tice MP’s description of her as “terrified and scared”.
The details are that on 16 November 2023 Pearson posted a Tweet (archived here) that incorporated a photo of two men of apparent Pakistani heritage shown holding a flag of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and posing with police. The photo was from August 2023 and had been taken in Manchester; Pearson described the men as “Jew haters”, it seems in the mistaken belief that the image showed protestors in London opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza after 7 October. It’s not clear how exactly she interpreted the flag – perhaps she thought it represented Hamas, but it’s also possible she thought it was a Palestinian national flag and that this in itself was sufficient evidence of being a “Jew hater”. According to the complainant, as quoted in the Guardian, “Her description of the two people of colour as Jew haters is racist and inflammatory”.
The Essex Police statement was made in response to Pearson’s own account as described on the front page of the Telegraph. Pearson complained about not having been given the details, and on one point her account is at odds with Essex Police: she says she had been told that the matter was being dealt with as a “non-crime hate incident”, althugh according to the force the officer actually said “It’s gone down as an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online. That would be the offence.” She also says that police referred to “the victim” rather than “the complainant” (so much for Henriques).
Although the Telegraph and allied media are relentlessly milking the incident (including the detail that the police called on Remembrance Sunday), the force’s actions do seem to me to be disproportionate. It might have been appropriate (although probably futile) for the police to have offered Pearson “words of advice” about her lack of care in throwing around allegations, but there was not enough of a case to answer for them to arrest her, and it seems unlikely that any case warranting a charge will emerge from a police interview – even if she declines to explain herself. Unlike the case of Bernie Spofforth, where it was reasonable for police to ask her about where her false information about “Ali Al-Shakati” had come from, Pearson’s post was obviously just a polemical (albeit ill-grounded [1]) extrapolation from a flag. (2)
But there is disproportion on both sides here. It would be natural for Pearson to feel apprehension, but “terrified” is excessive – especially given that she has an entire media ecosystem that includes former Prime Ministers (Boris Johnson and Liz Truss) and high-profile politicians fighting her corner. One problem is that people invest police procedure with too much significance, assuming that massive forensic and legal machinery is in play when in fact all that may be happening is low-level box-ticking. It can happen to anyone, and if more people understood this there would be less “no smoke without fire” stigma.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph has been looking for the complainant, who is not named by the Guardian. A musician and doctor named Nishant Joshi had advised Pearson to delete her post, and the paper incorrectly surmised from this that he may have been the person who had contacted police. Joshi was not just emailed by Telegraph journalists: the paper’s hacks doorstepped his parents and “were contacting long-lost Facebook friends, music pals, and anyone who’d ever known me”.
There has also been some confusion over a mirror account. Although Pearson at some point deleted her post, its content was copied by another account that also called itself “Allison Pearson”. This created an impression that Allison Pearson the journalist had been confused with some other Allison Pearson (or an impersonator), which prompted GB News to run a crowing article by James Saunders and Jack Walters headlined “Outrage as Guardian Identifies Someone Else’s Tweet as Allison Pearson’s in Failed Swipe at Under-Fire Journalist”. This article has now also been deleted.
Note
1. Although it should be noted that while in government in 2021 the PTI foreign minister described Israel in terms of “very influential people. I mean, they control media”.
2. Anyone who might draw a more negative inference should be aware that Pearson has announced that she intends to bring libel actions against various people who have done so – in one instance, she claims to have received advice from a barrister on a Saturday afternoon just hours after a comment appeared, and that he is compiling a “list”.
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