Bartholomew's Notes

From the Sunday Telegraph:

Elite police squad to monitor anti-migrant posts on social media

An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.

Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.

The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.

The article has been received with apocalyptic fury online, with Reform’s Zia Yusuf calling it “terrifying” and populist ideologue Matt Goodwin warning that “we will all soon be with Lucy Connolly folks” (more on Connolly here). The article itself including condemnations from Nigel Farage and from Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who sneered that “Two-tier Keir can’t police the streets, so he’s trying to police opinions instead.” Rupert Lowe has written with performative discourtesy (“what are you playing at?”) to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (although he doesn’t deign to use her name) demanding answers.

The article is based on letter sent by Diana Johnson, Minister  of State for Crime, Policing and Fire of the United Kingdom, on 17 July. It is publicly available on the UK Parliament website, and it unsurprising to note that in fact it makes no reference anywhere to “anti-migrant sentiment”.

The letter was written to the Conservative MP Karen Bradley, who as  Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had asked for “more detail on the Government’s plans for building police capability to gather open source intelligence from social media”, following on from the the Government’s response to the Committee’s Report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. Bradley wrote on 1 July:

Given the recent scenes in Northern Ireland, where social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder, I am sure you will agree that the way police forces use social media is becoming an increasingly important component of many police responses.

Bradley’s very reasonable observation has now been undercut by her Conservative colleague Philp, who apparently takes the view that the police have no business taking account of how “social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder” and that “building police capacity to gather open source intelligence” is a sinister conspiracy by the government to suppress criticism.

Here is what Johnson actually wrote in reply to Bradley – some of it is quoted directly by the Telegraph, but those investing in the newspaper’s narrative framing don’t seem to have bothered checking the original source before mouthing off:

Dear Dame Karen,

Thank you for your letter of 1 July regarding the Government’s response to the Committee’s recent report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. As you have requested, I am pleased to set out the further information below.

You asked about current plans to build police capability for using social media intelligence at force and national levels. We are carefully considering recommendations made by the Committee and HMICFRS in this area, including building a National Internet Intelligence Investigations team as part of the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC).

This team will provide a national capability to monitor social media intelligence and advise on its use to inform local operational decision making. This will be a dedicated function at a national level for exploiting internet intelligence to help local forces manage public safety threats and risks. Funding for this capability beyond 25/26 will need to be considered in line with future funding priorities but I am confident that as a first step, this new central team will help build capability across forces to maximise social media intelligence…

Although the Telegraph article does mention “intelligence”, the headline reference to “anti-migrant posts”, and this is why Philp and other critics appear to believe it is about opinions.

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From the Guardian, a couple of days ago:

From tomorrow social media companies must introduce child safety measures under the Online Safety Act. It is a key moment for a British government attempting, like so many others, to rein in tech firms and prevent children encountering harmful content on the internet.

Passed by parliament in 2023, the landmark legislation significantly empowers the regulator Ofcom… Social media companies operating in the UK now risk hefty fines if they fail to take strong action against content that is harmful to children such as pornography or material that encourages self-harm.

The Act has previously been criticised on the grounds that it might have unintended consequences, and/or will be ineffective. However, populists have come up with a new interpretation, which is that the purpose of the Act is instead to censor the news. Thus on Twitter/X, Annunziata Rees-Mogg:

The Online Safety Act, effective by July 2025, may be censoring violent protest footage in the UK, as noted in related posts, with Ofcom enforcing rules that could limit access to such content, raising questions about free speech versus public safety.

We live in a police state where the police have never been so mistrusted. 😡

And:

Hiding the truth increases fear.

Frightened people lash out.

This is dangerous.

“Frightened people lash out” would appear to be a pre-emptive apology for violence, similar to Nigel Farage‘s implication that the presence of counter-protestors at anti-migrant protests obliges protestors to smash up police vans and attack officers.

One supposedly suppressed clip in particular is cited by Rees-Mogg and others: it was uploaded by a user with the name Keira Diss, and shows police restraining and arresting a man at a protest in Leeds. Although fairly tame, some users are now seeing the message “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X esimates your age”. Both the clip and the text accompanying it are affected.

The restriction doesn’t affect me, as accounts created during or before 2012 are assumed to belong to adults. Nor does it affect anyone who has verified their identity on the plaform. If the purpose is government-directed news censorship, then it is rather poor effort. And the clip has not been “censored” by anyone in the UK: the decision to restrict the clip was made in America.

Four possibilities come to mind: (1) the clip has been flagged up either in error, or by someone gaming the reporting system for some reason; (2) Twitter/X decided to restrict access out of an abundance of caution; (3) Musk sees the development as useful in getting users to pay for verification; and/or (4) Musk wants to whip up resentment that will be directed at the UK government rather than at him.

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From the Independent:

Police say claims that officers “bussed” counter-demonstrators to a protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, are “categorically wrong”.

Essex Police have denied the claims circulating on social media; claims of which Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that the force’s chief constable should resign for.

… a force spokesperson said: “There are claims on social media that Essex Police officers ‘bussed’ protesters to the protest outside the Bell Hotel on Thursday July 17.

“This is categorically wrong.

“Officers did provide a foot cordon around protesters on their way to the protest, where they and others were allowed to exercise their right to protest.

“Later, some people who were clearly at risk of being hurt were also escorted by vehicle away from the area for their safety.

“To reiterate, we categorically did not drive any counter-protesters to the site on any occasion.”

Farage’s claim was based on a short clip from a video that he said was “proof” of counter-protestors “arriving at the station and literally, by Essex Police, being bussed to the Bell Hotel”. However, it didn’t take much effort to establish from background details that the video of counter-protestors getting into police vans had been filmed at a location some distance from the station (1). A longer version of the video cited by Farage (easily found on social media) also includes its narrator asking “why don’t they just go home if they are local?”, which obviously implies a context of people leaving the area rather than heading for the hotel. It is not clear whether Reform deliberately left this out or whether they simply relied on one of their preferred information sources, such as Dan Wootton.

Farage has now more or less conceded the mistake, although he goes no further than to say that “If I was slightly out on accuracy I apologise”. But he also now pretends that there is no difference between a “foot cordon” and “bussing”, although it’s not clear what course of action he would have preferred. Maybe his view is that police ought to have kettled counter-protestors at Epping Station, making a mockery of his “free speech” credentials; or maybe he thinks they ought have just allowed two groups of angry rival protestors to roam around Epping (2).

Some of the counter-protestors were masked, from which Farage concludes with typical confidence that they were “Anifa”. He also appears to believe that their presence explains why the protest at the hotel turned violent, although he has also conceded the presence of some “far-right thugs”. I did see one short video of an unmasked counter-protestor fighting with a protestor on a road near the hotel (apparently from an earlier protest a few days before), but it was probably no good for Farage’s purposes due to the person filming it abusing the counter-protestor as a “fucking faggot” and a “poof” (3).

Last year, Farage famously amplified false claims that the Southport killer had been known to the security services, which was a guarded reformulation of the internet rumour that he had been on an “MI6 watchlist” and which in turn gave credence to claims that he was an asylum seeker. Farage later reformulated what he had said as “known to the authorities”.

UPDATE: A follow-up story about a protest in Aldershot, from the Daily Mail:

A second police force has come under fire after a video emerged showing officers escorting pro-migrant activists to a protest outside an asylum seeker hotel.

…The latest clip of officers ‘bussing’ counter-protesters saw one activist brandishing a placard supporting the campaign Stand Up to Racism – which is partly funded by trade unions and led by suspended Labour MP, Diane Abbott.

Those scare-quotes appear to be an attempt to suggest that the word “bussing” can have a metaphorical meaning of “escorting”. Such a usage is strained beyond reason, and is obviously an attempt to obfuscate rather than report.

Notes

1. The video was filmed at the top of St John’s Road in Epping, at a junction where Coronation Hill meets Lower Swaines.

2. Populist ideologue Matt Goodwin speculates that the police escorted the counter-protestors to the site because “parts of the British state are deliberately stoking conflict as a way of delegitimising public protest over mass migration and broken borders”. In reply, Sunder Katwala cites a 1999 precedent on freedom of expression, summarised by Sunder as that the police “must facilitate & can not disallow either protest or counterprotest by antagonistic groups, until participants on one or both sides stir up or intimidate”.

3. The counter-protestor was stocky and bald, meaning it was unclear at first which side he was on.

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From Matt Goodwin:

Ugh 🤮. A Muslim matchmaking site operating in the UK advertises virgin wives, urges men to take multiple wives, describes women with a sexual past as “low quality products”, and features a video on when to beat your wife. Is this another sign of “multiculturalism success”?

One suspects that Goodwin has phrased his accusation as a sarcastic question because he knows that the mere existence of some website is a dubious basis on which to draw wider conclusions, although he’s not adverse to making wild extrapolations from casual observations. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, is sure that it “shows yet again how our immigration and integration policies have failed”.

Jenrick is quoted in the Daily Telegraph, which is the source of Goodwin’s post:

NikkahGram, a UK-registered company, describes itself as an Islamic solution for men seeking “a shy, untouched spouse” or wishing to take a second, third or fourth wife.

Virgin women under 35 are promoted as ideal first wives. Those older or with sexual histories are likened to “low quality products”, with their only hope being to share a husband.

The organisation’s social media page features a video on when to beat your wife, as well as claims that sex with non-virgins can cause cancer and that women are intellectually defective.

NikkahGram lists Asif Munaf, a former NHS medic suspended for anti-Semitism, among its staff.

The story appears to have been spun off from an investigation published last week about a website run by Munaf called Dr Sick, which provides medical sicknotes on demand for a fee. For that story, reporters went through the process of buying sicknotes in order to confirm the site’s claims.

Here, though, although the reporter spoke to an unnamed “spokesman”, no investigator registered with the website to see what happens. The site does carry customer testimonials, but these are all anonymised and there isn’t any third-party evidence about the business being active. It should be noted that in 2023 Munaf set up a supposed “University of Masculinity — Muslim Passport Bros” that he said would help British Muslim men find non-feminist brides from Morocco, but that his registered company was dissolved by compulsory strike off in late 2024 without having ever filed any accounts. The only reason it came to wider attention was because Munaf had achieved some celebrity as a contestant on The Apprentice, from which he was removed following allegations of anti-semitic social media posts.

Although there are various companies registered with Companies House containing the word “Nikkah”, there is no “Nikkah Gram” or “Nikkahgram”, and none of them seem to fit the profile. The Nikkahgram website has a page of “Legal Declarations” in which it refers to itself as a “Company” and gives virtual office address in London, but no company number is provided. If the paper has identified a non-obvious registration then one would expect to be told what it is.

Another oddity is that despite claiming to have “exposed” the website, the Telegraph makes no reference to Ustadh Gabriel Al Romaani, even though the “Our Team” page consists solely of him and Munaf, and he has identified himself as the originator of the website. Al Romaani is a Romanian (Hungarian minority, judging from his original Keresztes surname) based in Malaysia who became a Muslim in 2003, and who describes himself as an “Islamic psychology coach”. Like Munaf, he appears to have a focus on masculinity and to belong to an ideological trend that Muslim detractors call the “akh-right”. Munaf has previously promoted Andrew Tate clips on social media, and Al Romaani has also said positive things about him; if the Nikkahgram website represents anything more than self-promoting attention-seeking, then this is the area to be looking into.

UPDATE (9 July): The website was referenced the House of Commons by Reform MP Sarah Pochin, in an Oral Answers to Questions session featuring the Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood:

Pochin: The Secretary of State will be aware of the deeply troubling revelations over the weekend of the so-called Halal bride website. Does she agree that such practices have absolutely no place in Britain?

Mahmood: The regulation of websites and content falls either within Home Office responsibilities for criminal law or with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and I will happily pick up with them the detail around the regulatory issues that are raised by that case.

There was no reason to suppose that Mahmood would have been particularly aware of the Telegraph story, but she provided a businesslike answer to the question of how to explore whether a website might fall foul of the law or regulation due to the “practices” it represents.

As expected, though, Pochin’s purpose was not to seek answers but rather to set the scene for a personalised attack on Mahmood based on her religion. Thus shortly afterwards she appeared with Kevin O’Sullivan (this guy) on Talk TV:

This should be absolutely banned. I asked our own Secretary of State for Justice, a Muslim woman, if she would stop this and she refused to agree that she would stop this. These are the people that are running this country, Kevin. What does this say about the misogynistic culture that is creeping into this country?… This is coming from people established in this country as British Muslims. They are established here as legal immgrants.

The clip has been posed to Twitter/X by Talk TV, along with a further quote attributed to her:

“Shabana Mahmood did NOT agree that it was unacceptable. She should be ashamed of herself. The Labour government is refuses [sic] to answer ANY of my questions.”

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