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.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Whereas debunking is valuable, e.g. Farage’s peculiarities, it goes off track with the 2020 repaste below. My own cases are fully evidence council baby trafficking to a psychotic being sterilised. It took 20 years (2002 to 2022) to get my four hospitals’ 600 medical documents evidence of the psychotic’s knife attempted murders of me, sex abuse, physical and mental torture over many years. I have won CICA too, 2020 to June 2025 plus the U.N. fact-finder. To Notts Police “Legal – No crime to record” (to hide their Council’s Crimes against Humanity).. Tracey did not understand in her debunking of me, but whilst mixing up courts, and U.N. processes, of how slow international prosecutions can be. UN CaT can ask the Security Council to refer “serious cases” to the I.C.C., or Victims can submit evidence of child sex abuse / torture directly. I gave Tracey the reference number (U.N. Special Procedures,) but to Tracey that wasn’t enough for her. And on I.C.C., the details are the property of the Court, not for distribution. Debunk corrupt police, not the victims who spend decades fighting for child sex abuse and torture justice. At the time of my reply below, (2020) designed to tell victims they have international options, the I.C.C. OTP defined my cases as “serious crimes” but “first exhaust domestic remedies”. With Notts Police July 2025 PSD converting the Home Secretary’s 2025 order to re-open previously corrupted closed cases into closed “repetitious complaints”, (then unsigned they would not respond further) a pack of evidential lies, when Not-Police had written their council baby trafficking to be a test-bed (to see if I had to “be taken back in under a year” so an experiment) a psychotic being sterilised to find out if that “balanced psychosis” for sex abuse and torture and evading psychotic knife attacks, was “Legal No crime to record” . Torture is “legal” according to Not-Police. Well, Tracey, now the U.N. and U.K. have had IICSA and a stack of Report Findings, we are now returning to the I.C.C. for the second and final phase to trigger international prosecutions, of corrupt police caught destroying, hiding, tampering with text, lying in every sentence to refuse to prosecute council traffickers still alive, having exhausted domestic remedies, with your permission of course, Tracey. If you are a journalist ? I suggest you study how international courts work, because you debunked me with your very limited understanding / lack of knowledge. The U.N. often set up “ad hoc” fact-finding tribunals, I have had meetings face to face with Compliance Officers in Madrid, nothing to do with what you claimed below internal-only.
Tracey, on August 18, 2020 at 10:31 am said:
Lindsay, John isn’t working with me.
The three panel tribunal in New York deals with internal UN staff matters such as pensions, dismissals.
If there are findings from a fact finding panel of judges that judgment would be available publicly, even if some details of complainants and other matters are redacted.
If there is an analysis period there would be no findings. If there are pre trial findings on certain matters, those would also be available to the public.
What you are writing makes no sense and is both internally inconsistent and contradicts things you have written on this website and elsewhere. You have written elsewhere that your case will be heard by the International Criminal Court in Geneva. You have also said that the UN court (the particular one varies in your retellings) has made certain decisions. These should all be available already on the UN websites. I will say this again, even pre trial findings from the ICC are available.
Having a correspondence reference number is not the same thing as having a court or body such as the UN accept anything you have complained of is true.
As you can imagine, people all round the world will write to the UN for redress even though the UN will be able to do practically nothing in their case because of the very real limits of the UN’s power to prosecute cases. It is a little like the sorts of pleadings the Queen gets from desperate people.
I am particularly interested in the correspondence or judgments you have received from the UN. I will say, this is what interests me the most. I hope you don’t mind, but I will keep pressing you on it.
If you have an actual “ad hoc Special Prosecutorial Tribunal“ looking at your case I am incredibly surprised that this isn’t international legal news. It should be. Your case would be the first one I know of where a tribunal has formed and it isn’t in a post-conflict situation such as after the genocide in Rwanda.
If you could provide the link to the NY findings, I would be grateful.
Lindsay Fraser, on August 18, 2020 at 12:27 pm said:
Tracey, thank you, but you appear to have gone off on the wrong track. 1) The U.N. fact finding panel Nov 2015, had nothing to do with dismissals, U.N. staff ,matters whatsoever. It was writing a Report, sent to Theresa May, on failings etc. in U.K. institutional child abuse, and no I do not have a copy of that Report, only my exchanges with the Panel in regard to my cases. 2) The International Criminal Court is not the Geneva Court, it is based in The Hague, and no, the Submissions (X3) and instructions from the Office of the Prosecutor are not in the Public Domain. These are marked “Confidential”, as is Special Procedures which you can learn about at the U.N. Geneva website. If you try to assert I am inconsistent, I will not reply to you, because I am too busy to deal with nonsense like that. I do what I do, and am in competition with no-one. My work, and the Prosecutors work is about helping victims of abuse to the best of our ability, and I don’t like games, O.K. ? Special Procedures is always “confidential” until the final moment, as at the moment they have 25,000 documents to examine, and normally take 2 years to bring to Trial. With currently 13,million abused children (20%) of the population of the United Kingdom, it is of international concern, and what you can find is the U.N. statement that the U.K. is “the worst of industrialised nations for child abuse”. I suggest you learn a bit more on international courts, and how they work, which is not for your personal convenience, before suggesting I am inconsistent. The I.C.C. equated the Submissions as “serious crimes” but due to origins before June 2002, they would not do just the recent cover ups, but deferred to the U.N. As far as I am concerned it is the evidence that matters, not your “inconsistency” comments.
Lindsay
Lindsay Fraser, on August 18, 2020 at 1:08 pm said:
Tracey, further. I have in writing the Royal Courts of Justice, London, advising me to proceed with international prosecutions, because there is nothing like this in the U.K. Why do you think HMIC have identified institutional child abuse corruption in 41 out of 43 regional forces ? Corruption of evidence and ignoring of evidence is the central cause of astronomic numbers of State child abuse in the U.K. There is no working criminal accountability, so of course evidential corruption is rife, and police habitually hide crimes to protect the State’s institutions, not the victims. The strategy is delay, and lie, to wear Survivors out to the point of giving up complaining. Refusals to interview witnesses, deleting documents, profuse lying in writing, altering medical text, removing text from Statements, Transparency Failures are common practice in all the serious cases. I don’t know who you are, nor what you do, but fact-finding on the realities of Victims’ experiences is something you need to do. You need to understand also that each and every year, over a thousand victims die from “no justice despair suicides” (Lantern). This is an unacceptable situation. Corruption kills.
There is a third way Victims can get justice at the U.N. Evidenced complaints can be sent to the High Commissioner, Geneva or New York, which are then sent to the Attorney General, U.K. who has 6 months to respond. This is recommended in the first instance, for any individual victims, disappointed with IICSA, that does not work with individual victim’s evidence. The “no stone unturned” Inquiry, like IPCC / IOPC is not truly “independent” because it is constrained in remit by the British Government. It has no Prosecutorial team, nor a bank of lawyers assisting victims, when ordinary Barristers and solicitors have “no expertise” in multi-agency cases of child abuse, or “no capacity” because they are swamped in cases. Personally, I have tried over 90 firms of solicitors, and whereas they say I have strong evidence and cases, my collection is too complex for them, and even a Barrister Specialist firm said they would do them, but would need solicitors to share the workload. This is the situation of many Survivors in the U.K. Denied criminal justice by authority and police corruption, they / we have great difficulty to impossibility to find legal representation, and no, the Law Society is not able to resolve case saturation. Justice Reviews are extremely expensive for the Survivor to mount, when depressed and without work. Even High Court Judges have criticised the system. So Tracey, if you think I am inconsistent, provide an alternative…..
Lindsay Fraser, on August 18, 2020 at 1:45 pm said:
Tracey, one last point, a bit of homework for you. You mixed up the I.C.C. (The Hague) with Geneva, so what is the difference between the International Criminal Court, The Hague, and the U.N. Special Procedures Tribunals in Geneva ? I have meetings with U.N. Compliance Officers in Madrid, so I know the answers, but try to find out the differences, they are not the same court systems, so as you have an interest in this area, use google search to try and find out why they both exist separately.
Lindsay
By the way Tracey, the I.C.C. (a separate court to the UN CaT, but both funded by the UN Security Council, but where no British Government has ratified all U.N. CaT child torture Protocols) is based in the Hague (not “Geneva” as you put) the I.C.C. set up from its jurisdictional date 1st July 2002, can Prosecute State Denial of the Truth Crimes (extended State psychological torture) from 1st July 2002 on State Crimes against Humanity, The Child, once all domestic remedies have been exhausted. Mine was “Lead- best evidenced” at the U.N. fact-finding Tribunal, its report sent to Theresa May when Home Secretary, but we have many similar cases to Submit. Instead of debunking people like us fighting for justice, why not debunk police covering up child sex abuse and torture, “Forced Adoptions” half a million Found by Inquiry, 3,000 sterilisation experiments 1950’s to 1990’s, millions of child abuse cases covered up, listen to Cooper’s public apology a month ago. Debunking victims does not win. Debunking and exposing lying evidence-corrupting police, does win, in the (very) long-term.