“Parents ‘vindicated’ after police admit unlawful arrest over WhatsApp row”, the Guardian reports. The subheading is “Hertfordshire police agree to pay £20,000 to Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, who were held for 11 hours after complaining about daughter’s school”.
I posted about this couple’s experience last April: Boiling frogs in Salem and Hertfordshire.
One aspect of the story that the Free Speech Union’s Frederick Attenborough highlighted at the time was that Hertfordshire Police didn’t just put the frighteners on Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, they also threatened – in writing – their local county councillor, Michelle Vince, that if she continued to advocate on their behalf she too might find herself “liable to being recorded as a suspect in a harassment investigation”. And they told Michelle Vince to pass on that warning to the local MP, Sir Oliver Dowden.
As Sir Oliver said in the Times, “Police risk ‘curtailing democracy’ by stopping MPs doing their job”.
Today’s Guardian article continues,
Allen claimed he and Levine were not abusive and were never told which communications were criminal, saying it was “completely Kafkaesque”.
A Hertfordshire police spokesperson said: “Whilst there are no issues of misconduct involving any officer in relation to this matter, Hertfordshire Constabulary has accepted liability solely on the basis that the legal test around necessity of arrest was not met in this instance.
“Therefore Mr Haddow-Allen and Ms Levine were wrongfully arrested and detained in January 2025. It would be inappropriate to make further comment at this stage.”
You wish. Further comment is both appropriate and necessary. There bloody well are issues of misconduct involving at least one officer in relation to this matter: whichever officer tried to frighten off both a local councillor and an MP from representing their constituents.
You are absolutely right, Natalie, but the English legal system seems entirely unable to address these issues.
Are the coppers or the chief constable going to cough for the £20,000 from their own pocketses?
No. Though not. It’s the chumps who pay the council tax that foot the bill as usual.
I don’t know the operational setup of Brit police. Would any individual officer be making such decisions, or would something like this need to have been driven by someone higher-up?
I ask because this payoff seems to effectively end any pursuit upstream.
The purpose of this, and pretty much anything else in the british legal and political system, is fairly obviously to intimidate the mass of the brit population and to demonstrate that those in power, and those non-brits favored by those in power, are above any and all law. As Dan Souter above said, it is that mass of brits who will pay the fine and the officers and their superiors who ordered this will not pay any penalty. In fact I expect them to be rewarded for what they have done a little bit down the line.
Today I read a rumor [just a rumor with nothing to confirm it] that we here in the US might start accepting refugees from britain the way we used to take in refugees from the China, the USSR or Cuba. With the appropriate screening process, I could see it.
Subotai Bahadur
Anyone who has ever wondered if the British would have collaborated if Germany had won the war now knows the answer. These coppers would have loaded the cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz without a second thought.
I read not too long ago that the police almost always go with the government in any coup attempt or revolution.. They know where their paychecks come from. The military is always the wild card, and of course the military is the one you want on your side.
The police have been given very wide, and vaguely defined, powers – this is not good.
The powers that government officials, including the police, have should be limited and CLEAR – it should be clear what they can do, and that anything else they must NOT do.
Truthful history should also be remembered (which, contrary to some people on this site, is not difficult to find out – if you make a basic effort) – for example police forces were not compulsory in English and Welsh counties till 1856, we were not all eating each other in 1855.
The reports of Sir Edward Chadwick (that follower of Jeremy Bentham) that helped push the expansion of the government in various areas, were wildly distorted – indeed propaganda. Basically he started with his conclusion, that the state should take over some function of civil society, and then wrote the report to reach this preordained conclusion.
As for prosecutions – before the 1870s, unless the alleged crime was against the Crown (an attack up on the property of the state – or on persons, such as the Queen, who were part of the state) prosecutions in England and Wales were private prosecutions – the state did not prosecute you, and I am not sure that the take over over of prosecutions (prosecutions of ordinary crimes) by the state (which started in the 1870s – but took a long time to get to the present positions) was a good idea.
Lastly we must remember what a crime is…..
Contrary to Thomas Hobbes and other “Legal Positivist” thinkers – a crime is NOT whatever the state does not like, a crime is a violation of the person or the property of someone else.
That is Common Law nonaggression principle “101” as it were – but, these days, people have to reminded of it.
Especially the high court of the Monarch in Parliament – which has fallen for the delusion (the very dangerous delusion) that it “makes law” as opposed to FINDS law (which is what judges should also do – judges should NOT “make” law) – the law is the effort to apply the non aggression principle of natural justice. The state (including Parliament) must not fall into the error that it “makes law” and that anything it happens to dislike is a “crime”, or that the failure to obey its, often absurd, orders is a “crime”.
Perhaps the best short book on this is Bastiat’s “The Law”.
American readers will, perhaps, remember how the Founding Fathers of the United States mocked Sir William Blackstone’s effort to replace the “Divine Right of Kings” with the “Divine Right of Parliament” – which is just as bad. Although we must also be careful of the “Divine Right of Judges” – judges who fall for the delusion that they “make” law, as opposed to apply the non aggression principle of natural justice (against force and fraud) to the circumstances of individual cases.
“Are you saying that judges, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes jr, who do not believe in the basic principle of the Common Law (of the nonaggression principle, of private property based natural justice) should not be judges?” – yes indeed, such people (in the case of Oliver Wendell Holmes jr a friend and ally of the totalitarian Collectivist Harold Laski) have no business being on the bench.
A person who hates the basic principle of the Common Law, upon which the United States Constitution is based – especially the Bill of Rights, should not be deciding legal cases.
And it is the same with the United Kingdom – if the “unwritten constitution” means anything – it means the basic principles of the Common Law, of the non aggression principle, private property based, natural justice.
A “socialist lawyer” say a member of the Haldane Society, is a contradiction in terms – someone can not be faithful servant of the (private property based natural justice) Common Law AND be a socialist.
I very rarely praise Prime Minister Blair – but at least he (like Hugh Gaitskell, a former leader of the Labour Party – who, I think, died in 1963) understood that “Clause Four” (which used to be written on every Labour Party membership card – till it was rewritten) demanding that the members work towards the total control of “the means of production, distribution and exchange” was incompatible with being a lawyer, or a Member of Parliament, or indeed anything in public life. This old “clause four” (accepted at the Nottingham Conference of 1918 – under the influence of Mr and Mrs Webb of the Fabian Society) is either insane or criminal – or both.
Think about it, the old “Clause Four” (now, thankfully, long gone) committed its supporters to being part of what can be truthfully be described as a criminal conspiracy to take all property (from a large landed estate, to a market stall – to even the ladders, bucket and cloths of a widow cleaner) – and to “legalize” such thefts and tyranny by (illegitimate) Acts of Parliament (Parliament being used to subvert the very thing, the liberty and property of the public, that it was created to defend) – it is difficult to overstate the extreme nature of such a conspiracy, but certainly the only place in a court that people who try and carry it out, should be in – is the dock.
I remember pointing this out as a young child (very many decades ago) – only to be told (I think truthfully told) that most members of the Labour Party did NOT believe in Clause Four – in spite of carrying a card upon their person, where their agreement to it was written.
If you do not believe in something, you should not agree to it – and you should not be carrying written proof of your agreement (this dark-pact) on you. I am glad Clause Four has been rewritten and no longer says what it used to say.
Unable? No, unwilling!
If a police force is threatening legislators for legal advocacy, it is not fit for purpose. Is it legal to carry a sign in front of a police station saying that “this police force is not fit for purpose” in the UK?
Is posting this very comment legal in the UK? I have no idea and will not be visiting before I find out.
@T M Lutas
Yes it is legal. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the police tried to give you a bit of difficulty (in subtle ways). However, I suspect that would be true in the USA also.
I entirely agree with your first sentence.
“…The purpose of this… is…to intimidate the mass of the brit population…”
Indeed, with knobs on.
As usual, the process is the punishment.
TMLuatas – most things are “illegal” (in the Hobbesian sense of “law” – not the real one) in the United Kingdom. When “law” is just the commands of the state then the old Oxford essay “why should we obey the law?” goes into reverse – people have a moral duty to break “the law”, the law in the, false-Hobbesian, sense of the commands of the state.
I have given up trying to guess which of my words are legal and which are not – if I die in prison, so be it, it is not different from dying anywhere else.
If there has to be a “euthanasia of the constitution” (as Mr David Hume put it) – lets us go out fighting, not on our knees begging for mercy that we will not get – no matter how much we beg for it (that was made clear last summer – people pleading guilty to nonsense “crimes” and being thrown into prison, prisons dominated by gangs and by staff of a certain sort, till they “killed themselves”, anyway).
Clovis Sangrail and Peter MacFarlane – yes indeed Gentleman, yes indeed.
All of these visits by the police to folks who have written stuff online is a wickedness designed to have them convict themselves out of their own mouths. “But why did you write it, Sir? What were you thinking?”
Never, ever speak to a policeman. What good could it possibly do you? (Yes, I know. Back in the day, one used to be able to sweet talk the traffic cop from actually writing the ticket. About half of the time in my experience. But those days are gone.)
Allen claimed he and Levine were not abusive and were never told which communications were criminal
ECHR Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, Article 6, Right to a Fair Trial
Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: (a) to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him
Let’s ask the bunch of Human Rights lawyers running the country what they think?
Runcie Balspune – yes it is odd how these “human rights” never apply to the native population.
mongoose – yes, sadly so.
The only thing you should say is “I demand to see my lawyer” – naught else.
As for democracy – Council Tax, in councils that are responsible for Adult Social Care and Children’s Services, goes up by 4.9% a year regardless of what councilors you elect. I remember saying to the people who are now Reform Party Councillors in my own county – “the only change you will be able to make is to take down the flags you do not like” – and, sadly, that is the truth.
And if a councilor says something that the left do not like – they will either be arrested, or (at the very least) “reported to the Monitoring Officer” – which is often the end of the councilor.
So what “democracy” are the Hertfordshire police alleged to be subverting?
Think about it – elected councilors, in this sort of authority, do NOT really decide the level of spending or taxation, and they certainly do not have Freedom of Speech.
So what democracy are you talking about?