In July 1967, the Black Power activist Michael X addressed a meeting in Reading. “The most savage human being in the world,” he told the audience, “is the white man.” He was arrested the following month, charged with inciting racial hatred and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment.
It’s worth recalling this small episode in British race relations given the popularity within sections of the right to talk, in the wake of the summer riots, of “two-tier policing” and “political prisoners”. Last week, Peter Lynch, serving a sentence of two years and eight months for violent disorder outside a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers, died in prison, possibly by suicide. Reform MP Richard Tice called him a “political prisoner”, while Daily Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakeshott mourned him as “Britain’s first political prisoner”, no less.
The claim that we are entering a new era of “two-tier policing” and that, in Oakeshott’s words, “never before, in modern times, have people been jailed in this country, for such thin offences”, rests upon wilful ignorance. Throwing people into prison for what they have said or written is, unfortunately, a long and ignoble British tradition, as is applying different standards of policing to different groups.
Dozens of people have, in recent decades, faced jail for expressing objectionable views, from the imprisonment in November 1967 of four members of the United Coloured People’s Association for inciting racial hatred at Speakers’ Corner; to Abdul Saleem, imprisoned in 2007 for four years for chanting “Denmark, USA, 7/7 on its way” during a protest against the Danish cartoons; to drill rappers Skengo and AM, given suspended sentences for performing a song, Attempted 1.0, at a gig in 2018.
Most people would find many of these views repellent. But then, so were Lynch’s. Many of those now claiming him as a “political prisoner” seem more concerned that someone hostile to immigration was jailed than with the fact that Britain has a long history of imprisoning people with views deemed unacceptable.
“Two-tier policing” is equally embedded in British history. Certain groups have at certain times been seen as threatening the social order and so subject to vindictive justice.
On 14 March 1991, Hugh Callaghan, Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power and Johnny Walker walked out of the Old Bailey, freed after having wrongly spent 16 years behind bars. The Birmingham Six had been convicted in 1975 of the horrific IRA pub bombings in the city the previous year in which 21 people were killed. Not until 1991 would judges finally acknowledge that their “confessions” had been beaten out of them, police notes fabricated, and forensic evidence deeply flawed.
The six men had, in 1977, launched a civil action against the police for the injuries they received during interrogation. When the case came to the appeal court, one of the judges, Lord Denning, insisted that the men could not be allowed to win because if they did, “it will mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats… This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: it cannot be right that the actions should go any further.”
In other words, ignore the evidence, because politically it is too threatening. There could be no better expression of two-tier justice. The politicised justice meted out to the Irish community led to many other wrongful convictions including that of the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven.
Black communities, too, faced two-tier justice in a series of high-profile trials in the 1970s and 80s from the Mangrove Nine to Winston Silcott. A restaurant and community hub in Notting Hill, west London, in the late 60s and early 70s, the Mangrove had faced continual police raids. A protest about the harassment led to nine people being charged, on the orders of the home secretary, with incitement to riot. At their trial, the defendants put racist policing in the dock so successfully that all were cleared of incitement charges.
Silcott was convicted in 1987 of the brutal murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. There were no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence, nor a confession. The police claimed Silcott had boasted that no one would testify against him because “you can’t keep me away from them”. Given the racist portrayal of Silcott as “the beast of Broadwater Farm”, those words were sufficient to condemn him. Four years later, the verdict was quashed when even that boast was shown to be a police fabrication.
Perhaps the group that has most faced politicised justice is the working class. Politicians like to portray themselves as champions of working-class interests. But, from the Peterloo Massacre to the brutality of Orgreave, the moment working-class people take action to defend those interests, they are often faced with the full might of the state.
One of the most important, yet almost forgotten, illustrations of two-tier justice came with the trial of the Shrewsbury 24. In 1972, building workers held their first national strike for decent pay and conditions, winning most of their demands within months.
The Shrewsbury 24 were among a group of workers, mainly from north Wales, who picketed building sites in Shrewsbury. The picketing had been peaceful. But the success of the strike led employers to demand that action be taken retrospectively to prevent it happening again.
As campaigner Eileen Turnbull shows in her meticulously researched and deeply inspiring book A Very British Conspiracy, employers, government ministers and the police combined to do just that. The picketing had been lawful; so the authorities decided to use the archaic common law offence of “conspiracy to intimidate” to snare the men.
All but two were found guilty. Des Warren, the most outspoken of the pickets, and Ricky Tomlinson – yes, that Ricky Tomlinson – received the harshest sentences, three and two years respectively. It took until 2021 – almost 50 years after the original case – and the indefatigable work of the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign before the court of appeal quashed the convictions.
The history of policing is the history of two-tier policing. Those who object to the treatment of anti-immigration rioters, but have been silent about, indeed often celebrated, police crackdowns on Irish or black people or trade union militants, are unconcerned about free speech or politicised policing, but are simply looking for a bandwagon for their prejudices.
There are, nevertheless, troubling aspects about the treatment of this summer’s rioters. Many of the court cases have both expanded notions of “incitement” and, as seems to have happened in the case of Lynch, blurred the distinction between bigoted words and violent action. This should be a concern for anti-racists and those on the left.
We need to stand against politicised justice. What we don’t need are two-tier polemics.
• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
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