TRIGGERnometry - Journalist Investigated for Tweet Speaks Out - Allison Pearson

00:00:00.800 I was much happier being a free speech supporter in theory.

00:00:05.600 The practice turns out to be slightly unpleasant, but there we go.

00:00:10.360 Two very senior police inspectors, two former home secretaries, a former prime minister,

00:00:16.080 and they all said my tweet did not come near the threshold for a criminal investigation.

00:00:22.200 I don't think people realize just how outrageous this actually is.

00:00:26.400 I haven't particularly wanted to fight. I'm not brave.

00:00:29.420 But I, some things you have to take a stand.

00:00:32.680 And many of us will fight to the death for this.

00:00:37.900 Alison Pearson, Britain's latest thought criminal.

00:00:41.800 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:43.800 Well, non-thought, non-criminal.

00:00:46.540 Non-thought, non-criminal. We're going to get into all of that.

00:00:48.960 But for viewers who don't know who you are, including many American people,

00:00:53.440 they would have heard about a journalist who had a visit from the police for a tweet that wasn't even a crime.

00:00:59.420 That journalist is you.

00:01:00.940 Yes.

00:01:01.400 Tell us what happened.

00:01:02.640 Yeah.

00:01:02.920 So it was the morning of a Remembrance Sunday.

00:01:05.700 American listeners, viewers may not know, Remembrance Sunday is our big commemorative day for the dead of the two world wars.

00:01:13.240 I was in my house in a market town in Essex and I was still in my dressing gown.

00:01:18.760 I had all my Remembrance Day black clothes and the poppies laid out.

00:01:23.660 And my husband says there's two coppers at the door. 0.97

00:01:25.900 And I thought that's a bit weird.

00:01:28.480 But they closed off our street for a parade.

00:01:30.620 So I thought maybe they're telling us our car's in the wrong place.

00:01:33.580 I went down, two policemen outside, and they said they were here in connection with, I think, a hate incident.

00:01:41.320 And then I said, and then they said it was to do with a social media post a year ago.

00:01:50.600 So I was quite taken aback.

00:01:52.280 And I said it was obviously was going to be a tweet because that's the social media I do.

00:01:58.420 And I said, can you tell me which tweet it was?

00:02:02.340 Because apparently I had been stirring up racial hatred and not something I do as a full time thing.

00:02:10.700 And so the guy said, we can't tell you what it was.

00:02:15.280 And then I said, oh, could you tell me who my accuser is?

00:02:18.140 So that might give me a clearer picture.

00:02:19.860 And he said, yeah, we're not allowed to tell you that either.

00:02:23.960 But it's not the accuser.

00:02:25.740 It's the victim.

00:02:28.320 So we have something called due process in Britain, or we used to.

00:02:32.620 And usually the person who is the accuser or someone who's the accused, which was me, is innocent until proven guilty.

00:02:41.080 But clearly this person who had complained about me was now being called by the police a victim.

00:02:48.160 So I was shocked.

00:02:51.820 I think only half my brain, half of your brain is thinking, this is crazy.

00:02:56.500 And the other part is, you know, is panicking.

00:02:59.440 So I am a student of English literature, as you guys may know.

00:03:04.100 So I drew myself up to my five foot, three and a half inches.

00:03:09.140 And I said to them, poor guys, actually, because I think they probably thought a bit of overtime, you know, go around, tell the lady she's been a bad girl.

00:03:17.740 And I said, well, today we are commemorating the dead of world wars.

00:03:22.900 And hundreds of thousands of British men and allied forces gave their lives so that we could live in a free country, not like the country they were fighting.

00:03:31.600 And I said, what would they think of you, those young men, a similar age to the age you are now, if they knew that in their country, coppers could turn up at the door and act in a tyrannical way to a person and refuse to disclose what she'd done wrong or who was accusing her. 0.90

00:03:50.160 So they looked quite a little bit shamefaced.

00:03:53.640 They were looking down at their notes.

00:03:55.580 And yeah, so that was that was what happened.

00:03:58.100 And what did they say to that very reasonable challenge, actually?

00:04:02.500 I think I don't think they were expecting the St. Crispin's Eve Shakespearean soliloquy when they went around to warn people.

00:04:13.140 To be honest, I think I think my recollection of what happened is pretty good.

00:04:18.360 But I was very, very startled and shocked.

00:04:21.240 And I heard I thought I heard incident, which I thought was this thing called a non-crime hate incident, which is called abbreviation NCHI.

00:04:32.040 The police later claimed that they told me it was a criminal investigation under the Public Order Act.

00:04:39.220 Now, I didn't hear that.

00:04:41.720 They could have said it, but I don't know.

00:04:43.620 They also said they invited me for a voluntary interview about this tweet.

00:04:48.240 And I think it's something that's worth saying, because obviously I've learned a lot about the non-crime hate incidents, and that literally anyone can complain to the police that you have made them feel offended or made them feel unsafe.

00:05:09.520 So basically anyone who doesn't like my politics, doesn't like me, doesn't like the newspaper I work for, which is the Daily Telegraph, literally anyone can make that complaint.

00:05:21.600 And which is obviously what happened in November last year.

00:05:27.740 And that was a guy in Sussex made the complaint to Sussex police.

00:05:32.720 And we think at that stage, it was my offence, quote unquote, was deemed to be a non-crime hate incident.

00:05:41.500 But by the time, 12 months later, it had gone via the Metropolitan Police in London, come up to Essex, and somehow it had been escalated to a criminal investigation.

00:05:54.820 And Alison, we have to get this out on the table.

00:05:56.740 What was the tweet that you think this was triggered by?

00:06:00.160 Well, I've never been told officially, and the Telegraph news desk, which immediately swung in behind me, asked Essex police to confirm which tweet it was, but they refused.

00:06:14.820 But then they leaked it to the Guardian newspaper, which is an interesting way to proceed.

00:06:21.360 So it seems to be a tweet not long after the Hamas massacres of the 7th of October.

00:06:30.160 And I'll be honest with you guys, when the police were on the door, because I, a couple of weeks after the massacres of 7th of October in Israel, with some friends and colleagues, I co-founded the British Friends of Israel, which was to support British Jews at a time of huge increase in anti-Semitism in our country.

00:06:50.400 And also to support Israel's right to defend herself.

00:06:53.920 And since that time, I have seen a huge increase in attacks on me, attempts to undermine me.

00:07:03.060 So when the police were there, at the back of my mind, I'm thinking, this has to do with being a supporter of the Jews, isn't it? 0.97

00:07:10.020 I thought it's inevitably going to be that.

00:07:13.040 So the tweet, the Guardian thinks it was, came about because the Remembrance Sunday of 2023, with British Friends of Israel, you may remember that there were a lot of pro-Gaza people out on the streets.

00:07:32.940 Some statues were desecrated.

00:07:34.940 We announced that we were going to be standing on Armistice Day, very solemn day, by the Winston Churchill statue.

00:07:43.240 And anyone who supported British Jews could come along and meet us there.

00:07:47.620 So various people turned up and it was great.

00:07:50.400 And it was Free Speech Union people like Toby Young and Laura Doddsworth and so on.

00:07:54.540 So we were there and there was some police there.

00:07:56.580 And we invited them to do a selfie with our group, which had our British Friends of Israel flag.

00:08:01.960 And they turned us down quite, quite gruffly.

00:08:04.760 So that was OK.

00:08:05.700 They didn't want to be in our picture.

00:08:08.280 And then about a week or 10 days later, I was on Twitter just scrolling and someone had retweeted a picture of police with a group which looked like it was a pro-Palestine group to me.

00:08:22.260 That's what the picture looked like.

00:08:23.760 And the guy who had tweeted it said, seems clear which side they've chosen.

00:08:30.400 So in a kind of casual manner, I retweeted and I said, how dare they, unwilling, police unwilling to pose with British Friends of Israel, but perfectly happy to pose with the Jew haters.

00:08:43.800 Now, you know, people may say that was quite a sort of direct or, you know, rough form of words.

00:08:52.560 I stand by those words.

00:08:55.140 And then what happened quite quickly, I don't know, it would have been an hour or so after I'd retweeted that picture.

00:09:02.100 And it came up that that was a picture that didn't date from a few months before.

00:09:07.900 It was from a year ago and it wasn't in London.

00:09:11.660 So I immediately deleted my tweet.

00:09:15.160 And in fact, our prime minister, Keir Starmer, when he was the director of public prosecutions, our most senior prosecutor, he, somebody said to him, what do you do if you've made a mistake on Twitter?

00:09:27.360 And he said, delete the tweet immediately, which is what I did.

00:09:31.480 I don't know how many people saw that tweet, but it was a very narrow window in which in which people could see it.

00:09:39.760 But this person in Sussex claimed that they had been very offended by that tweet then.

00:09:46.280 So I made an error about the photograph.

00:09:49.400 I don't feel the sentiment I was expressing was wrong.

00:09:54.140 And indeed, the group that was in the actual photograph has very anti-Israel views, as it turns out, and are big fans of Osama bin Laden, which tends to be a bit of a bit of a clue, doesn't it, really?

00:10:10.480 So anyway, yeah.

00:10:11.020 So they're Gen Z then.

00:10:12.120 Yeah.

00:10:12.280 So just to say, actually, that the biggest story with Essex police, who were the ones trying to pursue me, a Jewish lady wrote and said she had submitted a complaint to Essex police about a very anti-Semitic tweet, which was indeed pretty Israel genocide, white supremacists, and a hate crime officer at Essex.

00:10:42.280 Had replied and said, you know, you are offended, but we're not going to be looking into this because feelings were running very high at the time when the guy posted that.

00:10:54.580 Now, I could say equally that when I posted mine, which was in a few weeks of a massacre, which I travelled to Israel recently to investigate and write big reports on, my feelings were running very high.

00:11:08.000 And I suppose that the broader picture, guys, is people get frustrated and upset, and these issues that crop up are, you know, they do excite strong feeling.

00:11:21.560 But I think strong feeling, we live allegedly in a free society, and we are allowed to express strong feelings as long as we are not inciting violence.

00:11:33.480 And it should be said that The Telegraph and me, we approached very senior legal people, a law lord, a former Solicitor General, two very senior police inspectors, two former Home Secretaries, a former Prime Minister, and they all said my tweet did not come near the threshold for a criminal investigation.

00:12:00.040 That's ridiculous. So it didn't come near the threshold, yet they still pushed it forward, and then you look at what is happening within our legal system and the court system where people have had the most heinous crimes committed against them, and for a multitude of different reasons, they drop out of the system.

00:12:19.060 Yeah, but there's a lot about this situation. On the one hand, you think this is clearly, it's ludicrous, right? So it's almost so bad, it's funny. But it's sinister, Francis. It's sinister. I'm a law-abiding person. I'm in my home. I've got the police around to my door.

00:12:41.700 There are neighbours around me who've had cars stolen from their drive. They've had their shops broken into. My neighbour Anne had £20,000 of jewellery stolen from her small antique shop round the corner.

00:12:56.480 They were given a crime number, texted a crime number, the police wouldn't come. But they were prepared to come for speech, which they deemed to be hateful, but actual crimes that I would still say the vast majority of British people would be their priority for police to investigate, go uninvestigated, unlooked at.

00:13:19.000 So we've got a massive disconnect in our country between police and more comfortable now policing speech than they are doing policing.

00:13:29.340 And why do you think that is?

00:13:32.860 Well, unfortunately, as a reluctant free speech martyr, I have to say, I've had discussions with Constantine in the past about his excellent book.

00:13:42.880 And I was much happier being a free speech supporter in theory.

00:13:50.520 The practice turns out to be slightly unpleasant, but there we go.

00:13:55.060 Let's not skip over that, Alison, because I think, you know, different people will respond differently to situations like this.

00:14:02.080 But you've talked about this being quite, I don't know what the right word would be, harassing or unpleasant for you.

00:14:09.640 And there are people who will say, well, some police turned up at your door, what's the big deal?

00:14:14.140 Why was it so unpleasant for you, the way that this went down?

00:14:20.620 Because they accused me of, I was on a criminal, potentially a criminal charge for stirring up racial hatred, a serious charge,

00:14:32.920 which the commissioner for police in Essex, Roger Hurst, went on a radio station and he talked about crimes like mine, crimes,

00:14:41.800 which could command a seven-year prison sentence.

00:14:45.880 So I think that the police...

00:14:48.920 So you thought when these guys are at your door, I could be getting nicked for years here?

00:14:53.700 No, I think that wasn't that then.

00:14:57.100 I think it was more the threat of this hangs over you.

00:15:04.120 So when you go to bed, you don't sleep very well, and then you wake up and there's a kind of immediate...

00:15:09.660 Your first thought on waking up is, but I'm under police investigation for something I consider to be almost nothing.

00:15:20.200 But they say about things like this that the process is the punishment.

00:15:26.740 And I think that's really right.

00:15:29.800 And it's almost like, I guess, you know, you've got experience of this in a Labour MP, actually,

00:15:37.140 Graham Stringer in the House of Commons talked about the Stasi-like treatment of Alison Pearson.

00:15:42.420 And you think, I mean, coming out of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, of course,

00:15:47.940 the great satirists and the great writers talked about the sort of absurd...

00:15:54.360 It's absurd, OK, but they make up things.

00:15:57.820 And then the more you protest, the more the noose tightens, right?

00:16:01.900 So you can say, I don't want to engage with this process because it's clearly outrageous,

00:16:07.040 but you don't have that option.

00:16:09.000 And so, obviously, I got in touch with the Free Speech Union and my friend Toby Young,

00:16:13.720 who is the founder of the Free Speech Union, and I gave him a description of what had happened.

00:16:18.000 And he said, many, many people, I mean, all walks of life, thousands and thousands of people

00:16:24.560 have been given these non-crime hate incidents, including a former Home Secretary, Amber Rudd,

00:16:32.200 for a speech she gave at the Conservative Party conference when she was the Home Secretary.

00:16:40.660 So the person who was in charge, overall ministerial charge of the legal system in our country, 0.99

00:16:47.920 was herself given one of these apparently fatuous, idiotic things, 1.00

00:16:56.100 which can have a real effect on your life. 0.99

00:16:58.260 For example, if I have a non-crime hate incident on my record,

00:17:03.340 then I may not be allowed to work with children.

00:17:06.520 I wouldn't be able to be a trustee of a charity.

00:17:09.540 I gave a big speech for the Sick Children's Trust last night,

00:17:12.660 and I joked to the audience that I was lucky to be there because, you know,

00:17:16.280 obviously, if I had not fought back against this charge,

00:17:20.180 then I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the work that I do.

00:17:24.400 But it's frightening, and I think of myself as living in a free country,

00:17:30.480 and you suddenly realise there are people who think there are limits on speech,

00:17:38.380 even things that were clearly not crimes.

00:17:42.940 Now, something I have found out, lots of serving and former police officers

00:17:48.420 have broken cover to tell me that at the College of Policing,

00:17:52.480 so let's just go back to the beginning.

00:17:54.700 The non-crime hate incidents really started with the Stephen Lawrence murder case, 0.94

00:18:00.460 a horrible, horrible case of a young black guy standing at a bus stop set about by racist thugs.

00:18:08.740 Now, there were various findings from the McPherson inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case,

00:18:14.640 which suggested that had some of these people been stopped when they were at the stage of hateful speech,

00:18:22.120 maybe it wouldn't have ended up in the murder of Stephen.

00:18:25.840 So that thought, the College of Policing, which doesn't make laws, it's not Parliament,

00:18:31.660 came up with these non-crime hate incidents.

00:18:34.660 They're not within the criminal law, and they're not really within the civil law.

00:18:37.420 They sit in this very, very awkward grey area, and this meant that any expressions of anything

00:18:43.760 could be that the police could turn up and slap these on.

00:18:49.600 They've slapped them on children, for example, just to give you a kid in the playground

00:18:54.400 who has called someone a bad word, that child, age nine, got one of these non-crime hate incidents,

00:19:02.020 so he wouldn't be able to travel outside the country, potentially.

00:19:06.200 So, for me, the more interesting thing is that the ex-police and serving police say

00:19:13.380 that the College of Policing has been entirely captured by woke ideology.

00:19:18.540 They are committed to turning the UK into a progressive utopia.

00:19:23.500 And the police officers who are doing their training are not really being taught a lot about nuts and bolts policing,

00:19:30.960 like catching actual bad people, but they are told that there are these protected characteristics,

00:19:37.380 and that's on the basis of skin colour, religion, sexuality.

00:19:42.440 So, essentially, if the person who decides to make the complaint to the police

00:19:48.020 that you or I have said something hateful, it's a much stronger claim 0.93

00:19:52.880 if they're a black person or a Muslim or a trans person. 0.79

00:19:58.820 So, essentially, now we have a lot of the higher echelons of policing

00:20:02.920 are completely captured by a progressive ideology,

00:20:07.560 which I would suggest is not shared by the bulk of my fellow citizens

00:20:13.180 who think that the police should solve their burglaries.

00:20:17.100 But that's not what's happening.

00:20:18.560 And if you look, there's been a huge increase in these hate crimes.

00:20:22.820 And just to say that, under the last Conservative government,

00:20:26.920 Suella Braverman, she was our Home Secretary,

00:20:29.520 and she could see that these were sinister

00:20:32.900 and could lead to have very, very bad, chilling outcomes.

00:20:38.880 And she suggested to the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak,

00:20:41.160 that these should be scrapped.

00:20:42.760 But, of course, the so-called Conservatives have been frightened

00:20:46.920 of the liberal intelligentsia.

00:20:49.100 So, they said, obviously, the Prime Minister said,

00:20:51.480 no, no, we can't scrap the non-hate crimes.

00:20:55.100 But she was allowed to introduce a statutory guidance,

00:21:00.700 the Code of Conduct.

00:21:02.060 And that Code of Conduct says,

00:21:04.040 if you're approaching someone accused,

00:21:06.660 before you do it, use your common sense.

00:21:10.260 Think, is this in the public interest?

00:21:12.640 Will this person, Alison, pose a serious threat of violent disorder?

00:21:19.680 I mean, I do nothing else, as you know.

00:21:22.420 You're lucky the room hasn't been set on fire.

00:21:25.880 And that Code of Conduct, the police were supposed to be abiding by that.

00:21:30.900 It's just got worse and worse.

00:21:32.900 So, we now have a situation where,

00:21:35.480 as we've had various, very senior people speaking out this week,

00:21:39.820 former Lord Hogan Howe,

00:21:41.760 former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, our most senior,

00:21:44.740 he said, this is obviously very bad and open to abuse.

00:21:48.340 And Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court judge,

00:21:51.740 said it's basically a charter for grudges.

00:21:55.500 It's, that's, you know.

00:21:56.860 And the thing that I find worrying about all of this is,

00:22:00.780 on the one hand, you go,

00:22:02.220 well, all of these notable figures within the establishment

00:22:04.780 have come out and said and condemned it.

00:22:06.900 And I think that's good.

00:22:08.080 Then I look over at Keir Starmer and all his lot,

00:22:10.380 and I think,

00:22:11.780 well, it's going to get worse, isn't it?

00:22:14.880 Well, yes.

00:22:15.800 I think that if my case can do anything,

00:22:19.080 it's possibly act as a slightly shaming,

00:22:22.420 short-term shaming tactic.

00:22:25.960 Yvette Cooper, now the Home Secretary in the Labour government,

00:22:29.420 was apparently going to increase the number of opportunities

00:22:34.360 for hate crime claims.

00:22:37.640 But this week,

00:22:38.600 she swiftly executed a bit of a U-turn and said,

00:22:42.460 we need common sense in the application of these.

00:22:45.800 And the Prime Minister,

00:22:46.900 when he was questioned last week,

00:22:50.400 he too said the same, you know, reassuring words.

00:22:54.820 We really don't want them policing tweets.

00:22:57.520 We want them policing crimes.

00:22:58.880 Because the Prime Minister knows

00:23:00.500 that those are the views of the vast majority of people.

00:23:05.300 Would Labour like to have everyone on the hook for hate crime?

00:23:10.980 Absolutely, they would.

00:23:11.940 Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:13.100 But we have to say, unfortunately,

00:23:14.600 that the Conservative government allowed these things

00:23:18.360 to take hold and flourish.

00:23:20.540 I suppose that one of the bases of my ongoing claims against them 1.00

00:23:25.680 will be how on earth was the stupid non-crime hate incident. 0.99

00:23:31.300 Do you know what? 1.00

00:23:31.780 I hate saying that.

00:23:32.800 Let me tell you why I hate saying that.

00:23:34.660 So I am a student of English literature.

00:23:39.260 And I loved, as a kid from a home with not very many books in it,

00:23:43.940 I did at school George Orwell's Selected Essays.

00:23:46.780 And that became a very treasured book for me.

00:23:49.000 It's still my most stunned book on my bookshelf.

00:23:51.900 And he wrote Politics and the English Language and Why I Write.

00:23:56.240 And those are touchstones to me.

00:23:57.920 And whenever I sit down to write a column, I always think of Orwell.

00:24:02.500 Choose an Anglo-Saxon word.

00:24:04.140 Don't choose a Latinate word.

00:24:05.660 Sometimes you can break that rule, but mainly that's a good rule.

00:24:08.260 Choose a short, pithy word.

00:24:09.560 So that was a great touchstone for me.

00:24:11.960 And Orwell said, if politicians are using ugly language,

00:24:16.840 that's because the thing behind it is ugly.

00:24:20.240 And he talked about, he said that these sentiments

00:24:24.460 are like prefabricated sections of a chicken coop.

00:24:29.320 Now, a non-crime hate incident is peak prefabricated sections of a chicken coop.

00:24:35.700 It's an ugly phrase for an ugly thing.

00:24:39.840 It's meaningless.

00:24:41.060 What is a non-crime hate incident?

00:24:44.000 Well, I can tell you exactly what it is.

00:24:45.680 Because Orwell wrote about this in the preface to Animal Farm,

00:24:48.440 which I discovered very late in life.

00:24:50.640 And I wish more people had read it.

00:24:52.220 Because in that, he talks about how difficult it was for him to publish Animal Farm.

00:24:57.100 And it wasn't because of official censorship.

00:24:59.700 It was because of what he talked about as soft censorship.

00:25:02.320 And that's where people voluntarily censor themselves

00:25:05.240 because they know the repercussions of not doing so.

00:25:08.440 And that's what this is.

00:25:10.260 That is what it's designed to do.

00:25:11.960 It's designed to intimidate people into not saying the things that they know to be true.

00:25:15.960 Yes.

00:25:16.720 That's exactly right.

00:25:18.460 And even, I mean, I'm, obviously, I'm a weekly columnist.

00:25:23.300 And there's a battle on the whole time.

00:25:26.940 I work for a right-leaning, very, very, very successful, wonderful, I think, refuge for all the views that millions of people hold dear.

00:25:36.840 But even there, they are an uphill struggle against this ideology.

00:25:41.300 So just to give you an example, a while ago, I wrote a column about someone who described himself as a pregnant man.

00:25:50.520 And I said, yeah, it's not a pregnant man, is it? 1.00

00:25:53.360 Because, you know, something women do that men don't do, which is get pregnant. 1.00

00:25:57.800 There goes our monetization.

00:25:59.240 Thank you very much for that. 0.62

00:26:00.520 You know, uterus, vagina, woo, you know, all that old stuff, you know, been going on for a few thousand years, hasn't it really?

00:26:08.660 And so I wrote that column and, you know, in my usual quite fiery way, defending women and feeling very, very annoyed about the pregnant man. 1.00

00:26:19.980 And so then the readers' comments started coming in and they were saying, why are you calling the pregnant man he?

00:26:32.500 Now, I had submitted a piece which said she throughout, her, she.

00:26:38.040 That had been changed in the editing process.

00:26:40.400 Now, I'm not accusing people because that's what most people do.

00:26:46.220 What Constantine has described is soft censorship.

00:26:49.260 Most people think it's easier, right?

00:26:51.980 Because you know you're going to get complaints.

00:26:54.460 So I said to my immediate line editor, that's being changed back now. 0.97

00:26:59.880 All those pronouns are going to be changed back because you've made me look ridiculous.

00:27:04.140 I'm saying there isn't a pregnant man and you've called it he, right? 1.00

00:27:08.060 And the readers are furious and they expect us to defend the values which I'm defending, not to succumb to that soft censorship.

00:27:15.660 And then they said, well, the lawyer said, let's go with the other thing.

00:27:21.660 And I said, it's not a legal matter.

00:27:23.940 I'm the opinion columnist.

00:27:25.400 My opinion goes into my column.

00:27:27.260 And then they said, yeah, but these people will report the paper to the complaints commission.

00:27:34.720 And then they will generate vast amounts of work and paperwork.

00:27:38.480 So we'd rather avoid, for obvious reasons, the vast amounts of complaints and paperwork.

00:27:44.360 So it's easier.

00:27:46.780 They make these complaints. 0.94

00:27:50.640 And in the end, even the sane will go along with their nonsense.

00:27:55.300 So I'm just saying that, and this is not a criticism.

00:27:58.460 I mean, I'm so lucky to work for the Telegraph and they have been absolutely in my corner this last fortnight.

00:28:04.700 I mean, we wouldn't have got the result we've got probably if they hadn't, you know, come out and just really gone for Essex police in the most kind of the best tradition.

00:28:15.280 Well, tell us about that.

00:28:16.140 So these guys turn up at your door.

00:28:18.720 They tell you you're guilty of all of these things or been accused at least.

00:28:23.260 The guy whose job it is to oversee the policing for that part of the country goes on radio and says, you know, Alison has committed a crime effectively, which you're not supposed to do in this country because until you've been charged and convicted, you're not, you haven't committed a crime.

00:28:39.120 You've been accused of one, right?

00:28:40.960 It's a big difference, I would argue.

00:28:42.460 And then a backlash started, which I'm very glad it did.

00:28:48.600 And how did you go from there and what was the result?

00:28:52.100 So actually, Roger Hurst, the police and crime commissioner, that was following my fight back.

00:28:57.460 So I rang on the Monday after the police had been around on the Sunday.

00:29:01.140 I rang my editor, Chris Evans, and I was describing what had happened.

00:29:05.820 And he said, that's outrageous, absolutely outrageous.

00:29:08.360 So then, obviously, then got the news team together.

00:29:13.820 And I then published in my Wednesday column what had happened, just describe what had happened and my sense of shock and obviously distress.

00:29:24.000 I was, you know, I was veering between defiant and tearful, which I guess, you know, most people can understand.

00:29:29.980 That was a kind of real switchback of emotions.

00:29:32.660 And the news desk guys started to lift the lid on some of Essex police's behaviour.

00:29:39.400 They published a wonderful chart showing how little actual crime the police solved.

00:29:45.940 Very, very low figures for burglary, assault, violence of all kinds, but quite much better figures for racially or religiously motivated crime or hate crime. 0.65

00:30:00.280 If we were going to be cynical gentlemen now, who would want to be that?

00:30:04.040 The crimes you could solve sitting on your fat bottom, dunking a biscuit into a large cup of tea while you were working from home. 0.83

00:30:11.120 All right. So not the crimes where you might actually have to go and be spat at by drug dealers or any of these people who most people would like to be kept safe.

00:30:21.500 So the paper was every day keeping up the pressure, really good stories, looking at looking at Essex police and then starting to get prominent people, you know, people in the law, people in the media to start commenting on what had happened to me.

00:30:38.000 And this really built up a head of steam.

00:30:41.300 And I can't remember, Roger Hirst appeared on the LBC radio show.

00:30:49.440 And not only did he say crimes like this carry a sentence of up to seven years, which I took to be intimidating. 0.90

00:30:57.820 I think he was part of the let's get out there and far from apologising for the stupid overreaction, draconian overreaction of coming to my house. 0.95

00:31:06.540 They double down. 0.98

00:31:08.280 And one of the things he said, which really, really annoyed me.

00:31:12.460 So I was it was quite good.

00:31:13.920 I was annoyed because actually I might have just thought, let's just go to bed and not wake up.

00:31:17.620 But you do sort of have quite dark thoughts.

00:31:20.940 But I thought he said about my tweet.

00:31:24.520 He said, let's think about how Miss Pearson's tweet would have been heard by our black and Asian communities.

00:31:32.460 I always just thought, I've got black and Asian friends in Essex.

00:31:37.940 They don't think about themselves as living in a black or Asian community.

00:31:42.080 They think about themselves as being British people.

00:31:44.800 And they think if my shop is burgled, I'd like the police to come around.

00:31:48.380 Thanks very much. 0.59

00:31:49.200 They don't want the stupid expense of sending two officers on a Sunday morning to police me for something I said a year ago that was deleted. 0.88

00:31:58.840 So I felt I felt that he was reflecting the mindset of these police, which I believe is racist. 0.97

00:32:06.500 I think it is the what do they call it?

00:32:08.360 The bigotry of softer expectations, don't they?

00:32:11.260 These people are going to be annoyed about the tweet.

00:32:13.540 And the friends I spoke to of that type just laughed.

00:32:20.080 I mean, my two friends of Indian background originally, and I said to them, do you think I go around stirring up racial hatred?

00:32:28.180 Because they absolutely fell about.

00:32:29.600 And Jay said, I can't do the West Midlands accent, sadly.

00:32:32.460 But he said, that's bollocks, that is.

00:32:34.000 And I thought, it really gladdened my heart because hearing them laughing, because I thought they're going to think, they see headlines, you know, Alison Pearson racist tweet.

00:32:48.060 What are they going to think of me?

00:32:49.880 They're going to think of me.

00:32:51.100 And they just said, that's bollocks, isn't it?

00:32:52.860 And I thought, such a gift.

00:32:54.980 Sometimes people give you a gift, don't they?

00:32:56.980 And that was a gift from Jay and Rucci to me, was that's bollocks, isn't it?

00:33:01.000 Because they know I'm not that person.

00:33:02.500 And then Boris Johnson, wonderful writer as well as former prime minister, wrote an amazing essay in the Daily Mail where he just said, when we were kids, we read about the Soviet Union and behind the Iron Curtain.

00:33:16.520 And we used to think, oh, my God, imagine, you know, we're so lucky we don't live in a place where people can come to your door and accuse you or falsely accuse you of things or make stuff up that you've said or thought.

00:33:29.220 And he said, now this is what they're doing to Alison is exactly the kind of thing we used to think.

00:33:36.140 See, Alison, forgive me, but this is where, with all respect, you lose me completely.

00:33:40.320 And I tell you why. 0.98

00:33:41.420 I don't give a shit about Boris Johnson writing an article. 0.99

00:33:44.840 The Tories were in power for 14 years. 0.98

00:33:48.240 Why is this still on the books?

00:33:49.840 Why is this law still on the books?

00:33:51.140 And by the way, why is the current conservative leadership not, they're talking about, we need to review, no, we don't need to review anything. 0.97

00:33:57.160 We need to scrap all this crap.

00:33:59.900 Why wasn't this removed already? 0.98

00:34:02.160 Why do former prime ministers write articles in newspapers?

00:34:06.800 Well, that's true.

00:34:09.840 Sorry that my anger at this situation seems to be unleashed towards you.

00:34:13.920 It really isn't.

00:34:14.620 But I'm just saying, how have we ended up in this position?

00:34:17.940 Because, by the way, for people who don't know, this Roger Hearst guy, who's the police, blah, blah, blah, he's a conservative.

00:34:25.540 Yes.

00:34:25.980 What the hell is going on here?

00:34:27.160 Well, as we know, conservative is now a broad and meaningless category.

00:34:34.840 Yeah, absolutely, I know what you mean.

00:34:37.240 And if you're in that spot yourself, you become very grateful when people articulate the point of view very well.

00:34:44.300 And we have, obviously, not just Boris, but Lionel Shriver and my friend who wrote beautifully in The Spectator about the craziness of this hate crime culture.

00:34:55.180 I think that we know that the conservatives have been taken over.

00:35:02.240 You know, I think there are huge numbers of the party, which, while in government, just effectively became what they call one-nation conservatives, which basically means not paying any attention to the country, I think, one-nation.

00:35:16.040 It's basically anyone outside of one-

00:35:18.020 No-nation conservatives.

00:35:18.660 No-nation conservatives.

00:35:19.900 Anyone outside our social circle.

00:35:21.960 They don't want to seem to be outside the sort of stifling liberal consensus.

00:35:27.940 You know, they've got the sort of metropolitan viewpoint.

00:35:30.680 We had the News Agents podcast, which is sort of journalists like Emily Maitlis and John Sopel, and they had a debate about my case, and they said that it was ridiculous.

00:35:44.520 I was suffering a persecution complex.

00:35:46.640 And you think, yeah, it's not really a persecution complex when you've got police.

00:35:51.500 That's actually persecution.

00:35:52.980 So I think that same reason why the pregnant man is kept as him, because people want a quiet life. 0.98

00:36:05.740 The people who support these views, I would still argue, are a very, very vociferous, aggressive minority.

00:36:13.800 And they just think, well, we won't offend them.

00:36:17.140 And what happens is that, as we've seen, we've just seen this week, it's a bigger issue, but we've seen record immigration figures last year, absolutely insane, a million people allowed into our country, many of whom will make net zero contribution to national wealth and well-being. 0.92

00:36:36.340 But that was allowed as well, same kind of thing, just go, you know, go with the flow. 0.94

00:36:43.020 This makes us look progressive, modern, not like dyed in the wool, horrible old racist Tories. 0.97

00:36:49.280 It's that kind of thing.

00:36:50.640 They, you know, they prefer to, you know, listen to Stonewall, the conservative government allowed trans influencers, trans pressure groups to come very close to the center of government, you know, flying the pride flag.

00:37:11.640 I would argue as a mainstream conservative, entirely inimical to what people like me want and believe should be happening.

00:37:19.060 But they did it anyway, because they were complacent, and they had a large majority, and they paid bugger all attention.

00:37:26.140 Alison, can I stop you there?

00:37:27.500 No, no, no, you shouldn't apologize.

00:37:30.040 You're just both British. 0.81

00:37:31.480 Yeah.

00:37:31.820 However you apologize, she apologizes, then we can move on.

00:37:35.200 Yeah, both identify as trans and move on. 0.89

00:37:36.980 Sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:37:38.100 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:39.280 But you were saying, you know, it's complacency, it's this, it's that.

00:37:42.440 And this is why I'm going to push back on you.

00:37:44.720 I don't think it's complacency, Alison.

00:37:46.700 I don't think it's the things that you've said.

00:37:48.060 I think it's one thing, and it's an unpleasant word, but it's a word that accurately sums up this entire situation. 0.97

00:37:55.460 It's cowardice, isn't it?

00:37:56.500 Let's be honest.

00:37:58.480 Yeah, no, that's a good word.

00:38:00.920 Yeah, it is cowardice, because when you stick your head above the parapet, then, you know, people, guess what?

00:38:08.100 People come around to your house and tell you you're racist or you're transphobic or whatever.

00:38:12.840 And there are a few of us, you know, there was a well-known case, Harry Miller, former policeman, who was told he tweeted something transphobic.

00:38:22.820 Police came around to his house and Harry amazingly fought it all the way to the Court of Appeal.

00:38:28.380 And the Court of Appeal said, yeah, free speech should trump almost everything.

00:38:35.680 That's what, and I believe that.

00:38:37.660 And there are a few exceptions, you know, people saying going around to set fire to a place of worship, obviously, but free speech should.

00:38:44.620 But we have become cowardly, and we don't defend our values, and we see them trickling away, and it's very sad.

00:38:53.560 And I just should say that I haven't particularly wanted to fight.

00:38:59.740 People say you're brave or no, I'm not particularly brave.

00:39:04.600 But I see this as me having a platform and being able to speak for clearly thousands of people.

00:39:13.040 The Free Speech Union thinks that 65 people every day get one of these non-crime hate absurdities slapped on them.

00:39:22.900 So what I can do, the least I can do is, you know, make a fuss, make a stink, write about me, but really it's for the people.

00:39:34.680 I've asked people to send in their own examples, which loads of them are tumbling in now, some stuff you could hardly believe.

00:39:42.540 I mean, it's mental.

00:39:44.180 And I want to try and use the pressure we're built.

00:39:48.280 You know, we've managed to build up some pressure, and we are, I think, I, if, if I could have done one thing in the last fortnight,

00:39:57.700 it would be to make a police officer who's about to send someone out to knock on someone's door, to make him think twice.

00:40:05.440 Just think, maybe this person doesn't deserve that.

00:40:09.200 So maybe some good will come of it.

00:40:11.280 You're talking about rights trickling away.

00:40:13.620 Recently, a Labour MP got up in Parliament and was talking about the implementation of blasphemy laws.

00:40:23.780 Thank you, Mr Speaker.

00:40:27.640 November marks Islamophobia Awareness Month.

00:40:31.260 Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the desecration of religious texts, including the Quran.

00:40:40.660 Despite opposition from the previous government, acts of such mindless desecration only serve to fuel division and hatred within our society.

00:40:50.920 Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the profits of the Abrahamic religions?

00:41:01.820 And you and Keir Starmer seemed receptive.

00:41:04.940 Well, he didn't seem receptive.

00:41:05.900 He was just there nodding vigorously.

00:41:10.400 And you're thinking to yourself, am I, what's going on here?

00:41:15.860 Well, I think that would be one of their, one of the goals of this Labour government will be to bring in much harsher hate crime legislation,

00:41:25.540 which will make it illegal to criticise any aspect of Islam.

00:41:30.940 And that's not our country, in our country.

00:41:33.660 I mean, I'm a lapsed Christian.

00:41:35.720 I was a Sunday school teacher many decades ago.

00:41:39.000 And, you know, Christianity is open, open season.

00:41:42.240 Everyone can have cartoons of Christ and so on and, you know, whatever.

00:41:47.240 But, yeah, I thought that was, it's, it is sinister.

00:41:51.640 But we are, I think, I'm not sure if we're still at the, we're at the end of it,

00:41:55.260 but we were in Islamophobia Awareness Month.

00:41:59.880 It's a smooth transition.

00:42:01.160 You have Pride Month, then Islamophobia Awareness, then Sucker Guy Off Month.

00:42:04.960 It's just going to keep going.

00:42:06.320 I mean, could you have Islamophobia Month and LGBTQ Pride Month at the same time?

00:42:11.440 Absolutely.

00:42:11.980 They go very well together.

00:42:12.980 They go, they go, yeah, they go very well together.

00:42:15.180 And, in fact, in our recent, we had some marvellous local elections in Britain

00:42:19.480 where the Green Party had, was being supported by some quite vocal Muslim people

00:42:29.280 and the sort of LGBTQ community.

00:42:32.860 And you did think, looking forward to that party conference,

00:42:35.160 because, you know, one group hates them.

00:42:37.520 But, look, I mean, I've been campaigning against anti-Semitism for the last year

00:42:42.320 because that's obviously been really horrific.

00:42:45.560 And this week we saw three little Jewish girls walking along, 0.99

00:42:49.640 had bottles thrown at them.

00:42:51.200 One child was admitted to hospital.

00:42:53.580 We're hearing about daily now British Jews leaving.

00:42:56.960 We've got about a quarter of a million Jews in the UK.

00:42:59.140 And many of them are now thinking this isn't going to be a safe place for us to live.

00:43:02.840 And that grieves me.

00:43:03.720 They are one of our, no, I don't want to say patronising,

00:43:08.060 the most astonishing community that make, integrated,

00:43:12.900 makes a brilliant contribution to British life.

00:43:15.260 Every science, business, arts, musicals.

00:43:19.780 There wouldn't, you know, there wouldn't be a musical on West End without the Jews. 1.00

00:43:22.800 But, so yeah, so, but we have an entirely Islamophobia awareness month.

00:43:28.840 And yet the attacks, I would say that the biggest racist threat at the moment

00:43:33.100 is against Jewish people.

00:43:34.420 But that comes back to my tweet, doesn't it?

00:43:37.360 Which was, so.

00:43:38.920 No, I was just going to say, you know,

00:43:40.440 one of the things that I think really resonated,

00:43:42.820 as you know, the story had transatlantic and frankly world resonance.

00:43:47.680 And I think, I don't want to sound snobby in any way,

00:43:52.080 but I think when we think of someone being investigated by the police for a hate crime,

00:43:58.640 you sort of imagine a bloke with a Millwall tattoo on his forehead or something.

00:44:03.040 Just like me.

00:44:04.420 Well, right.

00:44:05.400 And you sort of, and then in this case, not only is that not your profile,

00:44:09.840 but more than that, you're a journalist.

00:44:13.340 You're a journalist.

00:44:14.900 You represent a profession, much disgraced in recent years,

00:44:19.540 frankly, by the behavior of many journalists.

00:44:22.020 But nonetheless, a profession whose job it is to speak as freely as possible,

00:44:27.240 whose job it is to hold government and policing to account.

00:44:30.620 And that's the job of journalists, among other things.

00:44:34.660 So this isn't just an individual citizen.

00:44:38.260 This seems to me and to many people, I think, like whether by accident or by design,

00:44:44.560 an attempt to prevent people from actually talking about things that matter in the public square.

00:44:50.340 Yes, absolutely.

00:44:53.020 I mean, we have a free speech and a free press are the cornerstones of a liberal democracy, aren't they?

00:44:58.640 And it's been somewhat shocking to me this past 10 days to discover how many journalists are prepared to have me thrown under the bus

00:45:08.920 so they can say, oh, yeah, well, you know, maybe what she said wasn't very nice.

00:45:13.620 I can say what I like.

00:45:16.220 You may not like it.

00:45:17.480 You don't have to.

00:45:18.120 Guess what?

00:45:18.520 You don't have to read it.

00:45:19.880 You don't have to follow me.

00:45:21.400 You know, you don't have to buy the telegraph.

00:45:23.680 If our views are disgusting to you, choose some other views.

00:45:27.300 So we have had, as you say, Constantine, we've had the Wall Street Journal saying a headline, you know,

00:45:32.940 British police, police thoughts and not much else.

00:45:37.440 That's America.

00:45:38.640 So we're seeing this huge contrast, aren't we, with the Trump administration incoming is going to set its face against all these,

00:45:46.960 while our society here is, you know, is doubling down on these atrocious things.

00:45:53.480 I think British people have no idea of the way that this issue is seen.

00:45:57.340 And British police, by the way, I was in America.

00:46:00.260 We were there for the election while this story broke.

00:46:03.580 And I got in an Uber and the first thing the guy said to me when he heard my British accent,

00:46:08.640 was what do you think about the police going to journalist houses over tweets?

00:46:13.320 The first, didn't know who I was, just randomly asked.

00:46:16.520 This story has worldwide resonance.

00:46:18.980 And I think it's because they're seeing one of the world's oldest democracies,

00:46:22.420 one of the bastions of freedom, being a society in which this sort of thing happens.

00:46:28.720 I just, I don't think people realize just how outrageous this actually is.

00:46:33.580 But coming back to what you said about clamping down.

00:46:35.940 So we had, back in the summer, we had a massacre of little girls in Southport in a Taylor Swift holiday dance club for little girls.

00:46:47.200 And a person who was accused of that crime, three little girls were slaughtered with a knife.

00:46:56.060 And at least five other children were very badly wounded and their teacher.

00:47:00.140 So it was a horrific event.

00:47:02.380 And I remember reading that the media, when these outlandish crimes or the police said it wasn't a terrorist incident.

00:47:11.580 So we'll take that at face value.

00:47:13.620 But when those events happen, the media and everyone else swings into a particular pattern of suppressing the natural reactions of people.

00:47:21.840 It's not a terrorist event.

00:47:23.340 Don't worry, the accused is a lovely, was a choir boy, sweet guy.

00:47:28.540 No one said or anything badly of him, you know, helped old ladies across the road.

00:47:33.400 And then I read, they said he was Cardiff born.

00:47:37.300 Cardiff is the capital of Wales where I was born.

00:47:39.760 And I just thought, don't call him Welsh.

00:47:42.120 I mean, really, I, you know, this is, you know, Welshmen don't have a great tradition of running amok with knives in amongst little girls.

00:47:51.040 So the reaction to that massacre was they all want to, the government, the state, the police, they want it to go away as quickly as possible.

00:48:01.300 So people were tweeting and because the police refused to be honest about the identity of the person, alleged murderer, that then there was, you know, a lot of speculation and conspiracy theories came into that, into that space.

00:48:19.220 Yes. And they crack down on those people absolutely brutally.

00:48:23.500 And if you want to know what I honestly think, I think multiculturalism in our country is in huge trouble.

00:48:30.740 We have allowed in millions and millions of people, some of whom, many of them are becoming great, productive citizens, but a significant minority of whom hate our way of life.

00:48:44.280 They hate our values.

00:48:45.860 They don't want to integrate.

00:48:47.040 And this is causing massive problems.

00:48:50.420 And the states answer, the politicians, I imagine, if they think about it at all, are really scared.

00:48:56.980 And the only way they can deal with it now is to silence the mass of ordinary people who think it's disgraceful.

00:49:05.040 So this is all to do with mass uncontrolled immigration threatening our country and its values. 1.00

00:49:11.860 I'm a woman. I see those undocumented young males from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia coming across the channel.

00:49:20.840 And I think they will pose, they potentially pose a threat to British women and girls. 1.00

00:49:27.740 All right. Violence gets women and girls is on the increase in our country.

00:49:31.260 And those guys are coming from places where women are regarded as livestock. 1.00

00:49:36.240 Right. So it's dangerous to let them in, particularly undocumented young males. 1.00

00:49:40.980 If you start writing about this, no doubt the next time I tweet about this, I'll be, I'll have another non-crime hate incident against me.

00:49:48.820 But I won't shut up.

00:49:50.560 And many of us will fight to the death for this because they will not change the nature of our country.

00:49:57.920 Right. And allow these things to come in and have dissent silenced and freedom of speech silenced.

00:50:04.240 Actually, I'm sounding braver than I am.

00:50:05.900 I'm not brave, but I, some things you have to take a stand.

00:50:09.840 Alison, and it's very interesting you say that because what I see the Labour government doing is kicking the can down the road.

00:50:16.500 The way that they silenced and they smeared everybody who went on these protests as far right.

00:50:22.820 But eventually the truth comes out and there is going to be a court case in January.

00:50:27.480 Yeah.

00:50:27.580 And there's obviously, there's a large part of me that goes, that is a good thing.

00:50:33.280 There's a significant part of me that is utterly terrified of what's going to happen because there's only so long you can silence the truth for.

00:50:40.620 And then when it gets revealed and all its unpleasant goriness, that's when things have the potential to get ugly.

00:50:48.540 And that's what I'm worried about.

00:50:50.120 Well, they tried to slip out, didn't they, recently?

00:50:53.260 I think it was when you guys were in the States.

00:50:55.060 So they snuck out during the, around the presidential election.

00:51:02.400 In fact, the choir boy from Wales, yes, he, he did have a, allegedly had an Al-Qaeda training manual in his house and was brewing a bioweapon. 0.86

00:51:15.520 Allegedly.

00:51:16.040 Allegedly.

00:51:16.800 Allegedly brewing an alleged bioweapon.

00:51:18.400 Allegedly brewing an alleged bioweapon.

00:51:21.820 Now, say what you like about my house in Saffron Walden, but cooking up ricin on the stove is not something I do.

00:51:28.880 So, yeah, I agree with you, Francesca.

00:51:31.780 I, I don't know where it will all end.

00:51:35.740 And one fears it's not going to end well.

00:51:38.440 And I think that we could be moving eventually to a much further right government.

00:51:45.500 I mean, people like me now, I would say I was an absolute middle of the road conservative.

00:51:50.660 I voted twice for Tony Blair's New Labour.

00:51:54.240 But people like me now are branded far right for, I think, defending the centre right ground pretty, pretty much.

00:52:01.560 So I think we could possibly head to a far, far right.

00:52:06.500 If, if they don't address this, we could be heading for something much worse.

00:52:11.220 And if their idea of defending the indefensible is arresting and imprisoning for over two years a Tory councillor's wife who had no previous convictions, who tweeted something very unpleasant and racist.

00:52:27.800 On the spur of the moment, the woman had, Lucy Connolly, had lost a child in horrible circumstances.

00:52:34.960 She was clearly upset.

00:52:36.720 She tweeted and then she deleted quickly.

00:52:39.720 And that woman is now on a wing in a prison with people who have murdered people because she expressed herself on social media. 0.94

00:52:48.220 I find that really chilling.

00:52:49.820 It is.

00:52:51.400 And as well, the problem with lying, which I see a lot of this government, look, all governments do and all politicians do, of course they do.

00:52:59.960 But the, but the cover up and the lies is what you do when you cover things up is you distort reality.

00:53:07.060 And you don't only distort the reality of the people you're lying to, you distort your reality as well, which is why lies are so dangerous, particularly for the person who said to them.

00:53:15.920 And I'm looking at this Labour government and I'm thinking to myself, do you actually live in the real world with what you talk about?

00:53:23.720 Because the vast majority of people who I talk to, and I make a point of talking, trying to talk to everyone, because I think it's important, the cabbies, the Uber drivers, the people working in the supermarket.

00:53:34.260 I like to have a chat with them and get to them and to actually see what's happening with this country.

00:53:39.680 What they talk about and what ordinary people talk about, it's two different realities, isn't it?

00:53:44.640 And that's a huge problem.

00:53:47.180 Absolutely it is.

00:53:48.420 And I guess like you, I'm, you know, obviously I'm part of the media.

00:53:54.180 I live outside London.

00:53:55.880 I mix with, you know, regular people.

00:53:59.440 And, you know, my little office I rent was above Coral's bookmakers.

00:54:05.580 And the guys in there, guys in there came out and said, oh, thank God you've got rid of that nonsense.

00:54:09.900 You know, the reaction of normal people to my case has been people coming up, giving me plants, bottles of wine.

00:54:19.960 Yeah, I think that, but the, a really quite narrow, I don't like that using the word elite, it's a bit hackneyed, isn't it?

00:54:29.540 But it's a group of opinion formers who have a very strong, you know, they impose their narrative on people.

00:54:39.100 And I think people go along, perhaps nod along. 0.99

00:54:42.480 I think most people just think it's rubbish. 0.93

00:54:44.420 And I think worse than that, if this protected characteristics, if it is indeed the case now that the police are essentially policing to protect the protected groups against the white majority. 0.84

00:55:01.460 I mean, what situation are we in there?

00:55:04.160 No one's voted for that, have they?

00:55:05.960 So this is, this is a, yeah, it's a potentially very inflammatory and combustible situation.

00:55:12.880 And I think we see that in many walks of, you know, many instances now of housing and lots of things.

00:55:19.840 We, we've got a health service that doesn't function in a first world way because of the pressure on it of, partly because of the pressure on it of, of, of inward migration.

00:55:29.820 And people who are starting to think nothing works, we're paying huge taxes, you're creating, you're almost creating a situation where there could be, you know, civil unrest.

00:55:44.360 And you mentioned the role of some media outlets and all of this.

00:55:47.920 And look, the news agents is just where you go to find out how really neutral, in inverted commas, the BBC has always been because it's former BBC people being like rabidly far left, progressive, woke, et cetera, all of it.

00:56:01.760 So what I found really shocking, I know that seems like a minor point, but we have this satirical magazine in this country called Private Eye, whose job it is to lampoon the people in power, to lampoon bureaucrats, to lampoon governments, to lampoon politicians, to lampoon the people who abuse the, the, the rights and privileges they have by virtue of their position.

00:56:24.940 That's what the Private Eye has always done. And I used to get a subscription to read regularly.

00:56:30.760 And when I saw an article in Private Eye defending the police and attacking you, that's where I was like, I have no idea what is going on in these people's heads anymore.

00:56:42.060 How can a satirical magazine take the side of the police when it comes to enforcing anti-speech legislation? How is that possible?

00:56:51.440 Well, they've fallen through the looking glass, haven't they?

00:56:57.660 They, well, look, it's, I think they are pretty misogynist, actually, superannuated public school boys.

00:57:07.780 They obviously don't like me and they, you know, they do that.

00:57:11.780 I don't care if they don't like you. That, that, that's not the point.

00:57:15.620 The point is, they are a magazine whose job it is to make fun of things and they are defending police officers who go to the journalist doors to intimidate them about a thing that's clearly not a crime and should never be a crime in a civilized society.

00:57:31.020 Well, there were lots of comments and mainly of the, I've cancelled my subscription.

00:57:36.440 And they said, you know, it is the Voltaire thing, isn't it? You know, we may not like it, but I'll defend the death.

00:57:41.880 Right.

00:57:42.360 They're right to say it. And I hope I would have the sense and the magnanimity were it someone who was politically opposed to me, like, you know, a guardian journalist.

00:57:52.360 I hope I'd be straight out of the traps and saying we can't have police visiting journalists.

00:57:57.800 You know, that seems to me fundamental.

00:58:00.040 But things have become very, very tribal, haven't they?

00:58:02.780 And, yeah, I thought it was disgraceful that I didn't read it particularly because I could see that some things you want to spare yourself.

00:58:11.460 But I think this idea as well that, you know, I was playing up or was, you know, being hysterical or making a lot of it.

00:58:21.240 I am hearing in the last two weeks cases being brought against normal families or people, children, which are absolutely outrageous and have no place in our society.

00:58:35.320 Right. So it's not just me.

00:58:38.580 You know, obviously, I've used my experience.

00:58:41.220 This is what journalists have the privilege of doing.

00:58:44.180 You can use your position to make the general case that this is this is, you know, if I've got former Home Secretaries weighing in behind me, lucky me.

00:58:55.300 But the general principle is that people with no access to connections or any platform are, you know, being frightened.

00:59:04.800 It's very, very frightening.

00:59:06.720 You don't want the police to be, you know, at your door or on your case.

00:59:11.860 And one other thing with the media was the Sunday Times last week published, Essex police had leaked to them part of the transcript of the conversation, which I didn't.

00:59:25.900 I wasn't aware that the police were recording on my door.

00:59:28.540 I believe the police are supposed to tell you the accused, whatever I am, I'm accused of victim incident, but they were recording.

00:59:38.020 But anyway, they were recording our conversation and the Sunday Times published redacted elements of it, which, of course, backed up the Essex police's view that I'd misrepresented the conversation.

00:59:53.160 Again, I thought that was extraordinary that during a live investigation that the police would leak a conversation, which I don't think they were legally entitled to leak.

01:00:04.160 But the fact that they were really, again, intimidating me by getting people like Private Eye to say she lied about that conversation, I'm not saying I got it 100% right, because I would argue that anyone with the police in front of them would be slightly panicking and not necessarily.

01:00:22.320 But I would say that 97% of what I reported was completely correct.

01:00:27.860 And it acted as a smokescreen for the police.

01:00:30.720 It deflected from the central question of should they ever have sent police to my door, which 100% they should not.

01:00:40.600 There was nothing criminal about my tweet.

01:00:43.260 So that the Private Eye thing is, oh, she lied about what happened.

01:00:47.680 What about the fact that police were investigating a tweet for which didn't come near, didn't come near to being a crime?

01:00:56.460 So that doesn't seem to be important.

01:00:58.240 What's important is I'm making a big deal of it.

01:01:01.140 It's only just police popping around for a quiet word.

01:01:04.700 Can they hear themselves?

01:01:06.120 I don't think they can.

01:01:07.460 And I think you were right to raise this issue.

01:01:09.280 I know that many people around the world with big audiences and big platforms have been paying attention to this.

01:01:15.860 Elon Musk got involved.

01:01:17.120 And this is a big global issue.

01:01:19.500 People should make no mistake about this whatsoever.

01:01:22.160 This is going to be an issue in this country.

01:01:24.380 It's going to be an issue in all of Europe.

01:01:27.000 It's an issue in America only to the extent that they've now actually turned the tide on this stuff, we hope.

01:01:32.740 But this is really important that you draw your attention to this.

01:01:36.000 And I fear we're going to have to keep drawing attention to this issue until it gets resolved.

01:01:41.300 And as Francis says, you know, this is going to have to turn around one way or another.

01:01:45.340 And I hope that way is peaceful and democratic.

01:01:47.740 I really, really do.

01:01:48.800 Well, I mean, the Telegraph's campaign is going to go on to try and get these Orwellian, Kafkaesque, non-crime hate incidents just killed off.

01:01:59.980 They should have no part of our legal system at all.

01:02:03.680 And I am inviting anyone.

01:02:07.180 I've said to people, don't be ashamed because they want you to be ashamed.

01:02:11.100 They want you to be frightened to say this bad thing's happened to me.

01:02:13.860 I'm ashamed.

01:02:14.540 It's not you who should be ashamed.

01:02:16.340 So people doing it to you.

01:02:17.840 So inviting people to come forward with their stories where there's been inappropriate activity with the police. 0.99

01:02:23.560 And if we have to fight them one stupid case at a time, we will do it. 0.99

01:02:27.980 We will expose them. 1.00

01:02:29.220 I've already got, you know, a dossier, the papers publishing a story, Telegraph's publishing a story.

01:02:36.260 Today, a lady and her family were out having a horse ride to, this is allegedly, to travellers, drove a car at them, frightened the horses.

01:02:48.760 Horse nearly fell into a ditch.

01:02:50.080 Everyone was very, very scared.

01:02:53.500 The guys, these guys, two guys got out of the car, came towards the family.

01:02:59.320 They thought they were carrying a knife.

01:03:00.800 They think it may have been a screwdriver.

01:03:02.060 Lots of arguing between the dad, the mum, my source, the mum, call her Anna, was very, very frightened.

01:03:11.820 She dialled the police and she spoke to them and she said, oh my God, please come, please come.

01:03:17.820 It's horrible.

01:03:18.560 There are these effing pie keys here.

01:03:20.800 And pie key for American viewers is sort of slang for travellers or gypsies.

01:03:25.140 And the police turned up at their house about half an hour later and they took down the statement and then they said to Anna, a 42-year-old woman, military family, very respectable.

01:03:37.860 They said, yeah, we're going to need you to come down to the station because her call to the police, 999, was recorded and she'd used the hate word, pie key.

01:03:47.980 So this lady, British lady, kind, decent person, is in shock because she emailed me and she said, am I going mad?

01:03:59.440 I've reported something very dangerous and threatening and they're saying it's your word against theirs.

01:04:05.600 We're not investigating the guys who nearly drove your horses off the road.

01:04:09.760 We're going to get you.

01:04:12.020 We're speaking on the day that Anna is having to go into the police station.

01:04:17.980 To make a statement about using a word when she was very, very frightened.

01:04:23.040 And that is absolutely nuts.

01:04:26.140 And I was able to put her in touch with the free speech union.

01:04:29.340 And fortunately, the lovely solicitor, Loya, who helped me, Luke Gittos, is accompanying Anna today to that interview.

01:04:38.960 And honest to God, if they prosecute her for doing that, I will unleash whatever powers I have to, I mean,

01:04:47.980 that is, can we even, if you were to try that out on any person in the street, who would say that was okay?

01:04:56.840 You're sounding pretty brave there, Alison.

01:04:58.340 So thank you for coming on the show.

01:05:00.580 Thank you for doing what you've done to raise awareness of this issue.

01:05:03.940 I really think this is a big fight and it's going to run and run and run.

01:05:07.020 And it's going to take a lot more than just you and a lot more people are going to have to stand up for themselves and for the principles that are really at stake here.

01:05:14.500 So thank you so much for coming on.

01:05:16.500 We're going to go and ask you questions from our supporters on Substack in a moment.

01:05:21.320 Before we do, we always wrap up with the same question.

01:05:23.700 What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

01:05:25.920 Before Alison answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack. 0.97

01:05:33.260 The link is in the description and you'll see this.

01:05:36.600 Why is it that British politicians do not work to the will of the majority of the people?

01:05:42.300 Should of can't be abolished.

01:05:44.920 Do you think the police would have reacted in the same way for exactly the same alleged tweet if you were black or Asian?

01:05:51.900 I think coming on from what you've just said, we are going to have to have in 2029, we're going to have to have, I believe there will be a Conservative government returned.

01:06:08.980 And I think it will probably be an alliance between Reform Party and the Conservative Party.

01:06:15.060 And the Conservative Party is going to have to jettison any of these one nation people who don't think any of the stuff we're talking about today is very polite.

01:06:23.420 Let's not mention it.

01:06:25.020 But I think that these institutions, the police, the universities, justice itself is absolutely infested with people who don't put the British people first.

01:06:40.500 And they have come to see, we are a warped society where we have come to see every other point of view except our own.

01:06:48.920 That makes us warped.

01:06:50.420 Our civilisation is under threat by those people.

01:06:53.820 So I think what I would say is that we are going to have the fight of our lives.

01:06:58.280 And I think normal people who just think, hey ho, this is what happens.

01:07:04.000 Everyone is going to have to fight it at school level, at college level, at the police level.

01:07:10.200 We're going to have to, I may run against Roger Hurst, the Commissioner for Police for Essex, for the Reform Party.

01:07:18.600 Because if that man stands as a conservative, a fake conservative for that role, which he took on false pretenses because he's not a conservative, as he's proven by his behaviour.

01:07:31.180 People like me who would think I'm not that kind of person, I don't want to put myself forward for office or school governor or whatever.

01:07:41.260 But we're just going to have to do it because they are everywhere and we cannot allow them to colonise, kidnap our society and kick our values.

01:07:54.380 We're going to have, we're just going to have to stand up.

01:07:57.340 Head on over to Substack to hear Alison answer your questions. 0.99

01:08:00.320 How long do you think before the influence of the Trump administration bleeds into the British body politic and by extension policing to end this corruption of our national life?

TRIGGERnometry - December 04, 2024

Journalist Investigated for Tweet Speaks Out - Allison Pearson

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript