Two-tier policing is not a myth

The widespread claims that Britain has a problem with ‘two-tier policing’ have clearly touched a nerve with the establishment. Earlier this week, when a Sky News reporter asked Mark Rowley, Britain’s most-senior police officer, if he would ‘end two-tier policing’, Rowley grabbed the mic from the journalist’s hand and dropped it on the ground. He later issued a statement claiming that it is ‘complete nonsense’ that police would treat anyone differently according to their race, religion or political leanings. I dare say Sir Mark doth protest too much.

The media have also declared, in unison, that there is no bias to be found in our police. Almost every major media outlet has carried an article purporting to ‘fact-check’ and ‘debunk’ the claims around two-tier policing. The Times ran with ‘Two-tier policing: the claims fact-checked’. ‘How has the “two-tier policing” myth become widespread?’, asks the Guardian. ‘What is two-tier policing? Nigel Farage and Elon Musk’s claims debunked’, announces an Independent headline. That ‘two-tier policing’ is a myth, invented and spread by the far right no less, is simply taken as a given.

This is a bit strange, no? In some cases, the very same outlets that, until now, have been running near weekly articles on how the police are institutionally or structurally racist, riddled with some ‘-ism’ or ‘-phobia’, proclaim that any suggestion of unfairness in policing is preposterous. Apparently, if you dare to use the words ‘two-tier policing’, or ‘two-tier Keir’, then you have probably fallen under the malign sway of Tommy Robinson.

It is certainly true that some on the online right are overegging the extent of two-tier policing. Some ask why the ‘white working-class protesters’ of the past week or so are being cracked down on so harshly, particularly when compared with other ‘protests’. The obvious answer being that they have done so much worse than just protest – they have rioted, menaced mosques, tried to burn down asylum hotels, vandalised shops while shouting ‘smash the Pakis’. Any attempts to deny or downplay the despicable racism and violence of the past two weeks’ riots, or to equate them with legitimate, peaceful protest, need to be given short shrift.

But there are some like-for-like comparisons we can make that really do illustrate the problem with two-tier policing. Just two weeks before the race riot in Southport, riots broke out in Harehills, a diverse suburb of Leeds. This was sparked when social services attempted to take a Roma child into care. Yet while the police were out in force in Southport and in other English towns over the past two weeks, in Harehills, the police simply ran away. Rioters then overturned a police car, set fire to a bus and wreaked havoc for the rest of the evening. The police essentially allowed the rioters to tire themselves out.

Tellingly, most of the ‘fact-checks’ on two-tier policing don’t mention the Harehills unrest at all. The Guardian at least nods to it, but claims that the ‘circumstances in Harehills were very different’, although it does not really explain why. Of course, a key difference in ‘circumstances’ was the rioters’ ethnic backgrounds. Strikingly, the day after the Harehills unrest, Leeds City Council issued a joint statement with ‘representatives of the Roma community’ praising that community’s contribution to the ‘diversity and richness’ of the area. Might this be a hint that the identity of those rioters was at the forefront of the minds of the authorities?

What the deniers of two-tier policing miss is that differential treatment for different ethnic groups is an unseemly, but inevitable outgrowth of the system of multiculturalism. From the late 1980s onwards, the British state has increasingly related to its ethnic-minority subjects via self-appointed ‘community leaders’ who, in turn, can have a great deal of influence over police and local-authority decision-making. (Some on the right miss the significance of this, too, by mistaking this institutional set-up for police ‘prejudice’ against whites.)

We saw this system plainly in action in Birmingham earlier this week, when masked Muslim men were allowed to roam around Bordesley Green with weapons. An LBC journalist was chased away with a metal poll. A Sky News broadcast van had its tires stabbed at. A man was badly beaten outside a pub, leaving him with a lacerated liver. The police knew that large crowds were planning to gather here but they decided not to show up.

The next day, Emlyn Richards of West Midlands Police explained why. Speaking to Sky News, he said that his officers had met with ‘community leaders’ to ‘understand the style of policing we needed to deliver’. The ‘community’ (ie, Birmingham’s Muslims) ‘were trying to make sure that [this gathering] was policed within themselves’. So that’s okay, then? Some communities are free to ‘police themselves’ and can decide how certain men with weapons should be policed? That sounds an awful lot like two-tier policing to me.

Perhaps the most egregious examples of two-tier policing relate to the ‘pro-Palestine’ marches that have been held almost weekly since 7 October last year. The Metropolitan Police – usually keen to bundle Londoners into a van for using offensive language – haven’t just been turning a blind eye to much of the rank anti-Semitism on the streets. No, they have also actively tried to appease and excuse the most hateful Islamist elements of these marches.

Back in October, members of Hizb ut-Tahrir – now a proscribed terror organisation – gathered outside the Turkish Embassy in London screaming ‘jihad, jihad, jihad’ and calling for ‘Muslim armies’ to invade Israel. In response, the Met put out an extraordinary tweet trying to reassure the public that jihad ‘has multiple meanings’, while chiding those who associate it ‘with terrorism’. In this instance, the police didn’t just turn a blind eye to this call for terroristic violence and war, they were effectively doing the Islamists’ PR for them.

Meanwhile, the Met seem to have a zero-tolerance approach towards anything that might cause offence to Islamists and anti-Semites. Niyak Ghorbani, an exiled Iranian dissident, has been arrested on multiple occasions for holding up a sign that accurately describes Hamas – the anti-Semitic terror group behind the 7 October massacre – as ‘terrorists’. Clearly, the police are aware that opposing Hamas is a provocation to the many anti-Semites and Islamists who attend these ‘peace marches’.

Similarly, last year, volunteers for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism were threatened with arrest for a ‘breach of the peace’ over a mobile billboard displaying images of the children who had been kidnapped by Hamas. Police officers have even been photographed tearing down posters of Israeli hostages. The excuse for this anti-Semitic vandalism? To calm ‘community tensions’ – a cowardly euphemism for appeasing Islamist bigots.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that none of these obvious and unambiguous examples of policing double standards feature in the many media ‘debunkings’ of the ‘two-tier-policing myth’. Not for the first time, the ‘fact-checkers’ are less interested in establishing the truth than in defending the establishment narrative.

Let’s be frank, two-tier policing is not only real – it is also impossible for any honest person to ignore.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.