NSS Tries To Get Answers About West Midlands’ Police’s Pursuit Of Channel 4

The National Secular Society has demanded an explanation from West Midlands Police about why it conducted a witch hunt against the makers of Channel 4’s Dispatches programme “Undercover Mosque”. But attempts by the NSS to force the W. Midlands force to explain their actions through the Police Authority and the Independent Police Complaints Authority have been dismissed.

The programme was broadcast in January and showed extremist clerics — filmed with hidden cameras — preaching inflammatory sermons in Birmingham mosques. Much has been written since about this phenomenon and, unfortunately, the situation illustrated by the programme seems accurate. Newsline on 2 November ran a story headed: “Government gives £70 million to Muslims to challenge fanaticism”.

The West Midlands police investigated the programme, but rather than try to bring any hate-mongers to justice, the police instead tried to prosecute the programme-makers on charges of inciting racial hatred. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided that there were not sufficient grounds for prosecuting the broadcasters. The West Midlands Police, curiously with CPS endorsement in the form of a joint press release, then made several official complaints to the media regulator Ofcom. They objected to the programme on the grounds that they believed it to have been distorted and misleading.

This week, Ofcom rejected all the Police’s complaints and more than 300 others that the watchdog suspected had been orchestrated.

The NSS has tried to discover what was behind the West Midlands (WM) police’s pursuit of the programme-makers by initiating a formal complaint against WM Police and its Police Authority, and later appealing to the Independent Police Complaints Authority. As we suspected would happen, these have been ruled inadmissible – third party complaints will not be entertained, even when there is a public interest at stake. We made the complaints to register our concerns and, if they were rejected, to draw attention to the inability in such circumstances to challenge the police.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the NSS, said: “We welcome Ofcom’s adjudication. But it raises the uncomfortable question as to why the top echelons of West Midlands Police and their Police Authority were prepared to go to such extraordinary lengths to try to punish Channel 4 executives for exposing the truth about the situation in mosques.

“The supervisory bodies — The Independent Police Complaints Commission and HM Inspector of Constabularies — although acknowledging the seriousness of the complaints, were powerless to investigate. The Police Reform Act should be amended to permit consideration of third party public interest complaints in serious cases. This is even worse than shooting the messenger. If the police had managed to bring a prosecution or their Ofcom complaint had been successful, it would have sent the clear signal that they had the power to silence journalists investigating issues that were inconvenient to them. This would have resulted in a disastrous increase in self-censorship.”

Mr Porteous Wood continued: “One of the reasons extremism in this country has flourished since Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses has been that freedom of speech has been increasingly compromised, partly through intimidation and partly through the Government surrogate support of Islamists in the naïve hope that this would somehow protect us from terrorism. That was why it tried so hard to retain elements of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act that would have seriously compromised free speech. Fortunately, these Draconican measures were overruled by Parliament.

“Had the Government prevailed and the free speech amendments not been made to the RRH Act, and it had been in force when the programme was screened, we have no doubt that the WM Police would be pressing for Channel 4 executives to be charged. They would then be facing the prospect of a jail sentence.

“The fate of these executives, who should be being lauded for actually performing a vital public service, is something we should all be concerned about. But even more important is the cause of freedom of speech itself. As a society we have a clear choice. We need to decide between either giving everyone (including extremists) protection from being offended, or protect freedom of speech – this essential and precious weapon in the fight against extremism. But who is upholding our freedom of speech? Does the WM Police take this adequately, if at all, into account? Does the CPS? We do not think so. And the role of the CPS and its cosy co-operation with the West Midlands Police, with their joint press release, bears close examination in the light of Ofcom’s adjudication.

“A major investigation should be launched into whether regional police forces can be vulnerable to undue local pressure. The Government must also take some blame for creating an environment in which religion and race are conflated in the public sector thinking, and for creating a climate where religion is given a privileged position, and it seems, excused a great deal.

OFCOM adjudication Pages 9-20
See also: MCB backs police
23 November 2007

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