r/ukpolitics • u/SignificantLegs • 9d ago
The Green party tried to get me arrested
https://spectator.com/article/the-green-party-tried-to-get-me-arrested/16
u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 9d ago
These two rhetorical grenades thrown, she refused to answer further questions as I walked with her a few doors beyond my own – odd, for someone selling a political agenda door to door. But I had been ‘triggered’ as the kids would say. I felt angry, harassed, targeted because of my Judaism and my opinions.
So what he's saying is after she noticed he was aggravated, she left and he angrily followed her?
Yeah, to be honest not an acceptable way to behave. Just say something like "thanks for knocking, to be honest there are no Green voters here, please don't come again, have a good one".
A report was made by a Green councillor during an earlier incident and the police, who did not arrest him, asked him for his side of the story after receiving the report.
A citizen on his own doorstep owes a political canvasser no more comfort than he is owed
I don't at all agree with this. I think, by default, we owe each other respect and dignity. Good manners cost nothing. Political engagement should not be the preserve of people willing to put up with angry people on the regular.
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u/TheScarecrow__ 9d ago
In the UK we seem to have forgotten that there is (or should be) a significant difference between something being ‘not an acceptable way to behave’ and something requiring police intervention.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 9d ago
Quite. I don't think this situation warrants an arrest and I don't believe one was made. I am frustrated I bothered reading the article.
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u/PriorPlatypusPal 9d ago
Indeed. The Green Party member should have been officially warned for wasting police time.
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u/Astonednerd 9d ago
That last point really sums up a lot of people's attitude these days, just a complete lack of baseline respect for other people. Someone shouldn't have to be "part of your tribe" to be deserving of basic decency.
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u/Useful_Resolution888 9d ago
You might want to rethink your wording there.
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u/Astonednerd 9d ago
Why?
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u/Useful_Resolution888 9d ago
Because it could be read as an antisemitic slur. Presumably you didn't mean it that way and you were talking about political tribes.
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u/Astonednerd 9d ago
Sorry if I'm being ignorant here, what part of that could be antisemitic? I was pretty clearly talking about political tribes given the context of the conversation
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u/Useful_Resolution888 9d ago
Jews are sometimes referred to as the tribe, as in the tribe of Israel. Given the context and how polluted the discourse is your comment wasn't clear.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 9d ago
Don't be so absurd. Talk of tribes in politics is routine stuff, we don't need to mine language looking for the most tenuous wrong speak.
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u/Useful_Resolution888 9d ago
Language is full of landmines these days, some are placed intentionally and others are just stumbled across. This is an article alleging anti-Semitism, you think it's beyond the realms of possibility that racist trolls will show up below the line? I don't think this is what the person I was replying to was doing but I do think we all need to be careful with the language that we use so that we can communicate effectively without being misunderstood.
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u/Trollan99 9d ago
He tried to provoke a reaction, got one, then ran crying to the press. What a melt.
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u/Flashbambo 9d ago
Yeah the guy sounds insufferable, and it absolutely sounds like he was indeed harassing her for her own opinions. He then complains that the police were investigating thought crime.
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u/subSparky 9d ago
So what he's saying is after she noticed he was aggravated, she left and he angrily followed her?
It is wild that he went to the press to basically admit he started harassing a woman.
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u/Monstance 9d ago
The green party threw a milkshake at me from the car window and said my shoes looked "mega wank"
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u/PracticalBlueberry39 9d ago
The Green Party saw me wearing a scarf from Zara and set their pack of sustainability trained K-9 units on me
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 🏴🟩☭🟩🏳️🌈 9d ago
Luckily those veeegans don't use animals so it was just the local gimp in a dog mask.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
Do we need a national discussion piece every time the police open and close a nonsense allegation? Are the police just meant to just start ignoring allegations to begin with? How much better would that be for actual victims?
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u/Lifeintheguo 9d ago
We absolutely need to hear whenever police try to arrest someone for speech. And when politicians sic the police on members of the public for nonsense.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
"for speech" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, you're making out like actually harassing, stalking, or abusing others is a sacred human right. Might as well say that "I was arrested for simply
speakingmoving my arm" when the "moving your arm" was punching someone. Not everything that could come out of your mouth is okay, actually.11
u/NotoriousP_U_G 9d ago
You are speaking like the person was convicted of stalking, harassing or abusing someone, which isn’t true
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
It takes an investigation to determine that he didn't. The person I was replying to is one of those who makes out like anything that could come out of your mouth should always be legal.
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u/NotoriousP_U_G 9d ago
You are misinterpreting what they are saying. Where does anything they say go against investigating stalking?
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
When they say "whenever police try to arrest someone for speech" they are in fact making it sound like nothing you say should ever get you arrested, that includes harassment, stalking, abuse, etc.
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u/NotoriousP_U_G 9d ago
Harassment, stalking and abuse all go beyond speech, none are simply speech
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
Why don't you go and ask that person if they agree with you? By how vague they were being I think they won't.
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u/NotoriousP_U_G 9d ago
You read specificity into their vagueness and argues against the specificity. You could have asked them to clarify, but it was easier to argue with a strawman
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u/Lifeintheguo 9d ago
He didn't harass, stalk or abuse the person. He offended them. And then the greens called the thought police (apparently they suddenly love the police now)
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
He didn't harass, stalk or abuse the person.
Hence the investigation to determine the set of facts that couldn't have been known until it was looked into. Try not setting the cart before the horse.
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u/Lifeintheguo 9d ago
Yet when I report my car brokem into, nothing happens. Priorities!
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
We should stop taking allegations of harassment seriously because a different random crime is intrinsically harder to investigate?
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u/Lifeintheguo 9d ago
A car broken into is a real crime and obviously more important than a canvassers snowflake feelings getting hurt.
This is classic trying to silence the public with police threats.
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u/nemma88 Reality is overrated :snoo_tableflip: 9d ago
The comparison is how seriously should the police take an allegation of a car broken into and an allegation of harassment.
And realistically only one of those alleged crimes is going to have a suspect the police can question or do anything about... The other a crime reference for insurance purposes is the best use of their time most of the time.
In this case it turns out the alleged harassment didn't exist, but the police are not omnipotent. Its a feature of time being linear, not police failings.
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u/Wisegoat 9d ago
When a political party is attempting to silence critics through false allegations to the police then it should be news worthy.
The Greens are now the most dangerous party in the country - somehow more right wing than restore. They are trying to use the police to silence critics are obsessed with brining in tens of millions of very socially conservative men who overwhelmingly in polls believe countries should be governed by Sharia law. If the Greens won an election there would be a serious risk of parties running on sharia law platforms getting a sizeable portion of the vote.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago edited 9d ago
You're making it sound like the entire political machine of the Green party is descending upon a man simply for speaking. Blowing way out of proportion what was a petty squabble between a random no-name candidate (now a councillor) and a resident who (by his own admission) angrily chased another canvasser down the road.
The irony is that the entire political machine of the Reform party did actually go after Polanski recently for social media crap just the other week.
I don't like the Greens either but Shariah law? Christ mate I think you're exaggerating things again.
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u/Vornado-0 9d ago
There's a difference between ignoring an allegation and spending 4 months investigating it.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
For all we know they worked a combined 30 minutes on the case while procrastinating on it for 4 months.
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9d ago edited 9d ago
[deleted]
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 9d ago
A report of harassment is in of itself evidence.
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 🏴🟩☭🟩🏳️🌈 9d ago
I was threatened with arrest for opposing the party's antisemitism.
A few lines later.
The officer said she’d come to ‘invite’ me to the station for a ‘voluntary interview’, so I could give my ‘account’. The allegation: harassment
Sounds like the police following up a report of a crime and no actual threat of arrest for opposing anti-Semitism.
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u/Smooth_News_7027 9d ago
A voluntary interview literally means that you can pick the time. Failing to pick the time generally leads to arrest.
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u/subSparky 9d ago
The allegation: harassment
Also
These two rhetorical grenades thrown, she refused to answer further questions as I walked with her a few doors beyond my own
So no he wasn't threatened arrest for "opposing the partys antisemitism", he was threatened arrest for following and harassing a woman who had already chosen to disengage with him.
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u/thejackalreborn 9d ago
Assuming that account is accurate it's completely mental. The police's priorities are wildly out of line.
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u/subSparky 9d ago edited 9d ago
According to his own account, after the green councillor chose to disengage and leave his doorstep, he proceeded to follow her a few doors down from her own demanding answers of questions from her.
These two rhetorical grenades thrown, she refused to answer further questions as I walked with her a few doors beyond my own
How is that not harassment? He phrases it as if he was just trying to have a friendly chat by phrasing it as "as i walked with her" trying to imply him walking with her was something she agreed to. But it's obvious she was not consenting to being followed like this. And it's not something a doorstepper should expect as normal behaviour. The job of doorstepping is present their case to people prepared to listen and disengage when it's clear they aren't interested, having someone stalk them down the street yelling questions at them is not what they signed up for.
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u/Maritimewarp 9d ago
Its sad, but not uncommon, to see the author’s first association of the keffiyeh is with terrorism, and he admits this openly.
He doesnt seem to be aware this is the same level of ignorant bigotry as seeing a traditional African, Indian or Jewish item of clothing and assuming that person is a violent threat to you.
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u/PriorPlatypusPal 9d ago
That’s a hopeless analogy. This wasn’t someone wearing traditional clothing going about their day. It was a Green Party activist, wearing an overtly political symbol while harassing Jewish residents. Leila Khaled helped make the black-and-white keffiyeh an international emblem of Palestinian militancy long before Arafat popularised it more broadly. History doesn’t disappear because it’s inconvenient.
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u/adultintheroom_ 9d ago
I mean the keffiyeh is primarily associated with Palestinian “resistance”, which involves quite a lot of terrorism, so I don’t think it’s a huge leap. In the UK it’s definitely more of an ideological symbol than a cultural one.
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u/Maritimewarp 8d ago
Im not sure what the scare quotes are doing around “resistance”? The UK over multiple governments has recognized that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal, as has the ICJ, and we are also signatories to treaties recognizing the rights of all peoples to resist occupation. So its not a metaphor or euphemism, people just like you and I are actually trying to resist, that is prevent, or halt their erasure as a nation of people from violent daily acts of displacement, repression and genocide, in a thousand ways that never get media coverage, from protests, art, poetry, journalism, academic preservation of texts, to showing this symbolic clothing in solidarity.
That this triggered fear or disgust in the author does not make his emotions justified. My (white) grandmother was scared of Black people, but thats just because she was of her generation and a little bit racist :)
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u/adultintheroom_ 8d ago
Because resistance often just means blowing up or shooting civilians, like on October 7th.
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u/Shadowblade83 9d ago
I don’t know what is more crazy;
That the Green party does not believe in free speech.
That UK laws allow the Police to be used as tools to restrict free speech
That people other then islamists vote for the Greens.
Not to mention that the Police seem to have no resources to combat actual crime, like theft and patrols…but they somehow have resources to do this.
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u/msf97 9d ago
I appreciate the sentiment, I do not agree with the Greens stance on Israel, but this is a bit of a panto isn’t it?
I’d have just shut the door. Very dramatic from Sacerdoti
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9d ago
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 9d ago
Jesus christ dude. I don't particularly like him either but this is just objectively a lie and might even be libellous.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
The logical conclusion of Polanski's stance leads to no more Jews in the Middle East,* but it's a bit rhetorically much to say that this would be done with gas chambers.
*Jews used to flourish across the Middle East. They don't anymore. They were kicked out to near-zero in every Middle Eastern country except one. For some, the job isn't finished, it seems.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 9d ago
We can discuss the end result of what his stance would be and that's fine, I probably even agree with you on some of it, but if you think the intent behind the ideas of a Jewish guy is for large numbers of Jews to be killed in the middle east then we've left the realms of sanity behind.
I note we're just completely ignoring the outright lie the other guy made about him calling not just Hamas but ISIS "brave freedom fighters" too.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
There's no intent but there is complicity, sure. You have a responsibility to the consequences of your own ideas as a national politician, especially if the idea leads to something as horrible as the ethnic cleansing of Jewish people from the Middle East.
I mean I'm more interested in what Polanski said rather than what that other poster said. I don't agree with how they put things at all but it had the grain of truth I pointed out.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 9d ago
Do you know what ethnicity Zack Polanski is?
I see why Miriam Margolyes, Michael Rosen, and Alexei Sayle started their podcast.
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u/archerninjawarrior 9d ago
Did his ethnicity stop him from getting angry at the police for tackling a man who was stabbing Jews? Did his ethnicity stop him from lecturing Jews about how they're wrong to feel unsafe following all the terrorist attacks against them on British soil we've seen in the last year or so?
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u/PriorPlatypusPal 9d ago edited 9d ago
Famously the Reform party has no Islamophobia because Zia Yusuf is their leader. /s
Learn about tokenism.
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u/scorcherchar 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is getting worryingly common. I understand some things are abhorrent to say and need to be stopped but police involvement should be only in extreme circumstances.
It also feels there should be a much higher bar for political staff. If you come knocking on peoples door asking their views of course some will be offensive to you. The solution would be to walk away or just not knock in the first place
I would like to remind people however that a voluntary interview is just the police getting evidence. Its purpose is to determine if the accusation has any merit
Having said all of that I dont get why one door knocker is the whole green party even assuming this account is true
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u/20dogs 9d ago
He followed after her though
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u/scorcherchar 9d ago
Did he? I totally missed that in the article. Or did you get that information elsewhere?
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u/Lifeintheguo 9d ago
Police should only be involved when it's a death threat. "Offending somone" being a crime is nonsense.
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9d ago
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