Open letter to Claire Smart - Commander, Met Police

For the last few years I have travelled around Britain organising events where women gather in public to speak about women’s rights, safeguarding, freedom of speech and the reality that sex matters. (I’ve actually travelled around the world and witnessed policing in places as far as Auckland and Rio de Janeiro.) They are not riots, they are not threats to public order and they are not designed to intimidate anybody. They are simply women speaking in public about matters that affect women and girls.

Yet increasingly I have come to the conclusion that, in the eyes of parts of British policing, women speaking publicly is itself treated as the problem.

When we sought to hold an event in Whitechapel, we wanted to do what free speech campaigners have always done: gather somewhere visible, somewhere accessible and somewhere that ordinary members of the public might hear us and engage with what we had to say. Whitechapel was not chosen by accident. Part of the reason we chose it was because we know that there are parts of Britain where certain opinions cannot be expressed or where certain groups of people should quietly avoid speaking in public and we are told these places do not exist.

We are constantly told that Britain has no no-go areas, that the rule of law applies equally everywhere and that everyone enjoys the same rights and freedoms regardless of which street they happen to be standing on.

We wanted to test whether that was true.

Instead we were informed that, for the sake of “community tensions”, we would have to hold our event in a park some distance away from where we had intended. Public speech hidden away from the public rather defeats the object.

We were further informed that if we entered Whitechapel to hold our event as planned we risked arrest for breaching the conditions imposed upon us.

The practical message appeared to be that women were free to speak, provided we did so somewhere else. In this case, a park far far away.

We were informed that Stand Up To Racism intended to protest the event and that approximately 500 demonstrators were expected to attend. We also told that Tower Hamlets Council had informed the Metropolitan Police that as many as 20,000 protesters could arrive in opposition to women gathering to speak publicly.

Twenty thousand.

If those figures influenced operational decisions then I think the public deserves answers. Did these estimates contribute to the decision to move us from our chosen location? Did they contribute to the Section 14 conditions imposed upon our event? What intelligence supported those predictions and, now that the event has passed, does anybody seriously believe they reflected reality?

Because if public authorities can justify restrictions on unpopular speech simply by predicting enough opposition to it, then freedom of expression exists only at the pleasure of whichever group can threaten the largest protest.

That is not democracy. It is the heckler’s veto with official paperwork attached to it.

The consequence of this approach was that the women wishing to exercise their lawful right to speak found themselves restricted as to where they could stand and when they could assemble, while those seeking to stop us speaking appeared to face no equivalent restrictions at all. We cooperated fully with the police and complied with the conditions placed upon us, yet protesters were still able to approach closely enough to scream through speeches and attempt to drown out women’s voices.

Had some of the women present not stood their ground, our event would simply have been shouted down.

I find myself wondering what lesson the Metropolitan Police intended women to take from this experience. That we may speak, but only where we are told. That we may speak, but only if enough people do not object. That women discussing safeguarding and women’s rights are to be managed, while those threatening disruption are simply an unfortunate reality that everyone else must accommodate.

There is another possibility that I find myself increasingly considering, and it is one that should concern anyone who cares about equal treatment under the law. Have the police, in some circumstances, simply concluded that enforcing the same standards everywhere, against everyone, is too difficult, too resource intensive or too politically sensitive, and that it is therefore easier to restrict those who are willing to cooperate than those who may not be?

From the perspective of those subjected to these restrictions, it can sometimes feel as though policing has become an exercise in managing the compliant rather than confronting the disruptive. The organisers who engage with police, follow instructions and obey the law find themselves moved, restricted and regulated, while those threatening disorder acquire influence simply through their willingness to create problems.

Many members of the public will look at situations such as this and conclude that certain communities or activist groups are treated with a degree of caution or accommodation that would not be extended elsewhere, not because police officers agree with them, but because confronting them and policing them robustly is judged to be too difficult, too costly or too likely to create further problems.

Whether that perception is fair or unfair, it exists.

It also raises an uncomfortable question that police leaders should perhaps be willing to answer openly: are the police still controlling the streets, or are they increasingly managing public order according to which groups are easiest to police and which groups are most likely to create difficulties if challenged?

After several years of experiences like this, I have reached an uncomfortable conclusion. I increasingly believe that many police officers approach these events having already decided who the aggressors are before the first officer arrives on scene. Women speaking publicly about the erosion of their rights are viewed as provocative, while those seeking to silence them are viewed as reacting to provocation rather than creating it.

Once you begin from that assumption, every decision that follows becomes easy to justify.

Move the women.

Restrict the women.

Manage the women.

The protesters can largely look after themselves.

The day after this event I experienced something that was neither hypothetical nor speculative. A man approached me and asked whether I intended to continue “talking shit about Islam”. When I replied that I did, he told me, “I’m going to cut your throat.”

The exchange was captured on video.

If charges follow, he will become the fourth man charged with offences against me in the United Kingdom in the last three years because of my public campaigning.

That is one of the reasons I find this approach so difficult to understand. Time and again it feels as though the authorities are more concerned with managing, or not managing, the reaction to women speaking than with protecting the women who are speaking. Genuine threats against women who speak publicly seem to be regarded as an unfortunate occupational hazard, while the women themselves are treated as the public order problem.

I am also troubled by reports of Metropolitan Police LGBT training sessions in which my name was mentioned and officers were allegedly encouraged to boo and hiss. If true, that should concern every Londoner, regardless of whether they agree with me or disagree with me. Police officers are entitled to hold political opinions like everybody else. They are not entitled to allow those opinions to influence the policing of lawful speech and assembly.

Impartiality matters most when police disagree with the people they are policing.

Which brings me to my final question: is Tower Hamlets a place where women can safely gather and speak in public?

I intend to speak in Tower Hamlets again, and I intend to do so somewhere that people can hear us. Perhaps on the steps of the Town Hall itself. Perhaps somewhere else in the borough. The location matters less than the principle.

Will the Metropolitan Police facilitate lawful speech or facilitate its suppression?

Will women once again be moved out of sight for the sake of “community tensions”?

Will restrictions once again fall primarily upon those wishing to speak rather than those wishing to silence them?

Or will the police defend the principle that unpopular speech deserves the same protection as popular speech?

Because if parts of London have become places where women may speak only with official permission, under official supervision and in officially approved locations, then perhaps we should at least have the honesty to say so.

Women should not require police permission to speak.

Nor should they be treated as a public order problem simply because others object to hearing them.

Kellie-Jay Keen