Now investigate West Midlands police

Verity

There's a lot of extremely odd - not to say sinister - official behaviour here that needs a good airing. Perhaps in "Undercover Mosque Part Deux"?

field

Melanie - Congratulations to you in identifying this as matter of the utmost importance. It is emblematic of how insiduous is the influence of this ideology on our public life and what a poisonous chemistry there is between "Political Correctness" and Islamic ideology. To think that the Police and CPS sought to turn tables on this documentary team who had been acting in the public interest in exposing the preaching of hate! I agree entirely. The role of the Police and CPS needs to be examined thoroughly and in my view those people responsible for the abuse of power must be removed from office.

Elydo

This is the way a country turns to anarchy. More and more the average people are seeing that the police, the politicos and the wider media cannot be trusted to know, care or change anything that's going on within Britain's streets and houses. And once faith in the public services has fallen low enough, they will also fall from peoples minds, leaving no other options but to leave the country, as many who can have been, or to take the ineffectual law into your own hands. Then, well, no speculation will really be accurate...

Donald Forbes

Whatever the motives of he WM police, the outcome is that their complaints have been well tested and not upheld which should make it easier, not more difficult, for journalists to work on the subject of extremist activity.

eliXelx

Please don't take this one small victory against a subversive enemy using all our society's institutions against us as a precedent for anything greater. The enemy has unveiled its features ever so slightly; it is our delegates, our representatives, our freedoms, our lassitude, that have allowed it to come this far; it may be a first glimpse, but it won't be the last! There are a welter of court cases, on a myriad of subjects, by cohorts of enemies coming. We cannot afford to give them a single victory!

Gordon Neil

I too wish we could have some confidence that the actions of the WMP would be thrown open to public scrutiny and that those responsible would punished accordingly. However, I wouldn't hold my breath. I note from the Harry's Place Blog that the MCB/ MB are holding an extremists feast on 'Global Peace and Unity Islamist Style' and guess who the star guest speakers are..Our Justice Minister Jack Straw and the Head of the Metropolitan Police. The appeasement express rolls on....

dsquared

It is indeed good news that Ofcom have made the correct ruling, but can we have less of this conspiracy theory rubbish please? If the CPS were correct in rejecting the West Midlands claim that the program constituted incitement to religious hatred, then they were most likely also correct in rejecting the call for a prosecution of the people identified in the program. Pretending that we need any other explanation than "there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution" is completely superfluous and without evidence. Furthermore, the sentence concluding "this is the way a culture offers up its own throat to the knife" is implicitly claiming that British Muslims are going to destroy our culture and quite possibly murder us all. That is purely and simply a conspiracy theory and has no place in sensible or civilised discussion.

John

This case is similar to North Wales Police looking into someone criticising the welsh and the Met Police threatening a woman journalist because she spoke about gay adoption on the radio. WMP would do well to look at their crime rate rather than interfere in things not of their concern. Unfortunately this come part and parcel with this government's advance towards a "police state" where they control everything

Austin

What a supine, limp-wristed "force" the West Midlands police have become with their fugitive pieties about "communities" (the new codeword for "muslim"). When did the UK police change from robust enforcers of the law to tortured, bleeding heart social workers?

Malcolm Edwards

Melanie Phillips' obsession with Islam and militant Zionism is becoming a little tiresome. How about some blog entries on subjects other than the above for a change? The Spectator deserves better.

Thom

Whilst I disagree with the law against incitement to racial hatred, viewing it as a curb on free speech, I disagree more with the attempts to censor the Dispatches team in the interests of "community cohesion", or, as I like to think of it having lived near to Bradford, preventing a riot from angry muslims taking offense at bigotry that extends to the very top of their foodchain. Valuable resources are wasted on rubbish like this - the money could be better put to stopping actual terrorists rather than penalising people for talking about it.

Jason Mead

This was a blatant smear attempt by both the CPS and West Midland’s police to discredit the Dispatches programme for exposing the bigotry and hatred that was being preached at Green Lane Mosque. Well I’m glad that the tactic has spectacularly backfired and I personally hope that the programme makers will now sue the WM police and the CPS in the same way that Donal MacIntyre did when Kent Police tried similar smear tactics against his one of his reports. I also hope that there is also an investigative documentary by Dispatches, as well as full scrutiny by other reporters, into how these public bodies are being politicised to the point where they making utterly preverse decisions like this. Well done to David Davies and Don Foster for demanding answers from the WM Police and CPS. I hope that they and others will now call for a public enquiry.

Max

Malcolm Edwards (shurely shome mistake in the name??) If you find Mel tiresome there are plenty of other places you could frequent and while away your oh so important time. In the meantime, leave the important matters to people that know a little better than your good self. Idiot. Keep up the good work Melanie!

Gary McMahon

Well done Melanie for raising the profile of this worrying and insidious case. Can you believe the BBC has chosen not to highlight this case? Looking at their web site it is nowhere to be found - or very well hidden. It is time that the political Islamic community were put under the same searchlight and questions as other political parties and not 'let off' with condesending questions from 'enlightened' reporters. In this particular case WMP should conduct an investigation as to why the issue was pursued and the CPS should explain why there is not enough evidence to pursue some of the people making the odious comments they made?

Malcolm Edwards

Max, I'm unclear as to why my comment makes me an 'idiot', but there you have it. The Internet is full of rude people it seems. Nevertheless, my original remark still stands. A little more originality (and less swivel-eyed opinionism) from Ms Phillips please.

Tiberius

Malcolm Edwards: if you read Christopher Booker's ST column, you know you're going to get pieces on his speciality, loony bureaucracy. Don't go there if you don't want to read up on it! And Melanie isn't swivel eyed - that label belongs to those of whom she warns.

Peter

'Furthermore, the sentence concluding "this is the way a culture offers up its own throat to the knife" is implicitly claiming that British Muslims are going to destroy our culture and quite possibly murder us all.' What patent drivel, dsquared. If the authorities refuse to clamp down on the kind of hate speak exposed in the Dispatches documentary then it's hardly going to subside, is it? Indeed, with the reports that MI5 now has to watch 2,000 people, it suggests the problem is growing. It is the words of the preachers of hate that have no place in a civilised society, but because they come from a minority religion they seem to have special dispensation to do just as they please. The more these things go unchecked, the more confident the hate preachers become. As for Malcolm Edwards and his delusion that there is something called "militant Zionism", where are the Jews trying to bomb non-Jews into mass conversion to the Jewish faith all around the globe? I'm terribly sorry, but I can't see them. What I do see is a tiny little patch of land called Israel that belonged to the Jewish peoplehood before Islam even existed. It is theirs: morally and legally. As a British Christian, I'm beginning to understand just how the people of Israel must feel, although I doubt their police chiefs have gone grovelling to the forces that would dismantle Israel in the way that the West Midlands police has in this appalling and disgraceful episode.

Neil Saunders

As with most of our major institutions (the significant exceptions being financial ones, now the perpetual fiefdom of the free-market right), the Police Force (sorry, "Service") has been ideologically captured, Gramsci-style, by sociocultural Marxists who presumably view Muslims as the new, oppressed proletariat. It would be interesting to find out the names and affiliations of the police officers who ordered this series of actions against the programme makers and Channel 4.

Allan Sharp

As has been mentioned elsewhere, the actions of West Midlands Police are themselves worthy of full investigation in order to learn more about the inner workings of a politicised police force. Who are these people and what are their motives?

Ascalon

Another great cock-up by the police and a cover-up to protect the guilty. The Home Office obviously wants to ignore anti-western outbursts from mosques in the hope that "if we ignore them they might not go away, but they might not bomb us either." Turn the other cheek - as if it isn't red raw already!

Manuel

Well done WMP for yet another valiant effort to inhibit the telling of the truth!!! The hate-filled imams, encouraging criminal acts, are the ones to be investigated for incitement to racial crimes. In the name of leftwing political correctness the decide to shoot the messenger. If the police cannot see and hear criminal incitement and then investigate thoroughly, what chance do we have? What is the point of the police? I suggest the WMD be prosecuted for wasting police time, its own.

Lee Jakeman

Who's going to investigate them? Ian Blair?

Milton Valler

"West Midlands police ... have turned themselves into a mouthpiece for Islamists trying to shut down legitimate and necessary debate." Shakespeare could not have said it better. I await the investigation, but won't hold my breath.

Paul Weston

Malcolm Edwards In the 1930's there were a handful of foolish Jews in Berlin who complained of "scaremongering" Rabbis' appropos the rise of the Nazi party. Perhaps if you ignore the rising threat of militant Islam, which closely resembles the ideology of the nazis, it will just go away. I believe the expression for such magnificent complacency is "dhimmitude." Congratulations.

Geoff Miller

I am not defending his stance but how can Nick Griffin of the BNP be arrested when saying far less hateful things whilst no grounds can be found for the arrest of Islamists in the Ch4 documentary preaching such blatant hatred? Its obviously not about justice but politics. The disparity between how native people are treated compared to Muslim immigrants shows only too clearly why so many of us are now so very angry about how our country is being ruined by Labour and their fellow travellers.

Salvatore

Is there any reason why someone somewhere, should not launch a private prosecution against people who incite offences?
Legal advice on the point would be available, and if proceedings were feasible the CPS would have to consider whether to take them over or discontinue them.
If they were discontinued there should be explanations.