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| Plebgate: why did so many of us believe the police over Andrew Mitchell? | Plebgate: why did so many of us believe the police over Andrew Mitchell? |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Now and again a seemingly trivial episode serves to illuminate a much larger political or social problem. It can also conveniently act as a litmus test, demonstrating how far people are capable of honest, objective judgment, or are swayed by prejudice. | Now and again a seemingly trivial episode serves to illuminate a much larger political or social problem. It can also conveniently act as a litmus test, demonstrating how far people are capable of honest, objective judgment, or are swayed by prejudice. |
| On the evening of 19 September last year, Andrew Mitchell, the Tory chief whip at the time, wanted to push his bike through the gates between Downing Street and Whitehall. The policemen at the gate said he couldn't, and a short altercation ensued, with Mitchell saying "I thought you guys were fucking meant to help us." That might have been the end of the matter, maybe with private apologies, from Mitchell for swearing at the police, and from the constabulary for behaving in such an officious way. | On the evening of 19 September last year, Andrew Mitchell, the Tory chief whip at the time, wanted to push his bike through the gates between Downing Street and Whitehall. The policemen at the gate said he couldn't, and a short altercation ensued, with Mitchell saying "I thought you guys were fucking meant to help us." That might have been the end of the matter, maybe with private apologies, from Mitchell for swearing at the police, and from the constabulary for behaving in such an officious way. |
| What happened instead was that the Sun ran a story saying that Mitchell had called the policemen "fucking plebs", a word taken up by Ed Miliband, shouting "plebs" across the Commons, as well as newspapers, mostly, though not only, rightwing tabloids. Mitchell arranged a meeting with the Police Federation in Sutton Coldfield, his constituency, to clear the air, but the policemen he met then quoted him in a way plainly designed to damage him and force him to resign, which he did. But Mitchell had tape-recorded the meeting and, after far too long, Deborah Glass of the Independent Police Complaints Commission has just concluded that the policemen's distorted version of that meeting raised an "issue of honesty and integrity, not merely naive or poor professional judgment". | What happened instead was that the Sun ran a story saying that Mitchell had called the policemen "fucking plebs", a word taken up by Ed Miliband, shouting "plebs" across the Commons, as well as newspapers, mostly, though not only, rightwing tabloids. Mitchell arranged a meeting with the Police Federation in Sutton Coldfield, his constituency, to clear the air, but the policemen he met then quoted him in a way plainly designed to damage him and force him to resign, which he did. But Mitchell had tape-recorded the meeting and, after far too long, Deborah Glass of the Independent Police Complaints Commission has just concluded that the policemen's distorted version of that meeting raised an "issue of honesty and integrity, not merely naive or poor professional judgment". |
| That still doesn't address the original incident, the truth about which was revealed earlier this year, not by an official inquiry but by Channel 4 News. Using CCTV footage, it showed that the police account simply could not be true. In particular a description supposedly from the police log, and also leaked to the press, was demonstrably false. An inquiry by the Metropolitan Police into the incident still hasn't finished, although Tuesday's IPPC report shows yet again that the police cannot possibly be trusted to investigate themselves. | |
| What's hard to get over to this day is not the revelation that our police can be corrupt and mendacious – what else is new? – but that they can be quite so reckless, and also that so many people are so credulous. It was quite plausible to suppose that Mitchell – who is not famous for having the longest of fuses – should have sworn at the police. What was unlikely to the point of absurdity was that he would have called them "plebs". It's as if the police had quoted him saying, "Zounds and curses upon thy head, thou varlet." | |
| One might have thought that the police would have been a little more cautious about colluding with the Sun just at a time when the phone-hacking story had shown the extent of the corrupt relationship between the Met and the Murdoch press, but no. Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun's political editor , appeared in a T-shirt that said "I'm a pleb". No, you're an Old Etonian, as it happens, and you work for the paper that published much more wicked lies from the police about the Hillsborough disaster. | One might have thought that the police would have been a little more cautious about colluding with the Sun just at a time when the phone-hacking story had shown the extent of the corrupt relationship between the Met and the Murdoch press, but no. Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun's political editor , appeared in a T-shirt that said "I'm a pleb". No, you're an Old Etonian, as it happens, and you work for the paper that published much more wicked lies from the police about the Hillsborough disaster. |
| There are too few heroes in this dismal story, certainly not David Cameron, who abandoned his colleague, nor Miliband, who has been cutting a good figure lately, and who could cut a better one if he now apologised to Mitchell. Robert Harris, who is no Tory but has known Mitchell for years, defended his old friend, but then Harris's new novel An Officer and a Spy, about that historic miscarriage of justice, the Dreyfus affair, has doubtless given him a keener appreciation of just what officialdom can do when hard pressed. | There are too few heroes in this dismal story, certainly not David Cameron, who abandoned his colleague, nor Miliband, who has been cutting a good figure lately, and who could cut a better one if he now apologised to Mitchell. Robert Harris, who is no Tory but has known Mitchell for years, defended his old friend, but then Harris's new novel An Officer and a Spy, about that historic miscarriage of justice, the Dreyfus affair, has doubtless given him a keener appreciation of just what officialdom can do when hard pressed. |
| On the right, the libertarian Tory David Davis deserves a campaign medal, but so does Chris Mullin on the left. Apart from saying that, from his long experience of working with unions and cases of injustice, the Police Federation is the only union he knows that will defend a member even if he has obviously lied and broken the law, the former Labour MP makes the crucial point: if the police can do this to a cabinet minister, what will they do to a frightened black boy on a working-class street – or to any of us? | On the right, the libertarian Tory David Davis deserves a campaign medal, but so does Chris Mullin on the left. Apart from saying that, from his long experience of working with unions and cases of injustice, the Police Federation is the only union he knows that will defend a member even if he has obviously lied and broken the law, the former Labour MP makes the crucial point: if the police can do this to a cabinet minister, what will they do to a frightened black boy on a working-class street – or to any of us? |
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