In recent months we have witnessed frontpage news hopping from country to country to follow civil unrest in Western nations. We’ve had pro-Palestinian unrest on US campuses and in London, anti-immigration unrest in Ireland, French protests against a variety of matters, and back to the UK, this time, for unrest against the changed cultural landscape (to put it simply). In the UK’s recent unrest, a new term has come to the fore – “two-tier policing”. The term is resonating loudly such that even Elon Musk has joined in by referring to the UK’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as “two-tier Keir.”
The concept of two-tier policing implies that certain cultural groups are given preferential treatment by the police. Specifically, the thinking goes that protesters or rioters espousing leftist causes are given more lenient treatment compared to others. These leftist causes include LGBT+ advocacy, pro-Palestinian / pro-Islamic causes, and eco-activism.
Is there a factual basis to confirm two tier policing is a real phenomenon? We propose two phenomena that suggest it could be real
1. Decades of minority activist groups targeting the Police.
State-funded institutions to an extent will always be left-leaning and therefore more prone to being ideologically driven. Historically, of all public institutions, police forces were more likely to be politically centre-right as law and order typically has greater importance in the thinking of the Right. However, minority activist groups in recent decades have targeted public institutions to convert them over to their ideological viewpoints. Police forces have not been spared. UK LGBT activist group Stonewall have been at the forefront of this and some sections of the police force have enthusiastically fallen under their spell, facilitated by a climate of coercion that demands people’s very own thinking and values fall into line, not just the outward practicalities of law enforcement.
What the public now sees is a police force that is evangelical about LGBT values and other activist causes. The press reports on rainbow-themed police cars, members of the forces dancing at gay pride events, and fervency when tacking anti-LGBT “hate” crimes (see next point), not arresting those for causing mass public agitation (climate alarmism, pro-Hamas/Palestinian causes) whilst at other times arresting lone individuals for praying in the vicinity of an abortion clinic. From the outside, this doesn’t look like neutrality of policing. It looks biased.
2. Hate speech bias of enforcement
Hate speech at its very core is a Marxist technique to change the thinking of an induvial to line up with an ideology. The concept can be dated back to the Soviet era when words were classified as politically correct or not. Words that lined up with the Party’s ideals were deemed as correct, those against the Party were not. Today’s Hate Speech laws do not necessarily tackle real hate which is ultimately an issue of the heart. Instead, they tackle words that may have been spoken against an ideology.
The press reports of bias. We hear of UK policing tackling hate speech against Islamic / pro-abortion / LGBT matters but of little tackling hate speech against those of the Chrisitan faith / those holding right-wing political opinions/ pro-life advocates / those expressing socially conservative sexual norms etc. The public are suspicious, rightly or wrongly, that there is bias in favour of certain groups and causes.
Case in point: in June 2024, pride flags painted on the pavement outside Forest Gate railway station in east London, UK were vandalised. House to house enquiries and forensic investigations ensued. The perpetrator then repeated the action in July 2024 shortly after which the local police commented, “We stand with the local LGBTQ+ community and will not tolerate these disgusting, inexcusable hate crimes in Forest Gate”. That’s a lot of effort and emotion energy expended by the police. Why doesn’t the UK public hear about similar enthusiastic responses from the police to tackle the truly hateful chants of Pro-Hamas supporters that made UK cities no-go zones and their desecration of war memorials? It can’t be just a matter of selective reporting.
Policing – what does it look like from the other side
Not great. The new ideologies come from the world of politics above, pushed by the Elites. Promotion of the ideologies doesn’t come from grass-roots movements. Like all other Marxist-inspired policies that have gone before, fear and intimidation are the twin brothers required to roll them out. There will be many, many police officers who despair at the way they are told to police. Their numbers will vary from force to force. They will want fairness and may roll their eyes at the indoctrination but struggle to walk the tight rope to avoid disciplinary action.
Policing – a non-trivial matter
Getting policing right is critical to maintaining what some have called the thin veneer of society. There are countless global examples of when policing becomes politically aligned that trust breaks down. On the streets a blend of lawlessness and oppression follows but the ultimate casualty is a lack of justice. Lack of justice then spills over almost every aspect of society. This includes the realm of business confidence which affects economic prosperity which in turn impacts a society’s ability to generate new and innovative solutions to solve problems. Managing the containment is virtually impossible; there are no proven methods for ring-fencing a breakdown in public trust.
In the UK we are not yet at the point of a complete breakdown in trust. But, we mustn’t shy away from stating that we have such a scenario in embryonic form. The solution is to de-politicise the police to ensure neutrality of enforcement. There must be a recognition that there are layers of management that are bent towards permeating the force with the new values that cater for the select few. This must be driven by strong political leadership from the UK’s Home Office. Fourteen years of Conversative Party rule did little if anything to stop the concerns. Unfortunately, given that the Labour Party are on the Political Left there isn’t much cause for hope now. The situation is further exasperated by the UK’s Civil Service who are believed to be brazen-faced in their embodiment of woke ideologies. However, we now have at least the concept of two tier policing out in the public awareness. This may put pressure on policing strategy to return to a more neutral stance.
There is evidence that to suggest the matter has been brewing for decades, ever since Marxist influences got their foot in the door in the UK’s public sector. On a personal level, the author of this article was already suspicious of the phenomenon back in the 1980s. In August 1989 his suspicions were confirmed. One Sunday evening, walking back from a church service visibly carrying Bibles with a group of 3-4 friends, we happened to pass by an Islamic wedding party in Nelson, Lancashire who were congregated outside an events venue. The party consisted of a mixed group of approx. 30-40 people. We kept our distance as we were all too aware of the hostility we had witnessed before. Others in our church had witnessed stone throwing whilst at outdoor church events and the author himself had been set upon by Muslims at school. Seeing that we were Christians, all started to intimidate us, young, old, men and women. What was striking was that women in their 70s were joining in with the fun, it wasn’t just teenage males looking for some action. A few of the group became emboldened, broke aware from the party and physically attacked us. It wasn’t a beating as such but it was unpleasant none the less. Injuries were minor. The incident was reported to the local police station who were sympathetic and took our incident seriously. Action was taken in that the author was driven around the area in a police vehicle with the hope of identifying the suspects. It was a long shot that didn’t result in any identifications, but the gesture was much appreciated. The police did the best they could – they listened, treated us with respect, and took a reasonable level of action. The point of the matter is that there was a nervousness about handling our case. In particular, the author was told the policy was that they were expected to tread carefully when handling such cases because of cultural sensitivities. We do not wish to incriminate the police who were being given orders from higher up in the wider Lancashire Constabulary, so we will not divulge any more. But the fact of the matter is, non-neutrality of policing driven by an ideology, Multiculturalism in this case, in favour of a particular community was happening back then. Today, this is what we call two-tier policing.