Woke British Police Review Investigation of Conservative Broadcaster

W e all know a good-hearted person with a knack for attracting calamity. Enter 27-year-old Darren Grimes, a talented British broadcaster who, having just slipped on his latest proverbial banana peel, cheerfully assures National Review by Skype that he is more or less all right. Grimes, a charismatic Northern lad with the gift of the gab (as we Brits say), has, in the past several years, managed to attract the wrath of the Electoral Commission, the BBC, and now the Metropolitan Police. His offense? Being conspicuously conservative and — one cannot help but notice — not especially careful.

Grimes’s latest run-in with the British establishment began on June 30 of this year when, in response to the George Floyd protests, he invited the renowned (now disgraced) English historian, David Starkey, onto his YouTube show to discuss the lack of scholarship behind the Black Lives Matter movement. In the course of the interview, Starkey told Grimes that transatlantic slavery did not constitute genocide since “so many damn blacks” had survived. It was a flagrantly offensive remark, one that many considered to be unequivocally racist — though seemingly not Grimes, who let it slide.

As was perhaps foreseeable, within days, the exchange was turned into a truncated Twitter clip, becoming a viral right-wing-bogeymen sensation. And that, as they say, was that. Starkey, a distinguished writer who has published hundreds of thousands of words, uttered one foolish and inflammatory sentence, and poof — lights out, career over. He lost his fellowships at Cambridge and Canterbury universities, as well as his book deal with HarperCollins. Grimes also apologized for not holding his interviewee properly to account but was denounced nonetheless as “deeply unserious” by haughty journalists and politicians, many of whom were looking for such an excuse to attack him. Does it matter that both Starkey and Grimes immediately and profusely apologized? Not a bit. We’re talking about 2020 social media, from whence they (the self-appointed arbiters of discourse) shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

The episode didn’t end there, however. Last week, Grimes received an email from an officer with the Metropolitan Police, “noting that Crown Prosecution Service advice was sought prior to making contact,” and asking him to attend an interview. According to the email seen by National Review, the investigation related to Grimes’s “interview posted online with Mr. Starkey,” which allegedly violated the 1986 Public Order Act’s prohibition on “stir[ring] up racial hatred.” At first, Grimes thought it might be a hoax, but his local police station was able to verify the email’s legitimacy. “My heart sank,” Grimes told National Review, “I just thought, what a horrible thing to be accused of, stirring up racial hatred. I can’t think of anything worse.” The police officer informed Grimes that though this was a voluntary interview, should he fail to attend, he would be arrested, though Grimes more recently announced on Twitter that, “the police have cancelled my interview with them on Friday and announced a ‘senior officer’ has been appointed to conduct a review into the investigation to ensure it ‘remains proportionate.’ They say they’ll update me in ‘due course.’”

As their recent backtracking suggests, the episode is embarrassing to the officers involved, but also to the conservatives responsible for the Public Order Act’s vague and overreaching provisions. Much like their Scottish equivalents, English hate-speech laws — the expansion of which began in earnest under Theresa May’s Conservative government — are a menace to freedom of speech and of the press. They are also wildly inconsistent. Toby Young, a journalist and president of the Free Speech Union, of which Grimes is also a member, explained in a statement:

Are journalists and broadcasters now going to be arrested if the people they’re interviewing say things that could conceivably stir up hated? Should we expect the arrest of the young Sky News presenter who interviewed the rapper Wiley on 29th July in which he made some offensive remarks about Jewish people?

On 2nd February, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate Kehinde Andrews, a Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham University. In the course of that debate, he said “the British Empire did more harm than the Nazis” and whiteness was a form of “psychosis.” Are the police now going to arrest Piers Morgan for interviewing Professor Andrews on the grounds that his remarks could have stirred up hatred against white people?

Before his interview was cancelled, Grimes had intended to attend with his solicitor and read a pre-prepared statement telling them “it’s a waste of time and taxpayer money, a gross abuse in fact of taxpayer money at a time when the economy is on the bones of its bum.” Even if the authorities decide to drop the whole thing, Grimes intends to continue the fight for free speech regardless.

Darren Grimes is not a threat to the British public, hate speech legislation is.