Lift the Ban: Visit from the police

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Some other people who had made escalation videos had full-scale dawn raids. I was one of those who just had a friendly visit.

I knew that I was at risk of home raid or a visit because of the experience of other people who had made the videos, but when the doorbell went at about 10:30 on the morning of Saturday 29th August 2026, it still took me by surprise when my wife called to me to say it was the police. I'd started to think it wouldn't happen.

We have had visits from the police before, but in the past they were always there to help me (like when my son had had his bike stolen from him by a couple of people stopping him on the Redway), or, most recently, when they were asking us whether we could help them with information concerning a crime in the neighbourhood. (It was, terribly, a 'domestic' murder a few doors down the street. We couldn't help, but would most definitely would have done so if we could.) So this was the first time they were after me!

It was another of these surreal experiences. They asked if they could come in but I asked them if they had a search warrant and when they said they didn't and that they didn't have an arrest warrant either, I politely refused them entrance. (Actually I think I just stood at the door and didn't invite them in. They made no further effort to get me to allow them in). They went on to explain that they were not here to arrest me, just to inform me that I might be getting a summons through the post because there had been a video posted in which they believed I was violating Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. They had a piece of paper with a screen shot from the video, and were clearly comparing the face in that with me. They also read out the spiel about 'you don't need to say anything but anything you do say etc etc.', which slightly confused me because I thought police only read out your 'rights' like that when they arrest you. 

They then asked me if I could show them anything which proved that this was my home address. That was a bit weird, as I pointed out, since they had come to my door and found me there. They said that nevertheless it might be that I don't live here, and was only here temporarily. That made no sense at all since presumably the only reason they came here was because they had already found that this was my home address. Even so, they claimed that it was in my interests to prove my address because if a summons was sent to the wrong address and I didn't go to court having not received the summons, I could be in trouble. The fact that I have already had documents through the post relating to my ongoing Section 13 charge didn't seem make any difference! I really don't know why they wanted this, but when I said I'd rather not give them anything, again they didn't argue and our meeting ended cordially.

So there we go, another new experience in my retirement!