It seems the ‘Priti Fascist’ protester was clearly telling the truth

Priti Patel at the Tory conference and a protester holding a sign saying Priti Fascist


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THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED AT 3PM ON WEDNESDAY 6 OCTOBER TO REFLECT A COMMENT FROM GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE

The police have sparked fury after arresting a protester for holding up a sign outside the Tory Party conference. Clearly you can now be nicked for telling the truth.

GMP: pretty fascist?

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) caused the uproar after they arrested a peaceful protester. Liam Geary Baulch was outside the Tory Party conference at the time. He was holding up a sign. It read “Priti Fascist”; not an unclever play on words. Seeing it, the cops soon swung into action. The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) tweeted the details of the incident:

As it noted, GMP then “dearrested” him. But Netpol asked how the force justified “this fundamental denial of rights to freedom of expression and assembly”:

The Canary was also interested in how GMP justified its actions. We asked them for comment. A spokesperson told us:

A man was behaving aggressively towards an officer at around 11:30am… [on Tuesday 5 October] on Peter Street, when another officer intervened, and requested he step back multiple times.

A 28-year-old man was arrested to prevent further breach of the peace, and was given the option of being taken into custody, or leaving the area peacefully.

The man chose the latter, and was de-arrested a short time later.

Patel: “the truth”?

Meanwhile, Baulch told Netpol:

Within 30 seconds of holding this sign outside the Conservative party conference it was confiscated by Manchester police for “offensive language”. When I asked to have my property back, I was arrested for breach of the peace.

Baulch added:

As Priti Patel laid out her crackdown on protest inside, I was in the back of a van for simply standing alone with a piece of cardboard. If anything I’m more convinced now that this sign is the truth.

Of course, some people on social media pointed out the worrying overtones of the story:

They’re not wrong. Because as The Canary‘s Eliza Egret recently wrote, Patel and her Tory colleagues are further cracking down on protest.

Outrageous new powers

This is part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill (also known as the ‘police bill’). Egret noted that Patel:

will seek to introduce a six-month custodial sentence, unlimited fines – or both – for obstructing a public highway. The current maximum punishment is a £1,000 fine.

Netpol noted even more new powers Patel is trying to give the police. These include using stop and search powers to look for lock-on kits; equipment that protesters use to chain themselves to things. Also in her sights are regular protesters. Netpol said that Patel wants to bring in new “Criminal Disruption Prevention Orders”. It said that these will be:

aimed at preventing some campaigners from attending demonstrations – because they have a “history of disruption” or are likely to commit crime

A descent into modern fascism

All this is on top of the other contentious measures in the police bill. This includes racist provisions that will target Black people and the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community. It will also clamp down on our rights to protest, to roam, and to take strike action. Amnesty said of the bill:

In its current form, the bill represents an enormous and unprecedented extension of policing powers

And this is without Patel’s toxic views on other issues like immigration. As one social media user summed up:

As The Canary has repeatedly argued, the Tory Party could be considered to be enacting a form of modern fascism. Now that pointing out this obvious truth can have you arrested, the UK’s descent into this dangerous ideology seems undeniable.

Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube and Netpol

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  • Show Comments

    1. First they came for that man over the other side of town then they pinched that woman next door to me then they came for me telling how it is his now a crime we had aktion t4 rolling along now they come for the truth teller’s. Looks like we going back in time

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      1. It’s a frightening prospect when Politically there is only one doctrine no matter what Party! The Anti-Fascists, Anti-Racists, Anti-War, Anti-Bomb, Peace, Freedom, Justice, Equality Seeking Activists and Politicians have become the Racists, Fascists, Terrorists, Evil Outcasts. Right in front of our eyes, in a most Crass, Vulgar, Relentless Onslaught of Propaganda, Lies, Spin and Smear!
        Worst is that all the filth involved in doing it, are Amateurish, Unprofessional Buffoons in organised high places singing off the same hymn sheet!
        That is the secret to their success is a single way and no deviation nevermind the truth/lies, etc getting exposed keep on that path and keep moving forward with the same Bull Shit, by next week everyone’s forgotten and lapping up our Vulgar Shit again!
        The Vilest of creatures crawled from underneath their rocks, especially 2015 to 2020 and they can never crawl back, they are exposed we know who/what they are, every single fucking one of them!
        The amount of books, music, dvds, etc tha I binned since 2015 is phenomenal, it sure has lightened my load! All the Supermarkets boycotted for selling contraband. 2015 onwards is hopefully a valuable lesson learnt by enough People to make the difference we need to end it! It doesn’t look very hopeful mind! As long as people can get their latest iPhone/Galaxy S and watch, read or hear crap on MSM, they are content, until it comes to their door, then they want to wake up when it’s too late!

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    2. And China oppresses freedom of speak blah blah blah…….

      The only real difference between a capitalist system and a socialist one is that the socialists won’t let large amounts of money to leave their country…..

      See; Panama, Paradise and Pandora papers…

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      1. Unlike a few social/labor revolutions of the past, notably the Bolshevik and French revolutions, it seems to me that virtual corporate rule and the superfluously wealthy essentially have the police and military ready to foremost protect big power and money interests, even over the food and shelter needs of the protesting masses. I can imagine that there are/were lessons learned from them — a figurative How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101, perhaps — with the clarity of hindsight by big power and money interests. They, the police/military/big-money, can claim they must bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority; thus the absurdly unjust inequities and inequalities can persist.

        When it comes to capitalist society, I can see corporate CEOs figuratively or literally shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying that their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. Meanwhile, the shareholder also shrugs their shoulders while defensively stating that they just collect the dividends and that the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and/or ethical decisions. Thus, it seems that little or nothing notably progressive gets done.

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    3. The PEOPLE’S Tax, Revenues from Publicly Owned Sector, no, that belongs to the people should never leave, it is to improve the lives and opportunities of The PEOPLE.
      China is still leaning heavily towards Communism even if they are far more Socialist in nature. There is no place on earth where freedom of Speech is truly alloud. Britain is fast approaching China’s levels of Anti- just about everything and once The Elites’ Chosen One The Fuhrer Starmer and his Starmersstruppen, armed with Pegasus, take over we’ll all be in solitary confinement nextdoor to Julian Assange.
      Each Party has their own flavour of Socialism, restrictions are usually based on the same vein any kind of Government, extremist discent, terrorism, etc. 2017 & 2019 we had a most delicious flavour but apparently the majority of the people chose the puke flavour of Thatcher’s Neoliberalism with a sprinkling of, Conservative TORY vs Neo-New-Labour TORY, dried shit, for the unforseeable future instead.

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      1. My understanding is that, unlike China’s, the American and Canadian governance systems are heavily steered by corporate interests, sometimes through economic intimidation (and I’m not just talking about huge party donations come election time). To me, it’s as though the elected heads are meant to represent huge money interests over those of the working citizenry and poor. Accordingly, major political decisions will normally foremost reflect what is in the influential corporations’ best interests.

        Anyone who doubts the potent persuasion of huge business interests here need to consider how high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t met. It’s a crippling that’s made even worse by a blaring news-media that’s permitted to be naturally critical of incumbent governments, especially in regards to job and capital transfers and economic weakening.

        Furthermore, Western corporate lobbyists actually write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that those who are aware of it (that likely includes mainstream news-media political writers) don’t bother publicly discussing it. Meanwhile, why wouldn’t nations like China at least try to take advantage of this (what I see as) weakness in a Western governance, i.e. big corporate profit before individual and even national interests.

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    4. “Pretty” Patel has a portrait of herself in her attic, done by the same bloke who did Dorial Grey’s; it shows her as she really is, what her soul looks like; so fucking ugly that you would drop dead if you looked at it. We need someone to sneak into her attis and stab it; that way she will crumble to dust like a vampire exposed to sunlight; or she might age to death in a second like that bloke in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” who drank out of the wrong “Holy Grail”.

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