The Home Affairs Committee’s report on the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban has been released.
We welcome this report, and especially the Committee’s interventions in bringing senior officers before them to testify. Had the Committee not done so, Craig Guildford might still be Chief Constable. We have met the Acting Chief Constable and he understands the scale of the mistrust that this scandal leaves behind. However, despite its positive work in its oral hearings, the Committee’s report pulls its punches, noting disturbing patterns of behaviour by senior officers but never joining the dots. It is a missed opportunity to address the impact of growing sectarianism on the life of this country.
We are disappointed by the report in two key respects.
Firstly, the report fails to address the elephant in the room. The decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was not a series of administrative blunders; it was a police force buckling to the demands of local Islamist extremists who threatened lawless riot and violence if Israeli Jews were permitted to visit their city. There is not a single reference to Islamist radicals in the report, even though it was clearly at their behest that officers at the highest levels of the force fitted up the Israeli fans as the most dangerous in international football, fabricating evidence and framing them to justify the outcome demanded by an extremist mob. It was intentional appeasement in response to extremist incitement, and senior police lied to parliament to cover it up. Some of the senior officers responsible are still in their posts, and that needs to change.
Secondly, the report deals very lightly with those who were there to oversee the police and hold them accountable, in particular the Police and Crime Commissioner, Simon Foster, who failed to hold the Chief Constable to account and then permitted him to retire on a handsome pension. Looking at the Committee’s overall assessment, it is clear that the Police and Crime Commissioner failed in his duties and must now consider his position.
At a time when the Jewish community’s trust in police is already at a record low, this debacle has plumbed new depths. Today’s report shows how urgently police forces must be cleansed of appeasers in senior positions who undermine the work of brave frontline officers by appeasing Islamist extremists. Britain was once known for its firm but fair rule of law, and the Home Secretary must now lead the charge in hastening the return of those days.
