Jonathan Walker: Tory councillor's Twitter joke arrest crying out for commonsense
Dec 23 2010 By Jonathan Walker
Spare a thought this Christmas season for Gareth Compton, the Conservative councillor arrested for suggesting a journalist should be stoned to death.
Coun Compton (Con Erdington) made the remark on Twitter as he was listening to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown expounding on human rights abuses on the radio.
Ms Alibhai-Brown was busy telling an interviewer that British politicians had no right to criticise other nations for stoning women when they were complicit in human rights abuses in Iraq.
This prompted Coun Compton to issue the following outburst on Twitter: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”
The result was that Ms Alibhai-Brown threatened to report him to the police.
Somebody else actually did report him to the police, he was arrested and the Conservative Party suspended him in an effort to limit the damage.
Those who have been following the saga closely may know that Ms Alibhai-Brown then announced she had decided not to press charges. But was that the end of the matter? Absolutely not.
The idea that victims of crime “press charges” or choose not to, is an urban myth. If police have evidence for a guilty verdict, they and the Crown Prosecution Service will press ahead with a case whether the victim wants them to or not.
And so it is that Coun Compton has been under arrest since November 11, and out on bail, all this time, waiting to learn whether he’ll face a court.
I understand police will have a word with him any day now. I don’t know what they plan to say, but I rather hope the plan is to put him out of his misery and tell him the ordeal is over.
I don’t believe any sensible person could read Coun Compton’s comments and take them as a genuine threat, or as an attempt to incite others to violence.
They were the words of someone listening to opinions on the radio they disagreed with and having a seethe. What he wrote was foolish and possibly offensive, but do we want to live in a society where people are prosecuted for jokes?
Some Labour MPs have been expressing outrage, with Gisela Stuart (Lab Edgbaston) encouraging people to send letters of complaint to Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council Mike Whitby and local Tory MP Andrew Mitchell (Con Sutton Coldfield).
It all seems a bit over the top, but perhaps Ms Stuart makes, by implication, a fair point.
Coun Compton’s behaviour is something his opponents may criticise him for, and voters might decide to punish him. But there have got to be more important things the police could be doing.
