The RIGHT to BEAR ARMS (and CHEMICALS)

A couple of weeks ago, the Independent Police Complaints Commission delivered its considered verdict on the notorious police operation in Forest Gate, London last June. You’ll remember that some 250 officers converged on a two-up, two-down terrace before dawn and that around 30 armed cops burst into the house and arrested two Muslim brothers, Mohammed Abdul Kahar and Abul Koyair, the former of whom suffered a gun-shot wound in the shoulder at close range.

Nothing incriminating was found at the house. The pair were held in custody for nearly a week and then released without charge. It seems that the raid was based on something called “flawed intelligence”. This could well be a euphemism for “gross stupidity” or even “racist malice”.

The IPCC heard 153 complaints from “members of the public” and upheld just five. It recommended the Met to “apologize” publicly. However, the Met declined to say sorry, as they put it, “over and over again”, which raises the question: “if the IPCC can’t even get the police to apologize, what possible power does it have to scold, command, reprimand, direct or discipline any officer or force exceeding the remit?” The brothers say they have never received an apology. More to the point, I have never seen it suggested that they have ever received compensation.

Since then, I have been awaiting the outcome of a trial at Manchester crown court. The defendant is Robert Cottage, who stood for the British National Party in last May’s local elections in his home town of Colne, Lancashire. Police raided his residence too and sealed off the street. This time they had well-placed intelligence, none other than Mrs Cottage, the defendant’s wife. Sure enough, they soon found a stash of the appropriate chemicals in sufficient quantity to cook up “a powerful bomb”, along with the notorious manual, The Anarchist Cookbook, which lists the ingredients and recipe; so at any rate the prosecution charges. Mrs Cottage confirmed the evidence of her husband’s diary that he was planning to assassinate the Prime Minister and other political figures.

The first police comment to the press was that “he’s not a terrorist and it’s not a bomb-making factory”. This quick conclusion must have been based on the fact that Cottage is white and a member of the Church of England (as well as the BNP), rather than a shy, soft-spoken foreigner who talks with a foreign accent and believes some pagan mumbo-jumbo. They must also have accepted his assurance that, along with his crossbows and airguns, the chemicals were for making “thunder-flashes” to protect his two-up-two-down terrace when civil war breaks out. As you do.

The arrest of Cottage and his co-conspirator (a retired dentist, also white and a BNP member) did not, as far as I recall, make the national media. In contrast, the Forest Gate raid was the lead story in newspapers and on bulletins for days on end in June last year. Cottage’s first appearance in court on February 13th got national coverage but thereafter the media lost interest again.

I had thought that the case would be soon over, given that Cottage was obliged to admit to possession of his arsenal of weapons and his potential explosives. But nothing was reported. Surely the verdict would be thought newsworthy. I had to trawl through the net to discover from Lancashire newspapers that, following nine days of evidence, the jury had found itself hung after three days of deliberation. A retrial has been booked for July. The defendants remain in custody.

According to Pendle Today, “the 22 chemical components recovered by police are believed to be the largest haul ever found at a house in this country” [October 6th 2006]. What’s more, David Jackson (the retired dentist) had a pair of nuclear protection suits at his house, along with sundry chemicals. Evidently, these items were “to help teach chemistry to Cottage’s teenaged son”. When teenagers are studying chemistry, you certainly need to retreat into a nuclear protection suit.

The Lancashire constabulary clearly missed a trick or two when they apprehended Cottage. After all, they could have shot him. They could have arrested and charged him under the various enormously malleable terms of the government’s anti-terror legislation; those powers, after all, have been invoked to remove a heckler in his 80s from the Labour Party conference and to arrest a woman reading out the names of dead Iraqis at the Cenotaph. I would have thought a declared intent to kill Tony Blair would have given the raiding party something to yell imprecations about. What’s more, you might think there was plenty of material here for the press – and not just the “serious” press – to investigate. But of course all the newspapers are much more interested if the defendants may be made to represent some generalised Muslim threat. And anyway, there are so many more important stories to pursue: Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Richard and Judy …