Two-tier policing: will Croydon Mayor Jason Perry and Conservative MP Chris Philp be forced to face the consequences for their part in an anti-ULEZ Facebook group that provoked vandalism and criminal damage?
A south London Crown Court yesterday heard a man admit using Facebook to encourage others to commit thousands of pounds of criminal damage to public infrastructure. By STEVEN DOWNES
Unconfirmed reports from Jason Perry’s inner sanctum on the 12th floor at Fisher’s Folly suggest that one of the Croydon Mayor’s handful of minions has been tasked to prepare an emergency overnight bag, including a change of underpants, a toothbrush and half a loaf of fish paste sarnies, plus, of course, cake, just in case the erstwhile administrator and “expert” of the Croydon anti-ULEZ Facebook page finally gets to have his collar felt.
This follows a case at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday where Joseph Nicholls entered a guilty plea for publishing Facebook posts which were capable of “encouraging or assisting others” to carry out “criminal damage to or theft” of ULEZ cameras.
Nicholls, 43, a lone father of three from Sidcup, also admitted to court the sending a threatening email to Yunex Traffic, a contractor used by Transport for London to run Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone clean air scheme.
In the dock: Joe Nicholls outside Woolwich Crown Court, with supporter Kingsley Hamilton (right), who was expelled from the Tory Party
The police found parts from a ULEZ camera when they raided Nicholls’ home. He will return to court next month for sentencing.
Mr Recorder Steven Kovats KC said that “all sentencing options” remained open.
The offences were committed in the months before the ultra-low emission zone was expanded Londonwide, including to most of Croydon.
In this wave of vandalism and criminal damage, the Met even called in the anti-terrorism unit following a bomb exploding at a ULEZ camera lamp post in Sidcup last December.
As Inside Croydon was first to report, Croydon Mayor Perry was listed as the “expert” on the “Croydon Say No to ULEZ Expansion” Facebook page, where multiple instances of ULEZ cameras and other infrastructure being vandalised and destroyed were openly celebrated.
Perry’s Facebook group was part of a “a coordinated network” of social media groups, found to be run by Conservative Party officials. The groups provided “a platform for widespread racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic posts, as well as conspiracy theorist content and posts inciting criminal damage”, according to a Greenpeace investigation.
The anti-ULEZ Facebook pages were described by Greenpeace as “an absolute cesspit of vile racism and hate speech”.
Mayor Perry’s Croydon anti-ULEZ page even hosted an 80-second video rant from Liam Tuffs (also known as Liam Gillett), a “venomously racist” mate of far-right criminal “Tommy Robinson” (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon).
The video posted on Perry’s group had Tuffs spreading deliberate misinformation about immigrants getting some kind of priority access to GP appointments and housing – just the kind of Trumpian nonsense that provoked rioting across the country earlier this month.
Far right: the content allowed on Mayor Perry’s Facebook group was often extreme
Tuffs/Gillett has dabbled in a number of businesses, even trying his luck as a stand-up, providing “entertainment” for the Football Lads Alliance, UKippers and others on the far-right at a “freedom” rally organised in Whitehall by Yaxley-Lennon.
Perry denied any wrongdoing on his part over the incitements offered on the Facebook page he administered. Among the group’s 2,000 members was Conservative MP for Croydon South Chris Philp, who at the time held a Tory government job as… checks notes… Policing Minister.
A warning to group members not to encourage such vandalism, and worse, was only added to the group’s rules after Perry and his fellow admins of the secretive group had been approached by investigative journalists following undercover work by Inside Croydon.
And even after the warning was added, there was little evidence of any effort by Tory Mayor Perry or government minister Philp to clean up the content being published on their group, or to reproach the posters of the offensive, racist and inciting material.
“I cannot be held responsible for what other people post on Facebook groups which I do not administer,” was the best that MP Philp could offer.
The Croydon anti-ULEZ Facebook group was “archived” in May, just days after Labour’s Khan was re-elected London Mayor for an unprecedented third term.
The expansion of ULEZ a year ago provoked widespread vandalism of the new cameras.
Scroll of honour: group admins, including the Croydon Mayor, of the dodgy Facebook group
In court yesterday, TfL revealed publicly for the first time that its monitoring CCTV cameras cost £6,000 a time. TfL has never previously revealed how much it has spent repairing or replacing stolen or vandalised cameras, but it is suggested that as many as 1,500 cameras have been targeted in some way.
If those numbers stack up, it might suggest that the bill for repairing or replacing damaged ULEZ cameras may have topped £6million.
There are more than 3,700 ULEZ cameras across London, as the expansion policy has now been shown to have reduced the number of more polluting vehicles on our roads, and a reduction in air pollution levels in outer London.
Nicholls’ misconduct appears to be not dissimilar in many respects to the acts related in the “Croydon Says No To ULEZ Expansion” Facebook group.
Now that the criminal justice system is grinding towards sentencing for Nicholls, might it be time for Inspector Knacker to pay a visit to Mayor Perry’s office?
Or to arrange an appointment at the Town Hall to see Conservative council cabinet member Luke Shortland, another of the dodgy Croydon group’s administrators?
Or even to visit the Hampstead home of Croydon South MP Philp to get him to “help with police inquiries”?
Or is this a real example of a “two-tier” policing system?
Read more: Tory minister is member of online group that salutes vandals
Read more: Met appeals for witnesses after two arrests over ULEZ bomb
Read more: Perry should apologise for anti-ULEZ Facebook group says MP
Read more: Perry’s Facebook group hosted video by Islamophobic ‘comic’
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
As part of Britain’s march towards fascism, we can thank the Conservatives for their contribution to the recent race riots, linked in no small way to their creation of these hate, crime and disinformation websites.
The Tories failure to condemn and stop the tidal wave of racism and criminality on these Facebook pages, and their public rumblings of sympathy for people who carried out criminal acts, is little different from the kind of rubbish that Trump supporters believed on 6 January 2021, when they stormed the Capitol.
Their position was and remains that if you don’t like the law or political decisions, you’re entitled to commit crimes to get your way. You could argue that’s no different from how the Suffragettes won votes for women, or what the East Enders did in Cable Street to stop Mosley’s jackbooted thugs.
The difference here is that the same people cheer on the police and courts when they lock up Just Stop Oil protestors, and think it was a cheek for the cops to question Boris Johnson about his parties in Downing Street.
Perry and Philp and the far-right are hypocrites when they whine about two-tier policing. They think they’re above the laws they want to subject the rest of us to
Now we are seeing incitement to unlawful acts being actively pursued in the Courts it must at least be providing Perry with a moment of reflection to think about his actions.
The whole Susan Hall London Mayoral campaign was an extension of this putrid mindless thuggery which Conservatives seem to interact in their usual sideways gestures to the far right and violent without actually fully condemning those who don’t obey the rule of law.
The irony about Philp was that he was Minister for Policing thoughout this period as he plays the free speech card for the actions of others, but I can’t find him unequivocally deploring the massive waste of tax payers money due to violent acts and vandalism. No doubt he will blame Mayor Khan for this waste of tens of millions of pounds of resources as it is all cleared up.
Strange to see Perry fighting the ULEZ tax grab whilst approving the LTNs he pledged to scrap.
Without wishing to sound too Woodward and Bernstein, Ian, but… follow the money.