"I too had visit from police over tweet", says writer

Julie Bindel reveals that officers visited her home over an alleged hate crime after a complaint ‘from a transgender man in the Netherlands’



One of Britain’s most prominent feminist writers has revealed that police visited her home to warn they were investigating one of her tweets as a “hate crime”.

Julie Bindel said she received a knock on the door on a Sunday afternoon from two Scotland Yard officers, who told her a “transgender man” from the Netherlands had reported one of her social media posts.

The case bears a striking resemblance to the ongoing police investigation into Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson and will add to growing concerns over the curtailing of free speech in Britain.

Ms Bindel, a longstanding campaigner on violence against women and critic of gender ideology, said she was not allowed to know which tweet had prompted the investigation, under what category of hate crime it was being investigated, nor the identity of the complainant. The officers asked her to voluntarily attend her local police station to make a statement, she said, but she refused.

She described the visit as as “Orwellian” and said detectives “could better use their time investigating rape and domestic violence”.

Last night, a former head of MI6 criticised hate crime investigations into journalists as “ridiculous” and a waste of police time.

Pearson is currently being investigated by Essex Police over an unspecified tweet she posted a year ago.

Two officers visited Pearson’s home on Remembrance Sunday over what they described as “an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online”.

Ms Bindel told The Telegraph: “Police coming after those of us that do nothing more than speak the truth about gender madness and refuse to bend the knee to the crazy cultists, are doing a massive public disservice.

“Unless there is a very good reason not to, we must all publicly protest this terrible infringement of our human rights.”

Ms Bindel said the incident was witnessed by multiple people in her house at the time. The Metropolitan Police said it had no record of the incident.

Writing for The Telegraph, she says: “The officers left looking a little bewildered. I did have a sense that they understood what a ridiculous mission they had been sent on.”

Speaking of the visit, which took place in 2019, she added: “Police have limited time to investigate actual crime, but are instead being tasked with ticking off the likes of me for daring to tweet that ‘trans women are not women’ or whatever the person in Holland had objected to.”

A former Tory MP also discussed on Saturday night how a “non-crime hate incident” was recorded against his name following a complaint from a Labour activist.

Tom Hunt, who represented Ipswich, said the incident was recorded against him after he had raised concerns that “certain communities” were disproportionately responsible for crime in the city centre.

Mr Hunt said that Ms Bindel’s case showed how reporting of alleged hate crimes had become “an absolute free for all” and said ministers must “nip it in the bud”.

He said: “The fact that not only do you not have to be a victim, you don’t even have to be in the same jurisdiction, it’s just beyond ludicrous.”

The former Ipswich MP was reported to Suffolk police for a non-crime hate incident shortly after being elected at the 2019 election.

The complaint related to a local newspaper column in which he had written of the need to “confront the possibility that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by individuals from certain communities”.

Mr Hunt said the complaint was made by a local Labour activist and that, though he faced no criminal investigation, he believed the incident was still on his record.

He added: “It’s a deliberate tactic of the Left to try and drag the long arm of the law in to stifle legitimate debate and cower the Right and Conservative voices.”

These are non-crime events, so why are the police even following them up? I always thought the police were there to prevent crimes and arrest criminals, not people who use 'hurty' words.