A town councillor who asked questions about 300 Afghans put up in a local hotel was ‘reported to police for stirring up hate’.
John Edwards has also been placed under ‘investigation’ by a ‘monitoring officer’ at Bracknell Forest Council in Berkshire.
The elected councillor began asking questions in April, questioning whether the large number of new arrivals would affect local residents on the housing waiting list.
But instead of getting answers, Councillor Edwards said he was accused of ‘inciting’ hate and spreading ‘misinformation’ against an ethnic group.
The Free Speech Union has now taken up his case, calling it a ‘chilling’ example of democracy being suppressed.
It has since been revealed there was a huge official cover-up with the Government obtaining a super-injunction to stop the public finding out it had a secret immigration scheme for thousands of Afghans.
The Mail revealed that, while the public was being kept in the dark, ministers were being warned in private their scheme risked ‘significant integration considerations’ including with housing and local services such as education and healthcare.
But when Councillor Edwards – an independent member of nearby Sandhurst Town Council – began asking Bracknell’s borough council a series of questions, he was reported to police by a borough councillor.
Town Councillor John Edwards told the Daily Mail the Afghan migrants deserve help and respect – but so do British veterans
One of the Government’s unmarked immigration planes landing at Stansted Airport
Hundreds of migrants file off a taxpayer-chartered jet at Stansted Airport as part of the Government’s secret immigration scheme in which a super-injunction kept public in the dark
He wrote a post on Facebook on April 9 saying: ‘First of all, I want to make clear that everyone arriving on this scheme must be treated with dignity and respect. This is in no way blaming them, and they should be made to feel welcome.’
He went on to question the fairness of the scheme and whether it would have any impact on local residents waiting for housing or other services, pointing out that ‘many of our own veterans remain homeless’.
A Labour councillor on the Labour-controlled Bracknell Forest Council wrote on a Facebook community group it was ‘far right propaganda’ and added: ‘This has all been reported to the MOD, council and local police’.
Councillor Edwards – who never heard from the police – told the Mail: ‘The council has fuelled a narrative that I’m spreading hate and misinformation — despite my claims being true.
‘Another councillor has said publicly they have reported me to the police for “stirring racial hatred”. This would be a serious criminal offence. It’s stressful, it’s potentially very harmful to my reputation.
‘It’s a way to smear and silence me, and it has a chilling effect which amounts to, “disagree with the council and you will be call a racist”.
Councillor Edwards’ original post on Facebook on April 9 calling for respect and dignity but also asking what will happen to the local housing waiting list
A fellow elected councillor announces Councillor Edwards has been ‘reported to MOD, council and local police’
Another one of the Government planes landing at Stansted. The public were told nothing of the real reason why it was flying so many Afghans here: that it had betrayed them by losing data
While the public was in the dark because of a super-injunction, ministers agreed at this meeting last October to continue their secret resettlement scheme ‘at a cost of c.£7bn’
Heavily-armed Taliban fighters roaming Kabul
‘This was never about how I scrutinised a policy, but which policy I scrutinised. They’ve never corrected their own misleading claims on the impact of the policy on residents, or defended my right to scrutinise a policy as a councillor.
‘Instead, they’ve escalated baseless complaints because they are either too timid to uphold democracy and free speech — or they’re wilfully enabling the suppression of those rights by weaponising the complaints process.’
Samuel Armstrong, of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘Far from inciting racial hatred, his Facebook posts are genuinely some of the most anodyne messages I have ever seen.
‘We now know there was an official cover-up over this scheme, yet when this elected councillor did his job and asked some basic questions about whether local people were going to be pushed down the housing list, he was placed under formal investigation. It is chilling.’
Bracknell’s ‘monitoring officer’, Sanjay Prashar, said in a letter to Councillor Edwards: ‘I do consider there to be a case to answer.’
Bracknell Forest Council said: ‘As the matter raised is under investigation, it would not be appropriate for the council to comment further at this time.’
Mystery surrounds the police threat because Councillor Edwards never heard from Thames Valley Police, the force said it was not aware of any such report made, and the councillor claiming to have reported him has not yet responded to a request for comment.
It has since been revealed that the Government deliberately concealed the true reason for the large influx from the public, spending two years hushing-up the fact it was responsible for the UK’s worst ever data breach which led to Operation Rubific to evacuate thousands to Britain. Minsters agreed to spend £7billion, and plotted a strategy to ‘control the narrative’ by ‘managing’ what the public were told.
Nobody was told the full truth when the Ministry of Defence settled 320 Afghans in a hotel in Bracknell, Berkshire, in the Spring.
Yet the Daily Mail can reveal that, while the public was being kept in the dark, a secret Whitehall briefing paper was warning ministers that there were ‘significant integration considerations’ including with ‘local services such as education and healthcare’.
In public, the pile-on for Councillor Edwards continued when another councillor suggested he had ‘incited hatred’, while there were also complaints from people who opted to remain anonymous. One accused Councillor Edwards of ‘spreading misinformation on social media which is insightful of hate towards specific ethnic groups.’ Several of the complainants accused him of identifying the hotel where the Afghans are staying – which he strenuously rejects, saying he was never told the name and had never named it.
In his Facebook post, he used photos from the hotel to show its interior, but he blurred them to disguise its identity. But some of the people complaining claim that it is still possible to work out which hotel it is.
Councillor Edwards said: ‘I included images of the accommodation because it is undeniably in the public interest for residents to understand whether the level of publicly funded support is proportionate and fair.’
