The New Dark Age

For more than seven months, a retired head teacher, a dementia care advisor and a retired environmental health officer have been left waiting in limbo by the Metropolitan Police, desperately hoping to find out if they will face criminal charges instigated by an east London council following a town hall protest.

In February 2024, the three socialist campaigners attended a fraught Newham council meeting to discuss £22m budget cuts. Protests took place inside the meeting, councillors were heckled, motions were defeated, and the packed public gallery was eventually cleared. This was far from the first time Newham council meetings have been the centre of intense political debate.

Close to midnight the following evening, police raided the home of Carel and David Buxton, who are both in their late 60s. They were arrested for racially aggravated public order offences. Their friend Trisha was arrested at home the next morning. All were held for nearly 24 hours and eventually released on bail.

Carel, David and Trisha were all alleged to have hissed at a Jewish councillor during the budget debate and therefore, according to police, committed an antisemitic hate crime. All three vehemently deny this allegation.

Since the arrests, the three have felt unable to speak out or take part in any political activities while these accusations hang over them. Trisha has lost her job as a result of her arrest and all have described their feelings of fear, anxiety and a sense of shame over a serious offence they say they never committed.

Now that the bail restrictions have finally been dropped, they are finally able to defend themselves publicly against these charges, even though the investigation may continue for months or even years.

Carel Buxton has described feeling “anger, hurt and humiliation at my neighbours seeing me taken in the middle of the night… that former colleagues who knew me as a successful headteacher would now look on me with a tainted reputation.” Seven months on, these emotions remain strong:

“When our elderly neighbour needed an ambulance at 2am one morning, the blue light outside the house sent me into a panic. I was shaking as I ran to the front door to see if the police were there to take me away again. In my work I previously had positive professional relationships with police officers. Now I fear the police. I recall the female officer who arrested me telling her colleague that the arrest came from the top, from Commander Crick” (the former senior officer for Newham and Waltham Forest who has since been suspended because of a misconduct investigation).

Carel is also upset that “any further activity as a school governor or volunteer is now curtailed because of my arrest,” adding, “Who wants to have someone accused of a hate crime in their school, or volunteering at the food bank?”

Dave Buxton, who is in recovery from cancer, has described how he and his wife were held for 24 hours at a police custody suite in Leyton. He recalls “being held alone in a police cell for so long under bright lights, listening to a noisy fan running constantly, and with regular calls through the cell door window designed to disrupt your ability to sleep”.

Trisha, whose partner has Jewish heritage, has described the shock of her arrest and its aftermath, particularly on her health and her job: “my family were extremely worried about my health. I was told to avoid too much stress by neurologists and heart specialists”. When told the then Home Secretary James Cleverly and fellow cabinet member Michael Gove had tweeted about her arrest, she was“absolutely flabbergasted.”

The next week at work, Trisha felt she had to speak to her line manager: she was the equality, diversity and inclusion officer at her workplace and knew her arrest could cause negative publicity. Her manager was supportive, but the next day, more senior managers suspended her without pay. Since then she said:

“I have realised my mental health was suffering. Money was tight, we were just keeping ourselves together financially. I went to see my GP. I was feeling so poorly all the time. I tried to explain what had happened. Clearly, he thought I was deluded as it all sounded so far-fetched. He talked about medication and psychiatric concerns. I am still devastated and know my job is gone. I am still grieving it and wondering what people actually think of me. What it has done to my reputation. What people in the street know and think.”

All three are adamant the arrests were politically motivated. All were previously active in the Labour Party locally and feel that as a result, they were deliberately singled out from the many people who were in the public gallery at the February council meeting. The Labour Mayor of Newham. Rokhsana Fiaz, also issued a press release confirming the police raids on their homes were the result of pressure from her.

Carel and Dave have moved out of London since their arrest. Carel was the former chair of West Ham Constituency Labour Party who had spoken on camera to Al-Jazeera for its investigation “The Labour Files” in 2022, on unelected officials undermining her former party’s internal democracy. Trisha had been a ward chair for a short time but left in 2020: “nothing about the Labour Party felt safe or indeed, socialist,” she said, “but I didn’t expect this to follow me as an ordinary member of the public”.

Dave also left the Labour Party several years ago. He is especially angry about the accusation that he engaged in racist abuse while opposing the budget debate, because “we are perfectly capable of making political arguments to deal with opposing political ideas”. He says their arrests are “just a foretaste of where Labour is headed, facilitating and allowing the arrest and imprisonment of peaceful climate and anti-war protestors, even going as far as classifying some protestors and journalists as ‘terrorists’”.

Whether hissing at an opponent during a council meeting should be policed as a potential hate crime, as Newham council claims, is highly contested. But right now, the three campaigners insist they hissed at nobody and what they want is an end to their nightmare. They are calling for pressure on the police to make a decision and confirm the three will face no further action.

The Newham 3 campaign is asking campaigners, trade unionists and members of the public to write to the police demanding to know why the three have been left waiting for so long to hear about its investigation.

Email Louisa Rolfe, Assistant Commissioner for Frontline Policing, at Louisa.Rolfe@met.police.uk

You can also send messages of support to Carel, David and Trisha via Netpol at netpoladmin@protonmail.com

Photo: James Ivens