Postcard From The Antebellum, Part Two

On Thursday, 25th July, Mrs AWS and myself struck out for Birmingham New Street. One of our Standard Premium day trips, it’s memorable – even without hindsight – by a heightened presence of the transport police and an unexplained ‘incident’ on the train. The previous 48 hours had been difficult.

Gillingham

Two days prior to our trip, at 5.55 pm on Tuesday, 23rd July, police responded to a report of a serious assault in Sally Port Gardens, Gillingham. The victim sustained serious knife injuries and was airlifted to hospital for treatment. Witnesses reported seeing a man running up behind the victim before pulling him to the ground and stabbing him numerous times. The assailant drove away on a moped. Twenty-five minutes later, a 24-year-old was arrested nearby on suspicion of attempted murder. Later in the evening, images shared on social media showed the suspect to be a black man. At the same time, mainstream media played the mental health card.

It later emerged the victim was a white man in his 40s, Lt Col Mark Teeton, attacked while in uniform and close to Brompton Barracks, the headquarters of the British Army’s 1 Royal School of Military Engineering Regiment. Accompanied by his wife at the time of the assault, her screams could be heard on doorbell video footage later released to television news. Mrs Teeton had pulled her husband away from the attacker before looking for help. The 24-year-old is Anthony Esan, who was apprehended close to his home in Rochester. Esan stands charged with attempted murder and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place. Our thoughts are with the Teeton family. We wish the Lt Colonel a speedy recovery.

Manchester and Rochdale

On the same day, an incident occurred at Manchester Airport. Thus far no charges have been brought. Pictures on social media showed an officer kicking a Pakistani man in the head while he lay on the ground. Social media also reported that three officers had required hospital treatment after the incident. On the evening’s BBC Newsnight, Conservative MP Damien Green, a former police minister, was questioned by a shaken Victoria Derbyshire. After viewing the trigger-warning-tagged video clip, Mr Green noted a lack of context, given viewers weren’t being shown what happened before and after the brief events revealed on screen.

A fuller clip leaked from Manchester Airport CCTV appeared days later. It showed two Pakistani men attacking armed police officers after being approached at an airport parking ticket machine. Amongst a flurry of punches, one of the Pakistanis knocks an older Pakistani woman to the ground with an elbow to the face. A policewoman is punched full in the face and receives a cut and broken nose. The confrontation ends when a tasar is discharged at one of the assailants. While he lies on the floor, he is kicked in the head by a police officer – the only part of the incident shown by the fakes at BBC Newsnight.

Thus far, no one has been charged but two police officers have been suspended as part of a criminal investigation into them. It is self-evident the policewoman involved is too small and too easy to knock to the ground. If armed, she and others standing nearby are fortunate her gun wasn’t taken from her. The following night, a protest took place in Manchester city centre while a mob gathered outside a police station in Rochdale – home of the two assailants. Hundreds hurled abuse at the police. Many wore masks. Some carried megaphones. Chants of ‘Allahu Abkar’ could be heard. In yet another example of two-tier policing, the constabulary cowered inside.

Rather than make arrests or issue condemnation, Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Wasim Choudhry said he understood ‘the immense feeling of concern and worry that people feel about our [the police] response’ to the airport incident.

Also on the next night, a predictable line-up of hand-wringers and bedwetters repeated the statuary cliches on Newsnight. Alongside them the unpleasant self-publicist and opportunist Aamer Anwar. Since then the Pakistanis’ case has been taken on by Anwar. An old friend Puffins, the Glasgow lawyer’s G-P biography is available here under ‘The Lawyer’ heading.

In another example of two-tier law, despite the being a live case, Mr Anwar and the Pakistani assailants held a press conference on 6th August. As if addressing the most corrupt court in Karachi, Mr Anwar made allegations against the police. The three Pakistanis involved turn out to be brothers Fahir Amaaz and Muhammad Amaad. The older lady is their mother, Shameem Akhtar. Coincidentally before a switched-off bodycam, Amaaz was taken ‘around the corner where he couldn’t be seen by anyone else.’ Bloodcurdling threats were made, leaving him ‘fearing for his life.’

Shameem Akhtar was also present, sporting a black eye. To emphasise the point, Mr Anwar held up a photo of the 56-year-old. He claimed the injury happened because of ‘being hit with a taser’, whereas it is clear in the CCTV footage she took an elbow in the face from one of her own sons. One wonders what would have happened to the brothers if, back in their native Pakistan, they put three police officers in hospital.

Leeds

A week previous to our centre-of-the-storm day trip to Birmingham, East European Gypsy violence broke out in the Harehills district of Leeds. At first, fake news mainstream media reported the incident as contractors clashing with children. This is nonsense. Subsequent events suggest the contractors to be private security trying to remove at-risk children from a Roma family to the care of social services.

As the situation escalated, police manhandled four children out of a property in the slum area of the northern city and into a vehicle to be taken to safety. However, rioting broke out. The police withdrew. Fires were started. A double-decker bus burned. Scooters, pushchairs, bikes, and bats were thrown at a police car. Its windows broken, it was overturned and burnt out. Mobs remained in the street throughout that and the following night. As yet another example of two-tier policing, the West Yorkshire Force remained out of the area.

At the outset, a child had been taken to hospital with a ‘cracked skull’ with worries about child welfare leading to other children being removed. Harehills contains a Pakistani ghetto as well as a Roma ghetto. The local councillor is a Green Party entryist called Mothin Ali, filmed shouting Allahu Akbar at his election count. The local MP is another Puffin’s favourite, Richard Burgon, once filmed at a Muslim meeting ranting, ‘Zionism is the enemy of peace.’ On the day before our trip to Birmingham, The Local Government Lawyer Website reported the four children involved in the child protection case that led to the unrest had been returned to their ‘extended’ family.

Despite safety concerns raised by a barrister representing the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service and a social worker acting as the children’s guardian, Her Honour Judge Trotter-Jackson ruled the children’s ‘best interest’ lay in being returned. She noted the children might be split up if put into foster care and would be difficult to ‘culturally match’ to foster parents. Council for Leeds City Council agreed, echoed the council’s position that the children could be returned via a family placement that day.

If you’re wondering why the Roma ghetto is so keen to keep their children, I might draw your attention to a court case that concluded almost to the day two years before. On 28th July 2022, Anghel Iordache of Harehills was jailed for 11 years at Leeds Crown Court after being convicted of a string of offences linked to prostitution and modern slavery after a ‘welfare check’ which led to a safeguarding investigation. Although throughout the reporting of the trial, the victims were referred to as ‘women’, the case was pursued by the Leeds Child Vulnerable to Exploitation Team under Detective Inspector Al Chyne.

Three days prior to the Harehills violence, a black man, Yostin Andres Mosquera, stood charged with two counts of murder after the remains of two white people were found in suitcases left at the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.

Birmingham

With racial violence a weekly and even daily occurrence, the traveller has much to ponder before stepping from the carriage and into the concrete trench – beneath a squashed tin can – that is Birmingham’s New Street station. Determined to put the world and its wickedness to the back of my mind and enjoy a refreshing day with Mrs AWS, Britain’s second city, a thriving metropolis in the Heart of England, lay before us!

Little did I realise things were about to get much, much worse.
 

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