The state is not just failing us – it is actively working against us

From Epping to Rotherham, we are not just talking about a failure to deliver – we face an intolerant and ideological agenda that wants to subvert the way we live

John Steele is a former miner. These days, aged sixty, he is a Christian street preacher who takes the Gospel around his home town, Rotherham. Last month, he spent half a minute talking to a Muslim woman working on a stall offering support for ethnic minority women who had been victims of domestic abuse.

An hour later, several police officers surrounded Mr Steele, asked for his personal details and when he refused to provide them, they took him to a police station where he was detained, finger-printed and swabbed for DNA. His “crime” had been to ask the woman about Quranic verses regarding the treatment of wives by their husbands. Body-worn cameras record a police officer talking about needing to “lock him up” and another explaining he had caused the woman “harassment, alarm or distress.”

These are the words of Sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which is now used by the police, prosecutors and the courts far beyond any reasonable interpretation of its purpose. Section 4 says it is an offence if somebody “uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” if it is “with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress.” Section 5 says “threatening words or behaviour” that have the same effect may be criminal, regardless of intent.

Eventually the Crown Prosecution Service discontinued the police action against Mr Steele. This should not be a surprise, because Sections 4 and 5 contain defences where the accused can show his conduct was reasonable, or he had no reason to believe he would not cause “harassment, alarm or distress.” But others have not been so fortunate. Already this year, two people have been convicted of Public Order Act offences after they desecrated copies of the Quran and insulted Islam.

We can question the use of the Public Order Act in this way – as I have in Parliament – but we should also ask about the police themselves. Because this incident is part of a wider pattern.