Martin Tideswell: His views are bizarre but it was wrong to prosecute BNP leader Michael Coleman
IF YOU had been outside Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Friday you would have witnessed Michael Coleman playing to the gallery.
Just minutes after receiving a suspended eight-month prison sentence after being convicted of racially-aggravated harassment, the former BNP city councillor was in full flow.
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Former BNP councillor Michael Coleman outside court last week.
He vowed to continue posting political 'articles' (I use that term loosely) to his blog and said he believed it would eventually lead to his imprisonment.
Playing the martyr with the assurance of someone who possesses an Equity card, he said he was 'a freeborn Englishman' who will be damned if he will see hard-won freedoms secured by his forefathers in two World Wars taken away.
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Sadly, all Friday's sentencing and the previous conviction have done is raised Coleman's profile and given him a platform for his bizarre views.
When the voters of the Potteries did us all a favour by booting out him and his BNP cronies last year, it also starved them of the oxygen of publicity. Now he's news again.
Whereas before a few thousand people may have visited his blog to play 'spot the spelling mistake' and raise their eyebrows at his unusual ideas, his prosecution has sadly served to increase visitors to the obscure Stoke Patriot website.
Anyone who believes the riots which swept London and other UK cities last summer exemplified 'the difference in personality, perceptions and values of people of the darker races and ourselves' is clearly talking nonsense and didn't read the news reports at the time.
Anyone who accuses the city council of overseeing a 'complete population replacement programme – darkies in, whites out', is clearly in a very small minority. As well as being plain daft.
However, in spite of his repulsive, far-right views, Michael Coleman's prosecution was – in my view – misguided and could well do more harm than good. The posts on his blog may be obnoxious but, in spite of the court's decision, I just can't see them inciting others to racial harassment.
Frankly, they are more likely to incite someone to reach for a dictionary or the sick bucket.
As a result of his suspended sentence, Coleman, pictured left, is barred from standing in a local council election for five years.
Given that he was reported to the police by Labour councillor Joy Garner, this immediately makes her actions seem politically-motivated, even though I'm sure they weren't.
The bigger problem here is that the internet has given everyone a voice and the policing of blogs and the like is nigh on impossible.
If it was right to prosecute Michael Coleman then I would suggest that there but for the grace of God go countless thousands of other individuals who perhaps won't appear in court because they aren't on the radar of someone like Mrs Garner.
Uncomfortable as it may be for us to admit, I think Coleman is right in one respect. His conviction poses serious questions about our personal freedoms and the right to free speech.
Voltaire's oft-quoted statement: "I may disagree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it," comes to mind here.
The fact is we live in a democracy and a free country which is proud of being tolerant and a safe haven for the persecuted and peoples of other races, cultures and creeds.
I think our reputation as this bastion of tolerance is being somewhat undermined by the inability of everything from our judicial system to our national sport's governing bodies to bring some common sense into the racism debate.
Different rules and standards seem to be being applied across the board – just take the FA's kangaroo courts as an example.
It seems you get stiffer sentences these days for offending someone on the internet than you do for burgling a person's home or mugging them in the street.
Where's the logic in that?
I don't, in any way, condone or defend Michael Coleman's bizarre views but I can't help but feel that – as a society – we should be able to cope with his minority view without resorting to criminal prosecutions. Wrong he may be, but a danger to society who is inciting racial hatred? I don't think so. Only if you let him.
The bigger danger, if you ask me, is the thought police's propensity to overreact when anyone refuses to spout the vision of Britain being some sort of multi-cultural utopia.
I would suggest it is precisely the treatment dished out to Michael Coleman which is likely to get right-thinking people's backs up and make them wonder whether there may actually be a point to his ravings.
Comments
by truestokie
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 6:25PM
“Labour Len, just when did I do this
You and Cope just peddle lies, myths and exaggerations. Every time you claim that our city is flooded with immigrants, Asians, gypsies, travellers, asylum seekers, you blatantly lie through your crooked teeth.
This is a lie on your part.
It could not be the accusations of Blairs protection of Paedophiles, by slapping a D notice on Scotland Yard and the press to save Labour politicians, could it?
Although one of his closest aids was thrown in the clink.
As that is common knowledge.
It could not be the 25+ Labour convicted paedophiles as that also is common knowledge.
It could not be the fact that Labour councillors (Wazzir, Khan,Meredith, Pervez, Shotton, Barnes etc,etc) have graced the front pages of the Sentinel for the wrong reasons can it?
Two of my Nieces are black, and I love them as much as any of the others.
I have helped raise money to send to a children's eye hospital in Pakistan.
I have no time for hate.
I leave that to people like you and the others who believe they hold the moral high ground in every debate.
Finally I have always argued against your party's lunacy in creating a flood of immigrants (Jack Straws words) just to "rub the rights nose in diversity" (oh dear another Labour worker to Blair)
My argument has always been based on their deliberate actions to socially engineer this countries make up.
So come on where's the lies.”
by mole10
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 5:04PM
“.....who if you didn't know is embroiled in an 'inquiry' into a bank account.
......and if you also didn't know, was heavily embroiled in parachuting a 'friend' into Stoke-on-Trent.
....and whom also had a 'relative' dropped into a seat if he allowed a parchute to fall from the ky over Stoke-on-Trent.
...last but not least, whom took his instructions from a Lord and a senior LP (paid hand) somewhere down the M5.
Please note: I mention no names to this article.”
by mole10
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 4:58PM
“Kieth Vaz.”
by LabourLen
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 3:19PM
“@Fegghayesman (aka Craig Pond of the PCF/BNP): "as a journalist, Martin Tideswell has a duty to present the facts to the public, that's what his job is supposed to be. He can put his own slant on the story by including his personal feelings- though whether this came from himself, or from company policy, well, that's another argument- but the one thing they shouldn't do is the one thing that these days they always do, and that's lie."
Mr Pond, and your categorical proof that Martin Tideswell is lying?
I'd have thought that you above all others would understand what an opinion piece is? You spout your bile, hatred, intolerance through your deluded website (await the knock on the door, there's far worse on your pages than on Stoke Patriot) so why deny Martin the same rights through his personal column in the Sentinel another clear case of freedom of speech as long as it suits the far right?
You and Cope just peddle lies, myths and exaggerations. Every time you claim that our city is flooded with immigrants, Asians, gypsies, travellers, asylum seekers, you blatantly lie through your crooked teeth.
I won't embarrass you with the facts and figures but the far right in this city know that the true statistics are minuscule in relation to the indigenous people as you like to call them.
You will never gain credibility when you refer to other fellow human beings as third world tat. Your insults are based on no more than the colour and ethnicity of an individual.
The biggest insult of all is that you hide behind a benefit system that sponsors your keyboard campaign of hate at our expense.
Now that to me is the most abhorrent abuse of all!”
by mole10
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 2:59PM
“Yes you are and yes you are Labour.
You are unapologetic and you only want one view put forward. Yours.
You don't want me to see Coleman's.
Some Democracy.
One Nation together (Ed Miliband).
No chance.”
by warren-lloyd
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 11:55AM
“I'm not saying don't report it am l Mole10. Or have you know lost the function to read anything bar what you agree with. Craig, your now talking utter garbage so I'll not bother with an answer, don't want to put you knees in any more pain then they are by you jumping up an down in a rage because someone will not follow your strange mindset. I advise you both get a job, or a hobby.”
by mole10
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 11:37AM
“A billboard at Havana International airport:
'Millions of children all over the world are sleeping on the streets tonight. Not one of them is in Cuba'
Cuba is a Communist Country where they delight in 100% full employment, they can all read and write, have the best health service in the world and each citizen is guaranteed food tokens for basic supplies.
Fidel confiscated US oil companies in Cuba and paid them compensation using USA/Cuban values of that oil. The USA blockaded Cuba as a result.
To prove he was true to his word, Fidel burnt his vast and valuable farmland to the ground.
Cuba has more doctors and nurses per capita than any other country onn earth.
It has more patents in medicine than any other Western or Eastern country.
Cuba exports doctors and nurses in return for oil.
Seems nice to me.”
by fegghayesman
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 11:13AM
“Warren,
how can you compare the suppression of one of our fundamental rights- the right of freedom of expression- to some drunk??
Mike Colemans persecution tramples over one of the tenets on which democracy is founded, upon which our systems and lives are founded!
mole10.
What is it with you people and WW2 and the nazis? The communist regimes that were born from the the first world war made Hitlers achievments in WW2 look like a playground spat! Stalin alone was responsible for over 100 million deaths, and his ideology is what the Labour party is based on!!
This is about the Orwellian behaviour of the Labour party pigs, with Cameron doing nothing to stop it, not surprising though when he stands as a supporter of the far lefts violent thugs, the uaf.
The future of our city, our country, our children, is in the hands of people deliberately making decisions that will adversely affect all three, don't get telling us we have no right to do anything about it!”
by mole10
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 10:28AM
“Warren, do you know who julius Striecher was?
He was an editor of a newspaper who stopped all forms of publicity by any other political views than his own.
He was an unapologetic Nazi who dismissed all races and all views other than the one he thought was right.
He created a storm by furthering a single solitary view.
He supported laws that saw others painting fences and jailed for their beliefs.
He was hanged for those views in 1946.
Why don't you want me (shy and retiring with no thoughts of my own) to read what someone has written, be they Coleman or Tideswell?”
by warren-lloyd
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 10:27AM
“I did not say not to report it, but put it in the margin court reports with the driving not in accordance to the law or falling down steaming drunk in the street, and any other idiot act thats not in the public interest, which frankly this was. Anyway, he's a gonner, not with the time of day anymore, spent force, what little of that he had, could not replace Alby, and behaved like school kid because of that.”