Welcome to Lion of Britain! Pardon the mess. Whatever’s broken will be fixed soon I promise.
I wanted to explain what LoB is all about. If you follow me on X, then you already know I’m former Police Staff, but what does that mean? Why would I do this if I had worked for the police?
I am one of many victims of systemic silencing in this country, and whilst I choose not to share my identity, I refuse to let them silence me further.
Four simple words destroyed my life
Just under two years ago, I lost my role as Police Staff for criticising Islam in an online space, outside of work, in a way that did not connect to my identity or employer.
A colleague had discovered the comment due to the original post trending, and correctly guessed my identity just by a handful of things within different posts I’d made on my profile, which was ‘anonymous’, but never meant to be any kind of special secret.
It was nothing a stranger ever would’ve put together; you would have to really know me to figure this out.
The comment itself was primarily void of opinion. It was mostly factual commentary on graphs, photographs, ONS stats, histories and links to news sources about historic and current Islamic terrorism. I was also in a fairly ‘neutral’ space; I wasn’t talking to a Muslim or in any kind of anti-Muslim space on the internet. I was just on a random sub on Reddit.
Four words sat at the end: Islam is a plague.
Professional Standards disincluded everything except that sentence, and one other comment in a separate space that read:
“If an Asian man is abusive to his wife at home and then they move to the UK, he’s not going to start helping her around the house”.
The “Asian” was contextual. We were already having a discussion about Asian men in primarily Islamic cultures, which have a proven track record of mistreating women. But PSD cut that context out too, and presented it like an off the cuff racist comment about brown people.
Islam is an ideology, not a person. It is not a group of people, Muslims are the people and I made zero comments about them. And yet, I was punished as if I’d gone out of my way to target every individual Muslim that I found.
That colleague decided to ruin my life over it.
Had I pretended not to know what the comment was, the case would’ve been closed whether they believed me or not, as there was no evidence that they had in front of them connecting it to me. They even asked me how the person knew, because they couldn’t connect the dots.
The interview had no right taking place
On the day of my formal interview (before the hearing), I was in such a state I couldn’t remember my job title. The Sergeant laughed; she thought I was messing around. But I was so dissociative from stress that I could not remember what I did for a living.
I was a blubbering, hyper-ventilating mess. I couldn’t form words, could barely breathe, and the whole time these two women who I’d worked with for years stared at me like I was Harold Shipman.
I told them how ‘dehumanising’ their treatment of me had been.
I wasn’t suspended, I’d gone off sick with stress, yet that day they met me at the front door of the Head Office where I worked, to sneak me in the back “so nobody saw me”.
Nobody else had that. Everyone else went to the first floor meeting rooms in the staff only area, or one of the side rooms on any of the dozen floors in the main building.
I got taken back outside, down the road to the attached police station, and into the rooms where people go for Voluntary Interviews.
At the beginning of the debacle, they stripped my security vetting and kicked me out of my department (at which point I went off sick) – something almost exclusively reserved for those who misuse the computer systems or have misconduct related to behaviour within that department. I had done neither.
That same day, two officers escorted me home to get my work laptop. Despite zero systems misuse, and perfect track record of respect for those rules, nobody trusted me to just go home and bring my laptop in the next day. I forced them to wait in the foyer of my building. I refused to let them invade the one space that was mine.
In the interview room during that interview, the same two officers sat there, hearing me sob and say how dehumanised I felt, cross armed and cross legged and said ‘mmm’. Just mmm. That was all my trauma was worth to them. Mmm.
They falsely injected ‘Gross Misconduct’ that allowed them to fire me
Nothing I did amounted to Gross Misconduct. At worst, it was Misconduct and punishable with no more than either a verbal or written warning – both of which I would’ve taken quietly.
But to inject Gross Misconduct into my case, they were required to announce that I had “brought severe disrepute” upon my force.
Because nothing is more precious to the police than their reputation. They will destroy people in order to protect it.
However, none existed:
- The profile never mentioned my name or contained my exact location or photographs
- I never mentioned my job or even alluded to it on my whole profile
- There was absolutely zero way a random member of the public would have ever figured out where I worked, or who I was without illegally hacking into multiple accounts to find out, which I do not believe happened
- My record was squeaky clean. I’d never so much as shown up late and I was persistently praised for how well I did my job
- I didn’t lie or double down, I acknowledged that the post was mine, and the post was deleted
- I apologised for the post
I spoke to ACAS briefly on the phone. I spoke to a Union rep, even though I wasn’t a member. I spoke to my best friend, who is a lawyer. I even spoke to a couple of layman friends who I knew would be honest with me.
Not one person agreed that what I’d done was a sackable offence. With all of the points above, a warning would’ve been overkill, but they went scorched earth on me to make an example of me and prove a point.
It didn’t just put me out of a job
It destroyed a career I’d loved deeply and worked above and beyond to build for four years.
It destroyed my education; I’d been working for four years part-time on a Criminology degree, which I started voluntarily due to my role within the Police. I ended up taking a DipHE, as the stress levels meant I couldn’t bare to look at it anymore.
It destroyed my finances; the unemployment meant my otherwise well-managed personal debts could no longer be paid, and I was forced into a Debt Relief Order. I can’t even own a Current Account or have a £50 overdraft for a total of six years. My bank account is basic and has zero features.
It destroyed my mental health; I had never been so close to leaving this earth as I was throughout all of this. My force treated me like an animal. Given I worked in Professional Standards, I knew first hand how everyone else under Misconduct got treated. They treated me far, far worse and with much more impunity despite this first-time offence being extremely minor.
They box-ticked my well being, after treating me like a dog
When I handed in my notice, informing them of the severe harm they caused me with how they treated me, they gave me a box-ticking call to “confirm I wasn’t going to kill myself”. They then sent me a confirmation email to put in writing that I assured them I wasn’t going to.
This was, I can assure you, to prevent reputational damage in the event that I did anything. It was not and has never been about my welfare. They didn’t care.
But moreover, it destroyed my employability
I have not worked since November 2024.
Part of this is the fact that my city has the worst overall unemployment rate in the country.
Second, there are lots of foreign-language jobs that I cannot apply for.
Third, there are a growing number of jobs – especially in the public sector – where employers are provably prioritising non-white individuals.
Almost 700 job applications, and I haven’t had one single interview.
The unemployment it threw me into hurled me into severe poverty that so far has seen me lose 50lbs (about 4 stone) in weight simply due to having too limited funds to eat. When I received a small unexpected tax rebate at the end of this last tax year, I decided to invest the £40 or so for the domain and hosting, and finally speak my mind in the best way I can.
Lion of Britain gave me my purpose back
I’ve never spoken about any of this publicly before. I always felt an unearned guilt about it. Felt like if I spoke about it, I’d get dogpiled. But after many, many attempts at gathering my thoughts and articulating myself properly, I feel safe and secure in putting this out there.
Lion of Britain became a space to put all of my furious energy about the state of the country, and the fact that we are being systemically silenced by a bully-boy government and the Police who work for them.
The aim is to be completely bulletproof to arrest. To build studies and databases proving the things they claim “never happen”, actually happen all the time and it’s not just so-called racist libel. Take a look at my #FaceOfCrime study that I’m going to be working on.
The system failed me. It has failed many people. The more I learn, the angrier I get.
This cannot continue. It’s not sustainable, it’s not fair, and it’s not humane.
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