Video of Paul Weston's Churchill Speech, Arrest, Interview

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Winchester: Churchill Quotation Gets Liberty GB Leader Paul Weston Arrested

Liberty GB’s Paul Weston, Arrested in Winchester for Quoting Churchill, Could Face 2 Years in Jail



Transcript of the video


Q: Where exactly were you speaking, please?

A: Winchester, which is in the county of Hampshire, and Hampshire is part of the South-East constituency for the European Union elections which I’m standing in. So I thought: “As it’s part of my constituency, I will go down and try and explain to these people, who do not live nearby to a Muslim community, something about Islam to them.”

Q: You were actually speaking to a crowd about standing as a candidate in an election in a riding in which you were one of the candidates. How many people would you say were listening to you?

A: Well, in the beginning — you know, let’s face it: none of this lasted for very long, I’m afraid. We had — I started off by saying to them, that “People of Winchester, I want to talk to you specifically about Islam, and I want to read something to you.” And then I started reading it. We were immediately interrupted by this woman, who then immediately got on her phone, and we rightly assumed she had phoned the police. And within about three minutes the police had arrived and taken my megaphone away from me and taken my transcript of Churchill’s words, and said that I could no longer do that, because my words were causing offence and distress to people who were listening.

Q: Did your audience or the police know at the time you were quoting Churchill? Or did they know afterward? At what point did they know it was Churchill you were quoting? Did you start out by saying that this is Winston Churchill, or were you saving that for the end of the quote?

A: Well, no; I was never actually going to mention it at all. If I hadn’t been arrested, I would have mentioned it was Winston Churchill. Having been arrested, I thought, “There’s absolutely no point informing the police about this, because they will then perhaps be slightly less forward in taking action.” And I thought that, “If it really has come to the point that you can be arrested for saying these words, then don’t tell them who originally said it, and let them prosecute you — arrest you, prosecute you — and just to show the rest of the world how utterly sunk this poor old country of Britain is today.”

Q: Interesting; I agree with that. Among the people that were there when you started, did you have any supporters? That were listening?

A: We did. We had — you know, there were — we got passers-by initially, and a small crowd formed, but this was literally all over within three minutes. And by the time it ended, we had people shouting from the crowd, “What are you arresting him for? There’s nothing wrong with what he’s saying!” Which was probably about 80% of the people, with that view. And the 20%, of course, were shouting things like, “You’re a bunch of Nazis,” and, you know, the usual stuff that either the hard Left, or the totally uninformed about Islam, come out with.

Q: What is the charge that you believe is going to be levelled at you?

A: Well, in the beginning, they said to me that, because my words were causing concern and distress, I should immediately cease. When I said that I wasn’t going to do that, they said, “If you don’t cease, we will arrest you under something called a ‘breach of the Section 27 Dispersal Notice’.” And I said, “Well, that’s fine, but I am standing for an election in this constituency. I have the right to free speech. I will continue speaking.” I picked up the megaphone again; I think I got about two words out, and that was it. I was manhandled down the steps, and then searched and chucked into the back of their police van. When we got to the police station, I wasn’t fingerprinted, my DNA wasn’t taken, because a Section 27 is not necessarily a criminal offence. So they said, “We’re not going to fingerprint and DNA you.” They put me into a cell, and they kept me there, I think, for about five hours, and then a policeman came in and said, “We’re dropping the original thing” — which was this Section 27 breach — “We are re-arresting you in the police station now under the ‘incitement of racial hatred’”, and specifically they are getting me with “racially aggravated crime under Section 4 of the Public Order Act.” Which I’ve had a look at, and it’s rather nasty: it says that you can go to gaol for two years under that one.

Q: Major media in the UK: has there been any interest in this? Any requests for interviews by BBC, or even The Daily Mail, or anything?

A: No, there has been absolutely nothing. I got a phone call earlier from The Southampton Echo, which also covers the Winchester area, and I — Well, I didn’t get a phone call, I got a message saying, can I phone the journalist. And I was expecting an antagonistic bloke, and that’s exactly what I got. He was not horrified about the idea you can be arrested for quoting Churchill in Britain today. He wanted to know why I did it, what I thought I would achieve, was I aware that by doing that I would be causing offence and distress, and all the buzzwords they come out with. So that’s the only British media outlet that has come anywhere near me. And it was immediately antagonistic. Apart from that, there has been nothing.

Q: What would you say that the attitude of the police was that were dealing with you? Both in the police station, and the initial arrest? Did you get any sense of their view of this?

A: Well, the two policemen that initially arrested me were very young. They didn’t really have the faintest idea what was going on. It was only when I got to the police station that that was then dropped, and a senior policeman then brought in the charges of racially aggravated crime. But, despite that, they were — I can understand they’re following orders. The actual policemen themselves were very polite, very civilised. One of them even talked to me for half an hour after the interview, because I had a taped interview in the interview room, and I was supposed to go back to the cells, and he said, “Look, we’re going to arrange bail for you. You don’t need to go back to the cell. We can sit in here and have a cup of coffee and a sandwich and have a chat off the record.” And, off the record, he said to me that, “We are essentially at war in this country, but of course I’m not in my official capacity allowed to say anything about that.”

Q: What would you like to see happen? What do you expect to happen next? There’s going to be a trial, then? Like, you’ve been formally charged. Or, at least you’re going to be formally charged. Do you know anything about when there will be a trial?

A: Well, the — I’ve been bailed for three weeks. I’m due to go back to the police station on May the 24th. And I am assuming that, in the interim period — what the investigating officer said to me at the time was, he will forward everything, including the — obviously, because they don’t have video of me doing it. They are just responding to a report from the crowd; they heard a few words that I said. But what they have said, they have taken a copy of the Churchill transcript, and they are sending that on to the Crown Prosecution Service with the recommendation that I be prosecuted under this racially aggravated Section 4. So somewhere between now and May the 24th, if the Crown Prosecution Service says, “Yes, we’re going to go ahead and prosecute him,” then I’m assuming that when I go back to the police station on May the 24th I will be arrested and held.

Q: So, for the benefit of people that don’t live in the UK, what level of court, and meaning of court — the court system is a little different than it is either in Canada or the States. This would be in front of a magistrate or a judge? This is a criminal proceeding, right?

A: It’s a criminal proceeding, but criminal proceedings can be dealt with in magistrates’ courts. But I would imagine, because clearly, if they are intending to prosecute, then we are obviously going to mount a proper defence, so it would probably go to a Crown court hearing with a judge, which is similar to — I’m sure you heard about the whole Tim Burton “taqiyya” trial recently, and of course Tim got off on that one, and the Crown Prosecution Service must have been aware that he was probably going to get off, but they are — you know, the Crown Prosecution Service was taken over by the cultural Marxist Left a long time ago, twenty years ago now. They will prosecute anything they possibly can, even if they know they’re going to lose it, simply because they think that by prosecuting, they will deter anybody else from doing it, even if they win in court; they still don’t want to have to go through that pretty unpleasant situation, especially when the power they have on their side is the fact that if you are found guilty, the sentence is two years.

Q: Is there anything that people both inside or outside the UK could do to help you? Are you fundraising, or do you just want to raise awareness of this? Or what is it that you would like to see people do?

A: Well, I think at the moment it’s just to raise awareness, because I know that — I always knew before this happened that the probability of my being arrested was very high, and the probability of the English, British media taking any interest in it was very low. And I thought that, this is where we need — and thank God they exist — a country, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, where you can actually still say these things and get away with it. And my initial thought was, if we can get this into — I mean, for example, I think I’ll be with Michael Coren next week, and Erick Stakelbeck is trying to organise something for Fox News and Glenn Beck. So if we can make it big enough in America, that the media over here are simply forced into having to report it, then that would basically satisfy every single reason for why I did this in the first place.



Thanks to Vlad Tepes for the video and Gates of Vienna for the transcript.