Revealed: Zionism, abuse, pornography, and worse
It was a sunny Friday afternoon, about 4.10pm on September 13 2024.
My wife and I were happy to be back from nearly a month island-hopping in Greece. The garden urgently needed some work. But I confess I was enjoying a brief break from mowing the largest of our lawns, to watch a re-run of a particularly excellent episode of Veep.
From my armchair, I saw the two police officers had parked their car on the road outside and I watched as they walked up the steps to our home.
Instinctively — but surely irrationally — I guessed why. In the previous month, two prominent pro-Palestinian journalists and activists had been arrested for online content: Richard Medhurst, on August 15, and Sarah Wilkinson, on August 29.
But my career — as an award-winning Fleet Street journalist and then the owner of the best-read newspaper in my home city of Brighton and Hove — was long over. I am retired, a 68-year-old grandfather, happily married for 42 years.
Even my time as a socialist in the Labour Party had finally ended in summary expulsion — no hearing, no due process, no appeal — 15 years after joining. My offence: organising a meeting of socialists — The Resist Event — during the 2021 party conference in Brighton.
I have written extensively about the years in and after 2016, and the fake allegations of “antisemitism” used against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. As well as the toxic aftermath following Sir Keir Starmer’s election as leader.
I don’t intend to cover old ground; some plain assertions I make, however, are chronicled by me elsewhere. Please try to find time to read through the detailed evidence.
Fast forward to Friday the 13th: After a brief exchange on the doorstep and a mention of Twitter, I invited the two officers to sit on our back-garden patio.
One of the officers barely looked 17 and said nothing, a trainee I assumed; the other was PC Joe Williams, EA 937.
I name Joe only to pay tribute, not embarrass: PC Williams has performed his duties impeccably and, throughout, has been nothing but polite, helpful, and professional. We should be pleased to have officers like him.
It is the higher echelons of Sussex Police who are the problem.
I called my wife down from her weeding and planting. “The Twitter police are here! Do you want to join us?” I joked.
I should mention now that I tape-recorded both this initial 10-minute conversation as well as the subsequent hour-long interview under caution.
I have published a verbatim transcript of the full interview.
The outcome of the initial conversation was that I could be told only a brief outline of the allegations and the evidence against me. The complainant was a Ms Fiona Sharpe, of whom more later.
PC Williams said: “We’ve had an allegation at the beginning of July to say that you’ve been sending a load of messages over, I think, a 24-hour period which were offensive to her. Again, I can’t go into detail because you’re not under caution. We’re just having a chat.”
I made brief reference — ironic, I confess — to Ms Sharpe’s receipt in February 2024 of the Chief Constable’s Commendation from Jo Shiner, chief constable of Sussex Police. An unusual accolade for a civilian.
I also alluded, in a slightly garbled way, to Ms Sharpe’s position as chair of the Sussex Police hate crime scrutiny and involvement panel. I’m still not sure of the correct name of this opaque panel, or who is on it; I can find no mention of it on the Sussex Police website.
I knew enough about Ms Sharpe to take this unexpected, unannounced visit by the police seriously. More than enough.
For now, I’ll give a bald CV of one of the country’s most extreme Zionists with a record of hounding pro-Palestinian activists, particularly socialists inside and outside of the Labour Party.
Ms Sharpe (@SharpeFiona), 58, based in Hove, is spokesperson for the self-styled “Labour Against Anti-Semitism” campaign (@LabourAgainstAS); she was founder and co-chair of Sussex Friends of Israel; she regularly speaks in the media on behalf of an organisation known as the Sussex Jewish Representative Council; she has close connections with the management of Ralli Hall, a community and social centre in Hove “built in 1913 as a memorial to Stephen Ralli, a member of a wealthy Greek family who had donated money to many causes throughout Brighton and Hove”; having spent some time in the United States, her husband is Winston Pickett, who served as communications director for the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
What PC Williams told me — but which I have been unable to verify — is that Ms Sharpe (whom he repeatedly referred to as “Fiona”) is “on the Board of British Jews [sic]”. She is very close to Heidi Bachram (@heidibachram), another Hove-based Zionist extremist, whose husband is Adam Ma’anit (@adammaanit), digital communications officer at the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
I first became aware of Ms Sharpe in 2013, when I was editor and co-owner of the Brighton and Hove Independent, covering the successful campaign against the SodaStream flagship UK store in Hove.
She was the foul-mouthed counter-protester captured on video:
As far as I can tell, Ms Sharpe has blocked me on Twitter — unable to see any of my posts or mentions on her timeline, unless she goes out of her way to do so.
Or unless someone else draws her attention to it. Even then, depending on her X settings, she would have had to make a deliberate decision to view “sensitive content”. I know she either “follows” Caplin on X and/or reads his tweets.
Importantly, I have never sent her a direct message or “sent” her — by any means — a tweet/X post.
This had been the case ever since shortly after our one and only interaction, when — after I had sold my newspaper to Johnston Press — I was active in Momentum, in 2018:
Ms Sharpe — and her Labour Against Anti-Semitism (LAAS) cronies — have routinely crawled over all my social-media posts, looking for opportunities to abuse me. It has been going on for years. I am far from alone; it has happened to thousands of others who oppose the genocidal terror state of Israel.
It is their distinguishing modus operandi.
A mild example:
This type of abuse, and much worse, has been a near-daily occurrence for me, especially since I exposed Euan Philipps and his LAAS gang in November 2017:
I do not need to give much detail about the now-notorious Ivor Caplin.
Partly because the single question I was asked by Sussex Police about Caplin during my interview was: “Who is Ivor Caplin?”
One of few answers I gave PC Williams (PCW), other than a version of “no comment”, was this:
PCW: “Who is Ivor Caplin?”
GH: It’s not for me to say…You can read it on Wikipedia…Ivor Caplin? He’s the former defence minister, former Labour MP, best friend of Peter Kyle and Fiona Sharpe. The former chair of the Jewish Labour Movement. He’s now suspended from Labour…on June 11.…After serious allegations. It’s been reported publicly.
PCW: “What did you mean when you said Fiona Sharpe has known about his ‘likes’ and dislikes for some time, referring to Ivor Caplin?”
GH: I’ve nothing to say about that.
PCW: “How did you intend for her to feel when you said this?”
GH: I’ve nothing to say about that.
PCW: “Is it reasonable to feel she would be harassed by this?”
GH: I’ve nothing to say.
PCW: “In the comment below, you imply that Peter Kyle’s best friend would like the act I’m showing to you come in her [sic] mouth. Who are you referring to?”
GH: Sorry. What?
PCW: “The question this person is asking is “Where would you come? In my mouth? On my face? And you can see, you’ve written ‘In your mouth nice’ and you’ve tagged Peter Kyle in it. And implied his best friend is saying that.”
GH: I can’t see that.
PCW: “Were you referring to Fiona?”
GH: Sorry!?!
PCW: “Were you referring to Fiona. With that comment? When you referred to Peter Kyle’s best friend, were you referring to Fiona?”
GH: It says a 65-year-old. I don’t know how old Fiona Sharpe is…
PCW: “If you don’t know how old Fiona Sharpe is, how can I know that is not her.”
GH: I have nothing to say about it. You’ve got the tweet. I know what the tweet says.
It was a puzzling exchange, in an interview about alleged harassment of Ms Sharpe. It suggested the police officer had not closely studied the post sent to Sussex Police by the 58-year-old complainant to support her “harassment” allegation.
Caplin — who turned 66 a month later — is, of course, a former Labour councillor in Brighton and Hove (1991–1998); the former Labour MP for Hove (1997–2005); a defence minister under Tony Blair, during the invasion of Iraq, from 2003; vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel (1997–2005); chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (May 2018-April 2019 — when he was succeeded by Lord [Mike] Katz, who was recently appointed to the House of Lords by Sir Keir Starmer).
Crucially, Caplin — a close friend, for two decades, of Peter Kyle, Labour MP for Hove — was elected in November 2021 to the Labour Party’s powerful Southeast Regional Board.
The Labour Party has, in recent days, simply deleted the page on which Caplin was named as a board-member. Fortunately, I took screenshots on December 22 2024:
Ms Sharpe was the first to congratulate Caplin; another extreme Zionist was second to do so:
Others followed Ms Sharpe, with their best wishes. Although it appears, in the last few days, “Chris” has had a change of heart.
Could “Chris”, some have suggested, be Chris Ward, the new Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, who worked for Caplin when fresh out of Oxford University, before coming Sir Keir Starmer’s deputy chief of staff for five years? [From memory, my guess is it was Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant). But I don’t know.]
Since his election, Ward has been appointed one of Sir Keir’s two parliamentary private secretaries, a remarkable and swift elevation for such a new MP.
It’s not the first time, however, that Ward would have put distance between himself and Caplin, as Andy Winter — a sagacious Brighton blogger and a columnist for The Argus — noted in June last year:
Still a parliamentary passholder as a former MP, Caplin — who has pretensions to be a consultant/lobbyist — figured prominently when The Guardian in September 2020 raised concerns about how many such people had easy access to Parliament.
Caplin had a ready explanation:
On September 30 2024, the Metro revealed:
In May last year, Jess Phillips — also a close friend of Peter Kyle — played a pivotal role in securing new rules to ban MPs from Parliament if they are arrested for serious violent or sexual offences.
She has made no comment since Caplin’s arrest.
The full January 2025 list of former MPs with Parliamentary passes can be found here. You may notice Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP for Derby North, is not listed, because — outrageously — his pass was revoked by Parliamentary authorities in 2023!
Caplin, 66, born November 8 1958, is no stranger to scandal, including his role — as a Portslade councillor — in the secret “Ben Gowlett Trust” slush fund of £100,000, which had been squirrelled away since the 1990s by officers in Portslade branch of Hove Labour Party (which I exposed in April 2018).
Wikipedia has perhaps the best summary of Caplin’s involvement in the MPs’ expenses scandal, triggered when I was head of digital development at The Telegraph in 2009 — although I had no part in the disclosures:
Caplin’s sudden announcement — in November 2004, barely five months before Blair called a general election — that he would not be a candidate left Hove Labour Party “in disarray”, according to The Guardian.
“This announcement is about being honest about the future,” Caplin told The Argus. “There are other opportunities and other challenges I would like to pursue. This is not about policy or politics and Tony Blair will continue to have my strong support.”
What the defence minister did not disclose was the fact that he knew already that reporters from the now-defunct News of the World were sniffing around his secret sexual activities.
A fully-illustrated exposé was due to be the front-page “splash” — shortly after the May 2005 general election, I understand — but the article was pushed further back into the newspaper by late-breaking news. I have not yet retrieved a copy of the pre-digital newspaper (available at the British Library, for anyone interested).
Let’s deal with Caplin’s various failures to create successful companies. Wikipedia sums up his post-parliamentary activities thus:
The lack of success is clear by studying the accounts of the various companies on the Companies House website of which he is/was a director; 10 of the 14 companies have been dissolved. He remains an active director of only two companies: Both Sides Ltd and Ivor Caplin Consultancy Limited.
The accounts of the latter are far from impressive, adding to the mystery of how Caplin has funded himself since leaving the House of Commons in 2005 (including, I assume a significant ex-ministerial pension, on top of a pension from his marketing job with Legal and General Assurance Society in the 19 years from 1978).
[Caplin used to live two minutes’ walk from his best friend Peter Kyle in central Hove, until he moved last year to a rented £2,400-a-month flat overlooking his old workplace next to Hove Park.]
Although my investigations into Caplin’s financing are ongoing, I’ll point to one company of interest in the current context: Berlondor Ltd, of which the only director is 46-year-old Torsten Schwick (also a director, since 2005, of Ivor Caplin Consultancy Limited). Incorporated in 2011, Berlondor’s registered office, since April 2024, is Caplin’s current address.
Its latest accounts are as unimpressive as all the 14 companies associated with Caplin:
So who is Dusselfdorf-born Torsten Schwick? Something of an aspiring actor, it appears. With long-term limited success — that’s all I know.
I think it’s fair to say that red flags had been raised about Caplin’s character — and, of course, his membership of the pro-Israel lobby — by the time a citywide “City Party” was created in Brighton and Hove in January 2012.
The “City Party” was, in effect, a reverse/hostile takeover — by Hove Labour Party — of the two other constituency parties: Brighton Pavilion (of which I was a member) and Brighton Kemptown. The first meeting was at Ralli Hall in Hove; no mention was made of the £100,000 slush fund in any of its accounts.
That’s when I first began to learn not only of Caplin’s continuing deep-rooted influence, but also to realise the toxicity of the hateful individuals who controlled Labour Party affairs in Hove.
All this was the background to the “City Party” annual meeting on July 9 2016, when supporters of Jeremy Corbyn — including me — were overwhelmingly elected at an all-member meeting to be the executive committee of Brighton, Hove and District Labour Party, the biggest party unit in the country with more than 6,000 members.
The right-wing anti-Corbyn, anti-democrats showed their true colours. And Caplin was central to all the lies and behind-the-scenes machinations — including a tsunami of fake allegations of “antisemitism” in our city — under the party’s then general secretary, Lord [Iain] McNicol.
I will briefly refer to just two the most egregious cases of fake allegations of “antisemitism”, fabricated — and amplified — by Caplin. Ms Sharpe was clearly involved in the first, given her connections to Rallia Hall:
The truth about Sir Keir Starmer and the expulsion of Becky Massey;
Throughout the Labour witchhunt in Brighton and Hove, Caplin worked in tandem with Ms Sharpe and Kyle; he was rewarded in May 2018, when he became chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.
[Note: Kyle was vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel from September 2020, until he was appointed to Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet last July; he has appeared several times at events hosted by Ms Sharpe, including one on July 26 2016 when I sat next to the slightly-scary Simon Cobbs, of Sussex Friends of Israel (@SussexFriends), who filmed the whole event.]
I hope that I have made clear what binds together the main protagonists in what I am going to write next: in particular, Fiona Sharpe, Ivor Caplin, and Peter Kyle; but also Heidi Bachram, Adam Ma’anit, and (peripherally perhaps) Winston Pickett.
As I was write this article, I have just been informed by PC Williams — at 9.32pm on Tuesday, January 14 2025 — that the Crown Prosecution Service, which interestingly appears to follow Caplin on X, has authorised a charge for my single screenshot of a single post by Caplin (a very modest example of hundreds he has liked/posted/replied-to over the last 20 months. And which have been seen every day by his 3,342 followers).
I have never been interviewed about this single post on X that relates to a totally separate charge from the “harassment” allegations that I was interviewed about on September 13 last year. Sussex Police have rejected my request to be interviewed under caution about the new charge:
Given this development, I had better cut to the chase.
During last year’s general election, a pro-Palestinian independent candidate stood against Peter Kyle in Hove. Tanushka Marah (@tanushkamarah) — a British-born Palestinian-Jordanian theatre director — is a remarkable person whom I have met only fleetingly on less than a handful of occasions. She is passionate, articulate and intelligent — and therefore quickly became a target for Ms Sharpe, Ms Bachram, and some of Kyle’s most vile supporters. For some of Tanushka’s writing, see Middle East Eye.
I could report all the terrible abuse and intimidation Tanushka received — both online and offline — from Ms Sharpe and her cronies, including attempts to undermine her professionally, by bullying venues and funding organisations that support her work.
But that is not my story to tell, so I will not go into detail. Except for the tweets I saw from Ms Sharpe and Ms Bachram after Rishi Sunak, on May 22, called the general election for July 4.
Remember, it was during this period that we knew Caplin had been suspended by the Labour Party (reported on June 11 — my birthday!).
On June 20, it was reported that a then-unnamed 65-year-old Hove man for an alleged sexual attack on a vulnerable homeless person in an (unnamed) hostel.
I knew immediately it was Caplin; later, I was told the hostel was the YMCA’s William Collier House in North Road, Brighton.
For the general public, however, it was unclear why Caplin had been suspended. But Brighton and Hove News reported:
“In recent weeks, Mr Caplin has been tweeting increasingly explicit images of young men, ranging from semi-naked stills to pornographic videos.
“Brighton and Hove News understands the suspension relates to separate allegations. Mr Caplin declined to comment.”
The news website added:
“Mr Caplin, who was a member of Labour South East’s regional executive committee, helped assemble a panel to oversee Brighton and Hove’s selections for the 2023 local election, which are usually done locally.
“He said this was to avoid a repeat of 2019, when several candidates selected after appearing on a slate organised by the local Momentum branch were subsequently suspended or expelled for anti-Semitism.”
Some readers will know I had been posting about Caplin’s online sexual activities since I was alerted to them by a family member over a year earlier. Unfortunately, it was shortly after I had attended the count for the Brighton and Hove City Council elections on Friday, May 5 2023.
It was at the count that I saw Caplin shepherd the new Labour councillors — many of them first-time candidates, imposed by Starmer apparatchiks rather than selected by party members — into a sideroom to immediately elect Bella Sankey as leader of the majority Labour Group. Sankey was the only candidate; there was no time to consider options; it was a done deal.
By Caplin and his cronies.
Similarly, Caplin had a hand in the approval — or disapproval — of would-be parliamentary candidates across the southeast.
One of my first of many X posts trying to draw attention to Caplin’s troubling behaviour was on June 19 2023:
For the next year, I intermittently — even frequently — alluded to Caplin’s public “likes” (and occasional posts and replies) on X. They were all easily visible to anyone who followed him; I was, of course, “blocked” by him many years ago; none of them contained any of Caplin’s pornographic images.
Fast forward to 10 crucial days at the end of June and the beginning of July 2024.
Ms Sharpe was far from pleased that a pro-Palestine candidate was standing against her friend Peter Kyle in her home constituency of Hove.
And she was particularly outraged that Tanushka should share a stage with Roger Waters to protest against the genocide being committed in Gaza by the terror state of Israel:
Needless to say, many of her like-minded followers agreed. For example:
Shortly afterwards, the so-called Sussex Jewish Representative Council — with just 254 followers on X (@SussexJewishRep)- issued a statement about Tanushka. Ms Sharpe helpfully re-posted the statement:
Ms Bachram piled in to support her friend:
And on:
Ironically, there was some time for levity, with Ms Sharpe’s friend, Daniel Yates, former Labour leader on Brighton and Hove City Council:
But Ms Sharpe soon returns to her theme:
On the eve of polling day, Ms Sharpe and Ms Bachram were getting wilder in their accusations. This time falsely claiming Tanushka and/or her supporters were putting campaign leaflets in the kosher section of a local supermarket. You really could not make it up…but they did!
You have to read Ms Bachram’s thread to believe it. Read it, but don’t believe it: https://x.com/HeidiBachram/status/1808447526413979956
And still it went on:
Unsurprisingly, Tanushka was targeted more and more, by more and more Zionist extremists like Ms Sharpe and Ms Bachram.
What the two did not condemn was this:
On election day (July 4), The Argus reported details of the vandalism of Tanushka’s office in central Hove, close to Peter Kyle’s own office:
“Independent Tanushka Marah’s campaign office in Hove was attacked overnight on Tuesday.
“Two campaigners arrived there on Wednesday to find the front door glued shut and her banner graffitied, leaving the word “anus”.
“Now the owner of the unit is offering a cash reward for information that could lead to a conviction.
“A spokeswoman for Tanushka’s campaign said a theatre and school that she works at have also received complaints against her.”
For my part, during the election campaign, I focused my social-media activity — voluminous, I admit — almost exclusively on the candidates in Brighton Pavilion and Brighton Kemptown: Tom Gray and Chris Ward, the latter being imposed by Starmer after the strange and sudden suspension of the sitting Labour MP Lloyd Rusell-Moyle a few weeks earlier.
I did, however, some time amuse myself with some Hove references:
And then I read the report about the vandalism to Tanushka’s office.
Having quietly been a spectator to all the toxicity spewing from Ms Sharpe and Ms Bachram, I posted this at 2.58pm on July 4 (I know! It’s not funny, it’s not clever!):
At 3.11pm, much to my surprise, I got a DM from Sussex Police, to which I immediately responded:
The next day (July 5) — surely not a coincidence! — Fiona Sharpe, the spokesperson for the Sussex Jewish Representative Council, made a complaint to Sussex Police, a complaint I knew nothing about until Friday, September 13.
The allegations related only to “harassment”, not even to “anti-semitism” (although that was later floated briefly by PC Williams as a motivation of whatever he though I had done).
Strangely, PC Williams — due to go on holiday for three weeks at midnight on the day he rang my doorbell—had a lengthy interview script already prepared back at the custody centre. It emerged later he also had my mobile phone number.
The police had not even interviewed Ms Sharpe — and still haven’t, I understand.
Certainly they hadn’t spoken to her when they sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service on or about October 23.
I will now simply append the images that I was shown during the interview by PC Williams (PCW), who — like my duty solicitor that evening — had never used X/Twitter. Which caused much confusion in the police officer’s understanding. A confusion that has clearly had a significant on me.
I will add under each image a relevant extract of the interview.
PCW: “You also commented ‘hmm’ [sic] with a question mark [sic]. On a post that Fiona had written about a person she describes as demanding a platform for the Jewish community to allow her to rapewash history. What did you mean by that?”
GH: I think that covers my response
PCW: “But what did you mean? Was that a negative response, a positive response?”
GH: I’ve got nothing to add. I can’t do a commentary on every tweet, every reply or riposte
PCW: “You also posted: ‘Noone can disagree with SharpeFiona. What did you mean by that?”
GH: What did I reply to?
[PCW shows me]
GH: I have nothing to add
PCW: “You’ve also posted a video of Tony Robinson doing a video, with a caption saying ‘Vote Labour’ and a link to an article about a Labour funder under a post that Fiona has made. Why did you do that?”
GH: Can you show me? Am I allowed to ask how this is harassing Fiona Sharpe?
PCW: “At this point it is how it’s made her feel. The allegation is that she feels harassed.”
GH: By this? Where am I? ….Tony Robinson…I’m not quite sure of the relevance of any of this.
PCW: “But what was the reason you posted it. I appreciate, on the face of it, it is not an offensive thing to say. But it’s just a bit odd that you claim you have no relationship with her that you are posting about her so often.”
[I and my lawyer pointed out I had made no comment about Fiona Sharpe, ie whether I “had no relationship with her”]
PC Williams or Ms Sharpe — “Fiona” as the officer repeatedly referred to as — was under the impression that two or three of the posts were by me, when, in fact, they originated from a person known as “TeamPhoenix” (@LeftPhoenix). Whose identity I do not know:
PCW: “In another post, you tagged Fiona’s husband and stated his place of work. Why did you do this?”
GH: Show me that….That’s not my tweet…[Team Phoenix etc].
PCW: “As far as you are aware, is that her husband?”
GH: I have nothing to say about that.
PCW: “Which one of these is your tweet?”
GH: Winston Pickett. Not Wilson Pickett.
PCW: “What did you mean by that? As far as you are aware, is that her husband?”
GH: I have nothing to say about that.
PCW: “OK. I feel like you think I’m asking stupid questions. Or being difficult. But the CPS will ask the same questions, if it goes that far.”
GH: You’re not asking anything I wasn’t expecting….
PCW: “How do you intend for this to make her feel by posting about her husband?”
GH: I have nothing to say about that. Unless my solicitor advises me otherwise…Apparently not.
PCW: “On July 4. 2024, you tagged Fiona in another post accusing her of hypocritically moonlighting a hate crime panel. What did you mean by this?”
GH: Oh, this is July 4. …quote allegedly tagged …so it’s not July 4.
PCW: “The information I have — which may be incorrect — is that on July 4 and the following 24 hours there was a stream of posts.”
GH: Election day? Show me….what did I say? That’s not me.
PCW: “What is your connection to Team Phoenix then?”
GH: I have nothing to say about that. But it’s not me!
GH: [PCW’s confusion about how Twitter works.] Who has provided this? Fiona Sharpe?
PCW: “Yes, she’s provided it. So that’s why I’m asking you about it. She believes you’re the person behind it.”
GH: She believes I am the person behind Team Phoenix [@LeftPhoenix]. Is that the allegation?
PCW: “The allegation is general harassment.”
GH: So she thinks she’s being harassed by Team Phoenix; she thinks I’m harassing her?
PCW: “Potentially. This is what she sent as evidence of what you’ve done.”
GH: Has she got anybody else she wants to associate me with? That isn’t me.
PCW: “Even if we ignore Team Phoenix, we can talk about the ones which your profile is attached to.”
So long as you are aware that is not my Twitter handle.
PCW: “Fair enough”.
GH: Well, not fair enough. She complained about me saying that and it wasn’t me!
PCW: “It’s not for me to question her about it. I was just taking the statement.”
GH: Have you not questioned her about it?
PCW: “Not at this point, no. We believe every allegation until we see otherwise. Which is why we are speaking to you about it.”
GH: You believe every allegation until otherwise?
PCW: “On the face of it, yeah.”
GH: I have evidence that that is not factually the case.
GH: Team Phoenix isn’t me. I don’t know who Team Phoenix is.
When I returned from the police interview, I analysed the whole of my X/Twitter archive since I joined in March 2007. It showed:
- Nine tweets/posts by me — mentioning @SharpeFiona — since January 1 2024 (plus one mentioning @FionaSharpe!);
- 47 tweets/posts by me — mentioning @SharpeFiona in total (the first on May 8 2019);
- Seven replies by me, mentioning @SharpeFiona — since January 1 2024 (none of the replies is to a tweet/post by @SharpeFiona);
- 30 replies by me, mentioning @SharpeFiona in total since March 26 2018 (only one of which — the first — is a direct reply to a tweet by @SharpeFiona;
- I have never “sent” Ms Sharpe a post or a direct message.
On December 18, PC Williams emailed the duty solicitor who was present at the voluntary interview, to confirm that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would not be proceeding with Ms Sharpe’s allegations of harassment.
With the solicitor away (until January 8, as it turned out), I saw the email only on Friday, December 20:
I was pleased the vexatious allegations by Ms Sharpe had been dealt with. But I was certain I did not want to accept a caution, for anything.
The deadline to accept was originally the end of the day, hours after I saw the email — about allegations made on July 5, about which I was told on September 13.
I insisted on taking legal advice — over Christmas! — and said I would be in touch “next year”; the CPS extended the deadline to Friday, January 10.
A police caution is a conviction after an admission of guilt — albeit a conviction that is “spent” immediately, one that shows up only on “enhanced” criminal-record checks.
The caution can be taken into account if the recipient repeats the sort of behaviour that led to it for which s/he is then charged. It can be used as evidence of a pattern of behaviour.
Post-Leveson, media outlets generally name people accused of an offence only after they have been charged — not when they have been only arrested or interviewed.
Once charged, they can be named — but only very limited details can be given: name, address, charge etc.
You know the sort of headline that results: “Award-winning journalist charged online gay porn.”
The stakes were high. They have since got higher.
I then spent Christmas and New Year reading about Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
As the January 10 deadline approached, I consulted a King’s Counsel, who put me in touch with a solicitor, whom I fully briefed; both have significant expertise in this deeply-flawed piece of legislation, which is abused daily by police up and down the country.
At 3.52pm on Friday, January 10, I emailed PC Williams suggesting a commonly-used process that is known as “pre-charge engagement” and a request to be interviewed under caution for a second time, about the new and separate allegation.
I did not employ my solicitor to send a formal Letter of Representations because I was told it could cost me up to £6,000 (with an hourly rate of up to £400). Just in the hope of avoiding a caution.
I prepared to tell my daughter — for the first time — about what had already been hanging over me for nearly four months.
But then — just 21 hours after I sent the email to PC Williams — something astonishing happened.
At 12.57pm on Saturday, January 11, I was alerted to the livestreaming of Ivor Caplin being confronted by a vigilante group of paedophile-hunters and of his subsequent arrest by Sussex Police.
Caplin and another man, aged 40, were arrested on suspicion of engaging in sexual communication online with a child. After being held overnight, Caplin was released on police bail until Thursday, April 10. The other man was bailed until April 11.
I was shocked. I knew Caplin had always had a worrying focus on people as much as 40 years younger, often seen having sex and/or in a state of sexual arousal.
Early in my attempt to draw attention of the Labour Party — locally and nationally — I had confidence in Clause 8 of its relevant Code of Conduct:
Inevitably, a small number of Caplin’s defenders — including some of Ms Sharpe’s friends —had long accused me of “gay-shaming”.
Even Owen Jones has recently implied Caplin might be regarded — before his exposé and arrest, at any rate — as “an embarrassingly horny gay man online”:
Let me emphasise: The scandal about Caplin has nothing to do with sexuality or even gender. Although men are a particular threat. Nor is it about ethnicity, or race, or religion.
To an extent, it is to do with age: a 65-year-old inviting/accepting (unprotected) sex with someone 17 (rather than 15) is surely worrying. Even if it is not illegal.
And an obsessive interest in posting/re-posting/replying-to pornographic images and videos must surely raise some red flags.
It is mainly about power.
When this conduct is undertaken by a senior figure in a political party, with a public facade of trusted respectability, it is positively dangerous. Especially in an organisation with inadequate safeguarding procedures.
In an opaque, hierarchical, and undemocratic Labour Party — where whistleblowing is now punished rather than welcomed — it is a disaster waiting to happen.
Teenage members as young as 14 out on the #LabourDoorstep, canvassing in tiny groups — often on ill-lit streets and accompanied by older, more experienced, more trusted, more powerful party colleagues — must be protected.
In the light of whast I have discovered, I would definitely discourage my teenage grandchild from ever canvassing for Labour in Brighton and Hove.
I believe the Labour Party needs its own #MeToo moment — like Hollywood, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the media, and so on.
My experiences over many years — but particularly over the last 20 months — suggest senior figures in the party prefer to turn a blind eye, to look away, when people like Caplin are hiding in plain sight.
In fact, in Hove, they are always willing to target the messenger. Not only just because they don’t like the message, but also because it is so often delivered by people whose politics they despise.
Unfortunately, it has taken a vigilante group to bring Caplin to justice, alerted perhaps by my lengthy attempt to attract the attention of people who just did not want to do their duty and/or live up to their responsibilities.
We do not know if Caplin is a paedophile or not. I hope he will have his day in court, so we can find out.
And I do not have any evidence at all to substantiate wild rumours about a Labour “sex ring” or a “rape network” in Brighton and Hove.
I am certain, however, that my city has its share of perpetrators of sexual abuse and all of us should do our best to safeguard each other.
My central message is and always has been: some of Caplin’s closest friends knew of his online “likes” and likes. How could they not?
Did all his followers on X/Twitter always block him, have dormant accounts, or mute him, or just not notice the daily waterfall of extreme pornography? All the photographs? All the videos?
There are so many who followed Caplin (at least before his arrest at the weekend). Below I illustrate just a few — including Lord (Tom) Watson, Jack Lubner, chair of Young Labour, Lord (Mike) Katz, chair of Jewish Labour, and Gurinder Singh Josan, Labour MP for Smethwick (and a champion of Luke Stanger, on Labour’s national executive committee).
Even the Crown Prosecution Service (@CPSUK) follows Caplin.
And, finally, former Chief Superintendent Nick May, Sussex Police’s Divisional Commander for Brighton and Hove (until his retirement in September 2021), a friend of Ms Sharpe:
One thing I do know is that the likes of Ms Sharpe and Caplin are so embedded in the local criminal justice system, not to mention the local mainstream media, that they feel they can get away with anything.
They have friends in high places.
No complaint from them is too trivial to be taken seriously (Sharpe and Sussex Police); no mendacious story is so insubstantial that a quote from “a senior Labour source” won’t generate a headline (Caplin and The Argus or Brighton and Hove News).
Consequently, this is where we have got to: the threat of me spending up to five years in prison for a single screenshot in a single post, triggered by a vexatious complaint about a handful of harmless posts.
This is where I find myself just 80 hours after Caplin was arrested but not charged:
Just like in the Labour Party, so in the criminal justice system: the process is the punishment and the punishment is the process.
Meanwhile, Caplin is back online, doing what he always does.
