The sway of community advisers over policing is among the most under-reported but dangerous trends – and helps explain police tolerance of Jew hate on our streets
October 17, 2025 12:06
As Mark Gardner, CEO of the Community Security Trust, put it this morning: “[The] Aston Villa match is about who controls the streets of UK’s second largest city. The football is a very red herring.” We know who West Midlands Police have decided controls the streets of Birmingham: the mob.
The decision to bar Maccabi fans from Villa Park next month is supposedly about “safety”, the same argument advanced by Ayoub Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. Khan was one of the four Gaza Independent MPs elected last July who has campaigned to have Maccabi fans barred, arguing that their presence would present a safety risk.
Indeed – but not as he would have it. As the Birmingham-based Imam Astar Rashid has preached, the city should “show no mercy” to visiting Israeli fans.
What this appalling decision shows is the rot that has taken hold across the police – of which West Midland is just one example. It helps explain how the need for supposed communal safety leads to the very opposite, with one group’s right to go about its business – in this case Jews – sacrificed on the altar of supposed harmony and communal safety.
In that context, there was a fascinating interview this morning on the BBC’s Today programme with Dal Babu, a former chair of the National Association of Muslim Police and Met chief superintendent and, since January, a member of Sir Sadiq Khan’s London Policing Board.
Babu unwittingly confirmed the extent of the malaise in policing as he sought to explain why the police were right to ban Maccabi fans from Villa Park. He didn’t put it like that, of course, instead using all the usual buzz words about inclusion and community cohesion. Justin Webb, the interviewer, asked him about the view of Ayoub Khan that Israeli teams should not even be allowed to compete – a view which shows of course that the supposed concern with safety is irrelevant, as the real driver is the idea of banning Israel itself: “There are people who have views on Israel, some of them views on Jews. And those views have influenced the police and a lot of people would feel, including, it seems, the Prime Minister, that's wrong.”
Babu’s answer was revealing. First he said that the police would be focused mainly on intelligence. But then he explained the bigger issue: “They do a Community Impact Assessment and look at all those different views, but also…they would look at the views from different groups, different stakeholders, and make sure that they're aware.”
As Webb then followed up, did this not mean that “if one community said we're going to react violently to this, the police would just take that into account? So maybe we have to stop someone coming because of that?”
“No, no, of course not”, replied Babu. Except his response should have been “yes, yes, of course” because, as he went on: “It would be remiss of the police not to be aware of the sentiment…Because you need to understand what those local communities are likely to do. Are they going to be welcoming people, or are they going to be demonstrating? So all those factors will be taken into account.”
There you have it. This is the policing mindset in which fear of demonstrations and disorder by a mob of fanatics is good reason to ban the Jews from their sight.
Not that this is news. The extent to which community advisers and their views now determine policing is one of the most under-reported but dangerous developments of recent years – and is one explanation as to why the police have been so tolerant of blatant Jew hate on the streets.
On one of the first marches, on 21 October 2023, for example, there were widespread cries of “jihad”. But this was fine, according to the Met, based on the advice it received from its communal sources. The Met even posted a now infamous explanation on social media of why they stood and watched the chanting:
“The word jihad has a number of meanings”, the Met informed us. But while some people “associate it with terrorism”, the advice from those with “particular knowledge in this area” was that it was not possible to identify “any offences” from the chanting. Similarly with placards boasting of the “Muslim armies”, because there are “varying interpretations of what the language on the placards should be interpreted to mean”. And with the black Islamic flags being waved on the march, which were “not those of Isis”.
This desire to placate the very people who are the problem leads to appointments such as that of Attiq Malik, a solicitor who has railed against “global censorship by the Zionists”, as chairman of the London Muslim Communities Forum, which is described on the Met’s website as a “strategic advisory body for the Met…[to] inform and help shape police policy and procedure at a strategic level”. Malik, who was seen on video instigating chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” in 2021, was a regular in the police control room during the hate marches until his views were exposed by a newspaper.
It may well be that the intervention of the prime minister means that the decision to make Villa Park Judenfrei will be reversed. That would be a good thing. But do not fall into the trap, if it happens, of thinking that anything has really changed for the better. The problem does not lie solely with the police, obviously. But the police are part of it; a large part of it.
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