One can imagine that in the sweeping idyll of gritstone and moor that makes up much of North Yorkshire, police officers are not quite as run off their feet as their colleagues across the border in Bradford and Leeds. West Yorkshire gave us the Yorkshire Ripper and grooming gangs, North Yorkshire gave us a saucy Women’s Institute Calendar and James Herriot. Nevertheless, it may come as a surprise that Britain’s largest non-metropolitan county is so lacking in crime, anti-social behaviour and breaches of the peace that its senior officers have sought to alleviate the tedium by hosting this year’s annual Intersectionality Conference. Intersectionality, for those new to the term, is an analytical framework that extends critical race theory across multiple identities in order to present a Spaghetti Junction of oppression. If it sounds like repackaged Marxism, that’s because it is.

Speaking at the conference was a former cop who goes by the name of Purple Wisdom; he teaches that “jokes” and “sharing feelings with like minded others” (whatever that means) is the base layer in a pyramid of oppression. Naturally, this toxic mix of friends sharing why they love Titania McGrath is likely to end in genocide, and Purple Wisdom has a diagram to prove it.

Other speakers included a critical race theorist who specialises in charging £1500 a session to lecture police on white privilege, and a Liverpudlian nun whose service to The Almighty includes shouting TERF at anyone who disagrees that, along with Man and Woman, God fashioned 365 other identities from the dust of the earth.

To coincide with the conference, North Yorkshire Police decided to publish on its website a celebration of The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Act which, apparently, granted all kinds of rights to LGBTQI plus identities. That you may not have heard of this particular Act of Parliament should come as no surprise. Outside the fevered imagination of North Yorkshire Police, the Act does not exist.

Legitimate, identifiable police officers are keeping records of those who use the wrong pronouns

What we know of the conference is down to old fashioned sleuthing as North Yorkshire Police refused to reveal its list of speakers. More accurately, it states that it does not know who the speakers were, which is either an outright lie or an act of gross incompetence. Maybe the list got lost. It happens. Last year, North Yorkshire were unable to identify the senior officers pledging their troth to the gods of diversity, in spite of them appearing in photographs published all over social media. Conveniently, the wording of the pledge was lost down the back of the sofa.

North Yorkshire is not the only force to have taken a vow of secrecy.  As previously reported in The Critic, Fair Cop’s attempts to identify the police officers who tweeted “WeStandForStonewall” and “We see you, we have reported you” from a national police Twitter account have been met with a  wall of silence. We know that the co-chair of the secretive National LGBT+ Police Network is a Chief Superintendent with the City of London Police, but holding him to account is like playing Cluedo with oven gloves on. His employer states that duties carried out on behalf of The Network are distinct from those carried out as a City of London police officer, and that no inference should be derived from the fact that he appears in full uniform on The Network’s website.  Through this deft sleight of hand, Chief Superintendent Blackburn is able to wield all the power afforded by rank whilst conveniently sidestepping scrutiny. It’s a handy arrangement, enabling him to protect himself, his employer, and the assets that The Network has in place in constabularies across the country. Chen Wenqing, the head of Chinese State Security, must look on in envy.

Fair Cop wrote to all Chief Constables in England and Wales asking them to provide details of officers posting social media messages on behalf of The Network. “Can’t say, won’t say. Data protection” is pretty much an accurate composite of the replies. If nothing else, this suggests that Chief Constables have either chosen to close their eyes to the presence of spooks on the payroll, or as seems likely, they are just too damned scared to hold their George Smiley’s to account.

Chen Wenqing, the head of Chinese State Security, must look on in envy

We already know that legitimate, identifiable police officers are keeping records of those who use the wrong pronouns, retweet the wrong limericks, or whistle Bob The Builder in a threatening manner; one can only imagine the horrors about to be inflicted upon us by this new breed of secret police. Believe me, they exist. Answerable to no one, they lurk on digital street corners, taking notes, blowing streams of strawberry vape from beneath the shadow of a rainbow trilby.

“Britain has never had a Cheka, a Stasi or a Gestapo” wrote Mister Julian Knowles in his ruling against The Chief Constable of Humberside. “We have never lived in an Orwellian society.” One fears that, like bell sleeves and The Pussycat Dolls, the Honourable Judge has fallen behind the times. If, as Dostoevsky observed, the measure of a civilised society is how it treats its prison population, then it may also hold true that the measure of a totalitarian society is the secrecy of its police. By that latter measure, Britain has turned a corner and is on the road to ruin.