How Labour MP Kyle triggered 4am police raid on a constituent — for writing to him about Israel’s genocide

Brighton-based writer Greg Hadfield writes about latest episode in Starmer regime’s ‘lawfare’ against anti-genocide campaigners

Reproduced with Greg’s permission. Follow him on X here for updates.

In a quiet residential street off Hove seafront, the four uniformed officers arrived in two marked police cars. It was around 4am as they walked down the steps to the basement flat where Kerry* lives.

The 54-year-old woman did not hear any knock at the door. It was the barking of her two rescue dogs that woke her, as the Sussex Police officers — three men and a woman — stood in the dark outside her bedroom window.

In her pyjamas, Kerry — who lives alone — walked carefully to the door, tentatively opening it to such unexpected strangers at such an unearthly hour. She quickly realised her life had changed.

It is difficult to be certain exactly what the officers said. But they told her she was being arrested and must accompany them to be questioned at Hollingbury Custody Centre, where she was to spend more than eight hours in a cell — without any of her friends or relatives knowing she was there.

Hurriedly, she got dressed, asking if she could use the toilet in the tiny bathroom adjacent to her bedroom. The officers insisted she was accompanied; the woman officer, who had also watched her dress, squeezed in to watch her.

Having been told to hand over her mobile telephone and her Chromebook, Kerry was then driven away by two officers. Their two colleagues stayed behind to search the one-bedroom flat.

It all happened on Tuesday, June 17, barely six days since a fateful email exchange with Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove, and his so-called “Director of Operations” Chris Henry, a former Labour councillor on Brighton and Hove City Council.

It was Henry who triggered the police raid. He apparently took exception to an “anti-Israel” email Kerry sent to Sir Keir Starmer, David Lammy, and Angela Rayner on Wednesday, June 11.

Mr Kyle — a vice-president of Labour Friends of Israel until he joined the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology — was copied-in “just to be polite”, because he is Kerry’s local MP.

Before I publish the email, let me briefly outline the immediate context amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza:

• the UK-flagged ship Madleen, the “Freedom Flotilla” trying to deliver aid to Gaza, had already been illegally seized by Israel;
• Israel was about to bomb Iran, killing more than 1,000 Iranian citizens;
• The Labour Government, complicit in Israel’s war crimes, chose only to sanction two of the most extreme right-wing Zionists in Israel’s government.

Like millions of others, Kerry was angry. But what more could she do?

Having moved to Hove in 2016 from London, where she previously had a notable career in broadcasting, she became politically active in last year’s general election campaign.

In an energetic but low-profile manner, she was just one of hundreds who supported Tanushka Marah, who stood as an independent candidate against Kyle. Kerry, who does not use social media, did her bit by delivering leaflets in the densely-populated streets close to her home in Brunswick and Adelaide.

On June 8, Kerry wrote the first of a series of emails to Starmer et al. With the subject line “Protect the Freedom Flotilla”, it was — like others to follow — a brief message, a single paragraph, arguing it was the government’s duty to protect the Madleen.

It was — like all the others to follow, all of which I have seen — polite, articulate, and impassioned.

It did not, however, mince its words: “You already have a lot of blood on your hands and are very much on the wrong side of history and one day (inshallah) you will all be tried in the Hague for your actions.”

On most days, Kerry might send one or two emails to the same recipients via their publicly-available email addresses (sometimes with John Healey, the Defence Secretary, being added, along with a generic address for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). Sometimes, in the nine-day period up to her arrest, she sent more.

Let me emphasis again: I have seen all 30 emails and there is not a single word or a single phrase that could be regarded as abusive, threatening, or unlawful. It should not need to be said, but none contained anything anti-semitic.

Insofar as we can know, none of the other recipients was concerned by the emails; nor did any other recipient complain. Only Kyle and his most senior aide.

Let me show you the email in full:

Labour Ministers must be getting thousands of such emails every day from constituents watching — with a feeling of furious helplessness — scenes of starving children and the destruction of hospitals as a result of Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing and genocidal terror.

In Kyle’s case, and on his behalf, Chris Henry replied — uniquely — with a response to Kerry within 90 minutes.

As you will see below, it appears to be a mix of “boilerplate” paragraphs, combined with arrogant condescension, mixed in with a generous dose of “mansplaining”.

Here it is in full:

Leaving aside the lazy routine of linking to online transcripts of parliamentary speeches and news articles, the paragraphs that merit most attention are these:

In particular, the Kyle/Henry response — bizarrely — urges the need “to be careful about language so as not to stray into anti-semitism”. He then feels the need to point out: “It is NOT the Jewish people committing the atrocities in Gaza”.

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In Kerry’s response below, she correctly makes clear she never once — not in any of her series of emails — referred to “Jewish” people, and certainly not in relation to them “running the Foreign Office etc”.

Henry was, he insisted, just trying to be “respectful and helpful”. Of course he was. Until he called the police, because he regarded the email as “anti-Israel”.

Kerry is convinced Henry — never neglectful of his own sense of self-importance — made the fateful call to Sussex Police after receiving this well-argued reply:

Or maybe it was only after an email Kerry sent to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office the following day (June 12):

To repeat for emphasis: none of the emails Kerry sent during an nine-day period was anything other than polite, articulate, and impassioned. All but the three published above were brief and to the point, sometimes a single paragraph.

And yet she quickly found herself being questioned by two plain-clothes detectives because of the complaint by — or on behalf of — Kyle. The officers seemed particularly interested in Kerry’s support for Iran’s retaliation to Israel bombing its citizens.

After dawn broke on June 17, Kerry was allowed to telephone a local firm of solicitors; she was unable to contact anyone else, because all her contacts were on her mobile phone.

Detective Constable Emmanuel “Manni” Guffogg, the senior of the two officers who interviewed Kerry, told her solicitor Henry had contacted Sussex Police the previous day (Monday, June 16).

In a “pre-interview briefing” note, DC Guffogg recorded the following:

Without going into detail, Kerry’s understanding is that the police had considered accusing her of “harassment”, but this was ruled out following the intervention of her solicitor. Instead, the interview seemed to focus on “malicious communication”.

There was, she recalls, some brief discussion of what she thinks was referred to as a “Community Protection Order” (CPN), a warning notice — not a criminal charge — more commonly used in relation to anti-social behaviour. Regardless, nothing came of the discussion.

In the end, in the early afternoon, she was given police bail until September 17 — when she may (or may not) find out if she is to be charged with any offence.

The police made it a condition of her bail that she stayed away from 99 Church Road, Hove. Kerry was puzzled and had to ask why.

The officer enlightened her: “It’s the address of Peter Kyle’s constituency office.”

For good measure, the other bail condition prevents her from contacting or indirectly either her local MP Kyle, or Henry, or Starmer, Lammy, and Rayner “or any person associated with these or other MP’s [sic] offices”.

It is time — beyond time — for Kerry* to have her say, in her own words:

“I have marched, I have signed petitions, I have demonstrated. But nothing is working, nobody is listening. So rather than scream into the void that is social media, I decided to email directly our leading politicians, via publicly-available email addresses that we are all ‘encouraged’ to use.

“I wanted to make my feelings known and also let them know that we are not buying their excuses and lies anymore. This country is an active participant in the Holocaust of our time and I desperately wanted them to finally find some semblance of humanity (in actions, not words).

“The people I was emailing were, quite literally, the people making the decisions. Instinctively, I began commenting on news and events as they occurred that week.

“And then, out of nowhere, Israel illegally attacked Iran, killing and injuring many innocent men, women and children. Iran, quite rightly, invoked its legal right of retaliation in Tel Aviv and beyond.

“I am a Muslim revert [convert]. But, more importantly, I am a human and sentient being. So to see a country finally stand up to the demonic state of Israel was stunning and this, I believe, was my ‘crime’.

“None of my emails was ‘threatening in nature’. But I am 100 per cent pro-Palestine and very much an anti-Zionist.

“If the Police needed to speak to me, all they had to do was call. I made no attempt to hide my identity. I believe their tactics were not only heavy-handed but intentionally intimidatory

“I stand by everything I said and only wish more people were emailing their politicians, all the time, expressing their genuine rage and disgust at what is happening in Palestine and this country’s unconscionable, active participation in the worst crime of mine and many lifetimes.

“I would like their email boxes to be flooded, their phone lines to be blocked, and their constituency offices overwhelmed.

“And then, maybe — just maybe — they would be forced actually to do something.”

In conclusion, I want to point out that Peter Kyle is friends with fellow Zionist Fiona Sharpe, the Hove-based co-founder of Sussex Friends of Israel, who triggered my own prosecution. Both have close contacts with senior officers in Sussex Police.

Sharpe is also close friends with Heidi Bachram, who is behind the private prosecution of comedian Reginald D Hunter, by the so-called “charity” Campaign Against Antisemitism; even Sussex Police told Bachram no prosecution was merited.

I am delighted that my excellent legal team, which also represents Mr Hunter, has now agreed to represent Kerry*.

Mr Kyle and Mr Henry have been approached for comment.

*I have made the decision not to use the real name of “Kerry”.

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