Mick Hartley

Will the Stephen Ireland fiasco mean the end of police cars painted in Pride colours? We can only hope. Janice Turner in this morning's Times.

In 2019, Stephen Ireland posted a film of himself at Surrey police HQ in Guildford beside a Jaguar patrol car customised with a swirling rainbow design and the name of the organisation he founded and controlled, Pride in Surrey (PiS). “This is what I will be riding around in today,” says an ecstatic Ireland, as the officer who will act as his chauffeur waves.

Ireland energetically cultivated Surrey police. He spoke on panels alongside officers, attended joint school visits, befriended its LGBT staff group. PiS was a “partner agency” on the force’s website. Most significantly, he was highly regarded by the then chief constable Gavin Stephens. After Surrey’s police and crime commissioner Lisa Townsend expressed gender critical views, Ireland launched a vicious campaign to have her sacked. Stephens, instead of offering her support, told her to apologise because Ireland “is a friend of Surrey police”.

Now that “friend” is serving 24 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old boy. Ireland had messaged his partner David Sutton, 27, (jailed for four and a half years) to say he’d found a “14-year-old baby” on Grindr who “wants to play with men’s bodies”. Discovering he was even younger, Ireland said: “OK, we just have to keep it a secret.” The couple smoked methamphetamine with the boy, described in court as “highly vulnerable”, filmed the rape and added it to their bank of paedophilic images.

The details of the case are shocking but to some came as no surprise. For years, whistleblowers had tried to raise their concerns about Ireland with Surrey county council, which gave PiS thousands of pounds in funding. They believe they were ignored because Ireland’s very public bond with police chiefs made him untouchable.

Chief constable Gavin Stephens is a central figure in this whole grim saga. 

Certainly Ireland weaponised the police against his enemies. In 2021, after Lisa Townsend stated that biological sex was important in matters such as crime statistics, police searches and prisons, he posted a photo of an officer sitting in a rainbow police car holding a sign saying “TERFy Townsend not fit for office”. Ireland’s message to anyone who crossed him was: come for me and you deal with the police.

Unsurprisingly, his very public vendetta against Townsend deterred potential whistleblowers (as did chief constable Stephens quickly distancing himself from her views).

So has he resigned yet, this Gavin Stephens? Of course not. He's now Chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council.

For Townsend, who attended Ireland’s sentencing, it underlines the imperative of police neutrality. Whatever individual officers’ views, they should not parade them at work, nor should forces appear to favour particular interest groups. She notes wryly that this is an urgent matter for the newish head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council — Gavin Stephens. “I don’t think there should be rainbow cars any more than International Women’s Day or autism awareness cars,” she says. “The police force does one thing no other agency can — it arrests the bad guys.”