This week the European left has been outraged by the arrest of Ernest Moret, a French Marxist publisher who was visiting London. Yet the same leftist and liberal commentators were perfectly happy when the exact same laws were used to detain Isabel Peralta and other members of the Heritage & Destiny team.
After arriving by Eurostar at St Pancras station, Moret was detained by border security under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. When he refused to provide passwords for officers to access his phone and computer, Moret was arrested and held in police cells for 24 hours.
He was released on bail on Tuesday evening.
Racial nationalists have known for many years that Schedule 7 gives UK police and border security officers extraordinary powers that would once have been seen as unconstitutional. Our own citizens as well as visitors can be detained on entering the country, and questioned for up to six hours.
Unlike any other arrest, those detained under Schedule 7 have no right to remain silent and are obliged to surrender their phones, computers and other devices, together with any relevant passwords. The authorities do not require any reason for detaining and questioning anyone under Schedule 7, and their questions can cover any subject.
Four of our H&D team have been detained under Schedule 7 in recent years. Editor Mark Cotterill has been stopped twice at Manchester Airport after returning from a non-political holiday to Mexico and a visit to H&D supporters in Australia. Assistant editor Peter Rushton was stopped at London Stansted Airport on returning from a visit to Germany. And last September our Spanish comrade and H&D writer Isabel Peralta was stopped at Manchester Airport, the night before speaking at our 2022 meeting in Preston.
Isabel explains these events in the videos published here (in English and Spanish).
Her case was especially outrageous because her computer and phone were retained for almost a week, without any justification, as part of a political ‘fishing expedition’ where UK authorities were liaising with political police and intelligence agencies in Germany and Spain.
