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Mike Lockley
Birmingham Mail
December 8, 2013
A sandwich shop owner endured an eight-hour grilling by police and had his computer seized for three weeks – after cracking sick Nelson Mandela jokes on the net.
Neil Phillips, who runs Crumbs in the heart of former staunch Staffordshire mining community Rugeley, says he was quizzed, finger-printed and DNA swabbed following complaints about what he refers to as “Bernard Manning” gags.
In one, he posted: “My PC takes so long to shut down I’ve decided to call it Nelson Mandela.”
Mandela, former South African leader, global statesman and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, died on Thursday, aged 95.
Mr Phillips, 44, is one of two men interviewed by police following a bitter, ill-tempered feud over plans for a mining memorial in the town centre – a well-intentioned project that, claims one leading councillor and barrister, has been ambushed by some members of the Far Right and used as a propaganda platform.
Liberal Democrat Councillor Tim Jones said: “Some of the material would make the very miners that this is intended to be a tribute to, turn in their graves.”
The other individual collared is pensioner and former miner Tom Christopher, quizzed by police at his home in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, over claims he issued threats on the net.
Neither man faces charges.
The simmering memorial dispute sank to new depths at a Rugeley Town Council meeting three days ago, when police ejected Mr Christopher.
The 72-year-old, who worked at the local Lea Hall pit from 1965 to 1991, says he was enraged by public allegations that some of those beating the drum for the £68,000 tribute, which will depict three miners, were “thugs and fascists”.
One council official admitted: “It didn’t come to fisticuffs, but it was close.”
As part of the growing concern over comments on cyber talk-shop “Rugeley Soapbox”, Mr Phillips was arrested at his home on September 10.
He was first taken to Rugeley police station, then Stafford. The shopkeeper alleges he was also quizzed over two further postings:
l Free Mandela – switch the power off.
l There was confusion at Rugeley Jobcentre. Someone who spoke English walked in.
Mr Phillips admits to once being a member of the far-right BNP, quitting 25 years ago.
He said: “It was an awful experience. I was fingerprinted, they took DNA and my computer. It was a couple of jokes, Bernard Manning type. There was no hatred. You can question the taste, but they’re not hateful. I told the police they got plenty of ‘likes’. What happened to freedom of speech? I think they over-reacted massively. Those jokes are ‘out there’, anyway.
“When they took my computer, I thought, ‘what the hell are they looking for?’ To be questioned would have been over the top, never mind arrested.”
