Two-tier policing? Majority of banned marches were proposed by far right

The bar is said to be appropriately high, but there have been 24 marches banned by a home secretary in response to police requests in the past 30 years.

- Daniel Boffey

Two of those prohibited under section 13 of the 1986 Public Order Act had been organised by "anti-capitalist groups" and one was recorded by the Home Office as being a "religious march" planned by an unnamed group in Luton.

But of those 24 banned marches, 21 were proposed by far-right groups: the BNP, the National Front, the English Defence League and the White Nationalist party, a now-defunct neo-Nazi group.

The list, provided by the Home Office nine months after a freedom of information request, could be viewed as ammunition for those propagating the idea that Britain has a "two-tier policing" problem - the theory that police treat white, far-right protesters more harshly than others.

Claims of unjust bias have long been made against the police over their treatment of minority groups, in particular in the execution of stop and search policies. But the newest incarnation of the allegation has some far more powerful advocates.

They include the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who in August described the prime minister as "two-tier Keir" during the police crackdown on the summer rioters, and the former home secretary Suella Braverman, who was sacked after she defied No 10 to accuse the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, of applying a "double standard".

She had claimed in an article in the Times that Rowley was taking a tougher stance with rightwing demonstrations than those held in London by pro-Palestine groups.

Things came to a head on Armistice Day last year when Rowley rejected Braverman's suggestions that he ban a pro-Palestinian march in London.

Does, then, Britain have a two-tier policing problem?