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Welcome back. Joining me now is David Bernstein, former chairman of the Football Association
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Thank you very much indeed for joining me this morning, Mr Bernstein. What's your reaction to Craig Guildford, the former chief constable of West Midlands Police
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being allowed to retire on a full pension after orchestrating the bungled Tel Aviv-Markabee fan ban
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Good morning, Camilla. Look, I come from a generation that had a high level of confidence and trust in the police
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But fortunately, for a lot of things that have happened in many police forces in the last few years, this has been eroded to a great extent
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This Westminster Police Force, the chief constable, what have they done? They've exaggerated evidence
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They've fabricated, fabricated this in the police, evidence. They've engaged with extremists, that's quite clear
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They've provided erroneous information to Parliament, to MPs. And they even managed to contrive a match against West Ham that didn't exist
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So this is incompetence at best and dishonesty, potentially. And it is also two-tier policing
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So to tell you, along with the way of answering your question, I don't know this Craig Guildford's history generally
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He may have given 20 or 30 years of good service to the police
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And whether he should have been sacked without a pension or not
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I haven't got a strong view about it, frankly. It's very important that he went
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And I think it's probably important that the West British Police have brought into special measures as well
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I think more than all these to be done. I agree with you. It hard to make an evaluation of whether he worthy of his pension on the basis of a recent controversy without taking to account his entire career Okay but put that to a side
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What's interesting about this case is the lack of accountability for him as an individual
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You've pointed out what went wrong here. Let's just talk about the bungling first of all
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So we find out today that the minutes of a meeting with police in the Netherlands
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which suggested that Tel Aviv fans had misbehaved at a match over there
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Those minutes have been lost, and subsequently the mayor of Amsterdam said that never happened
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We then have the police relying on an AI hallucination of a match that was purported to have taken place with West Ham when it didn't
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There was no police probing at all of the AI fabrication, which raises serious questions about the investigatory abilities of Craig Guildford
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And we have the sectarian issue, which we'll come on to in just a minute
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But for those two bungles, the idea that this chief constable doesn't need to take some sort of responsibility for the failure of policing, regardless of any of the kind of religious concerns around all this, is in a way staggering, Mr Bernstein
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Absolutely. I can't argue with anything you've said. Of course it is. It's an absolute staggering. It's a complete failure in every way. And it is dishonest. I mean, incompetence is bad enough
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just honestly within the police is incredibly dangerous. So, you know, you wouldn't take much to persuade me
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that maybe he should have been sacked and sold. But, you know, I do think one needs to look at this possibly
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in a wider context of his own record and sold and so forth. And I can also say that what happened as part of this Maccabi and Tel Aviv have been demonised You think there were the Vandal or the Vikings coming over to destroy Birmingham It completely out of proportion ridiculous
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And there were many other clubs in Europe, particularly the Italian clubs with ultra supporters
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who are much more potentially dangerous than Maccabi could ever be. I think there was talk about 2,000 fans coming over at most
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I mean, that should have been policed easily, but of course that wasn't the direction of travel
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that Birmingham police wanted to go. Well, let's talk about that. I mean, is something more troubling at play here
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You and I both know that football matches are policed very carefully
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not least when there are particular sensitivities or when it's a derby
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you know, Spurs versus Arsenal and all the rest of it. You've got to be very careful to make sure that fans don't clash
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They're well used to doing that. Is the sinister nature of this
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this idea that sectarianism appears to have crept into policing in the West Midlands and influenced our outcomes
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Absolutely. Look, Camilla, in 1971, I attended the last Scottish Cup final
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at the Hampton Park before they reduced the attendances there. There were 120,000 Rangers and Celtic fans
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who detest each other at the match, but the match was played
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There was a little bit of trouble, but by and large, it was played and was policed. That was with a massive crowd in very hostile circumstances
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and also to say I thought in this country we don't give in to extremism
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and that when I was at the FA we had to police and think about
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plenty of difficult situations at Wembley Stadium but we never banned fans, that was for sure
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it was never even considered that we would ban fans the match had to go on as other things as that society do So I think there a level of intimidation and I don know unfortunate circumstances here
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And I do want to, the time we've got, just to talk about the wider issues
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because, frankly, this is just one element in a tsunami of anti-Jewish, anti-Semitism
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that is plaguing this country now, whether it's universities, whether it's schools
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whether it was in hospitals, whether we have a Jewish MP's visit to Bristol cancelled
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We have restaurants in London which are being intimidated, Jewish restaurants, and being encouraged to close down or move
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Yes. We have issues in grassroots football. What issues, just briefly, Mr Burnstein
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because, yes, we do cover anti-Semitism a lot on this show, just briefly in the time allowed, we've only got another minute
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tell me about the problems in grassroots football. I haven't got a list of examples, but there were many more incidents with Jewish players or Jewish supporters or whatever being attacked sometimes, being abused certainly
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And it's a much less pleasant environmental atmosphere than it was before
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And can I finally say that the government, in my view, talks the talk
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It speaks a lot of platitudes. But it doesn't take this issue really seriously
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And why? Because in my view, its heart is really in it. It's got too many connections with the extreme left, of course
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who are a problem here, and the extreme left linking in with extremists
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And those together is producing a very dangerous situation on our streets
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David Bernstein. At the time we'll have more time to talk about something like this, in more detail, perhaps
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Indeed. David Bernstein, though, thank you
