The former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell was a Jekyll and Hyde character who employed a mixture of charm and menace, his libel trial against the Sun newspaper over the Plebgate affair heard.
Desmond Browne QC, for Toby Rowland, the police officer whom Mitchell is accused of calling a “fucking pleb” and who is suing the MP, said many officers had seen “Mr Hyde and not Mr Jekyll”.
“[Mitchell’s] capacity for menace finds its outlet in both a foul temper and foul language,” Browne said at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
In court, Mitchell, 58, admitted he had a temper and that he used foul language but denied he had used the words attributed to him. “My Lord, I did not say those words. I would never call a policeman a pleb, let alone a fucking pleb,” he said.
The court heard details of previous verbal altercations between Mitchell and police or security officers. In one, in 2005, Mitchell is accused of describing a security official as a “little shit”. In another, in 2011, he told a protection officer: “That’s a bit above your pay grade Mr Plod.”
Mitchell said he had no recollection of the verbal exchanges in detail but said it was possible he had used those words.
In his opening statement, James Price QC, for Mitchell, said the MP for Sutton Coldfield and his family had been subjected to an extended and vitriolic press campaign as a result of a “web of lies, deceit and indiscipline” by police officers.
The incident on the 19 September 2012 between Mitchell and Rowland led to the resignation of the former Tory chief whip.
Price said his client was not a snob but an outstanding cabinet minister. The words “pleb” or “learn your fucking place” were not in his vocabulary nor his character. He said it might surprise observers that, in a case between a cabinet minister and a police officer, it was the latter who would bring “considerable financial muscle”, in the form of the Police Federation, which is paying Rowland’s costs.
Price said the federation had seized on the row for its own political ends.
Before taking the stand, Mitchell sat in front of his counsel as Price told Mr Justice Mitting, who is sitting without a jury, that what the MP was alleged to have said was a “gross caricature of an attitude of mind which has been out of date for decades”.
Price said the detail of the encounter that was leaked to the Sun by a number of officers was “wholly false”.
“This web of lies, deceit and indiscipline, and by police officers, led to Mr Mitchell and his family being subjected to an extremely unpleasant, indeed vitriolic, press campaign and a good deal of hostility from the public who believed what they had read in the press. It also placed him in a position where he required considerable determination and, above all, confidence in the rightness of his position, to stand by his account of events,” he said.
On 19 September 2012, according to Rowland, Mitchell, having demanded and been denied the right to leave Downing Street on his bicycle via the main gates, lost his temper and told the officer: “Best you learn your fucking place. You don’t run this fucking government. You’re fucking plebs.”
Mitchell is suing the Sun for an article it ran two days later headed “Cabinet minister: police are plebs”, which he alleges falsely accused him of “launching a grossly offensive and arrogant attack” on police officers. The former chief whip denies demanding to be allowed to use the main gates, losing his temper or using the words attributed to him by Rowland.
Describing what happened on the night in question, Mitchell said: “As I turned my bike round, I said under my breath but audibly: ‘I thought you lot were supposed to fucking help us.’” Mitchell said that Rowland immediately told him that if he swore at him again, he would arrest him.
“I was thinking that it was extremely odd that a member of the diplomatic protection group would threaten to arrest one of the three ministers who work in Downing Street.
“I was also surprised that he said I had sworn at him when I had not,” Mitchell said. “But equally I was aware I had used bad language and you shouldn’t do that in dealings with the police.”
Mitchell told the court: “I should not have used bad language, my lord. I’ve apologised for it and the officer and I’ve apologised to the court. You should not use bad language any time to police officers and I should not have used it.”
He accepted that it was said that a chief whip had to have a mixture of charm and menace, and that he could be abrasive, but said: “I strive not to be abrasive.”
He said: “I don’t believe any of my colleagues who knew me well would have believed I would call a police officer a pleb.”
He added: “When there is a media storm of the ferocity which hit me – the extraordinary tsunami of vitriol which descended on my head over a prolonged period of time led by the Sun – it is not surprising that very few people would put their head above the barricade and defend me, although a certain number did.”
Mitchell agreed that he had a temper, but not that he was quick to lose it. He made a distinction between losing his temper, which he said would have been reliably demonstrated if he had been shouting, and having an “ill temper”, which he had on the night in question. He accepted the description used by Bob Geldof, well known for his own use of Anglo-Saxon words, as “no slouch” when it comes to swearing.
Lawyers for Rowland and the Sun told an earlier hearing there were 17 occasions relating to incidents at security gates or barriers where the Conservative MP was faced with some impediment to free movement.
Mitchell denied suggestions by Browne that the reason he was sometimes allowed though the gates by police was that it became “too much trouble, because of the way you treated them, to stop you” and that he was irritated when officers did not recognise him.
Browne asked him, one by one, about a series of incidents previous to 19 September 2012, in which he is alleged to have had verbal altercations with police or security officers.
Mitchell said he could only remember “very vaguely” an incident at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament at Black Rod’s Garden, where he is alleged to have said to a security officer: “Stop being so aggressive you little shit.”
“It was nine years ago. I can’t be absolutely sure that I didn’t say it,” he said.
He denied, however, that he had said “I’m a member of parliament. I’m too important to stop for you” during the same incident.
Mitchell said: “I’m certain that I never spoke to him in that way.”
Referring to a trip the MP took to Tunisia, when he was visiting refugees from Libya with a protection officer in April 2011, and wanted to cross over into Libya, Browne told Mitchell: “In your witness statement, you accept the possibility of your saying to him: ‘That’s above your paygrade Mr Plod.’”
Mitchell said: “I’ve no recollection of it. I believe that a lighthearted exchange could have taken place.”
“PC Plod is the Toyland constable in the Noddy stories isn’t he?” Browne said. “He is remarkable for his ineptitude.”
“I suggest that you know perfectly well how addressing an officer as PC Plod what would have been his reaction.”
“You accept a possibility that you said that to him and if you did as I suggest you did, it shows a complete insensitivity to the police providing your protection.”
Later, Browne asked him about another incident, when a trip from Kenya to Somalia was delayed and he was said to have launched into a foul-mouthed tirade and “exploded”. Browne asked: “Did you sneer at officers that had been sunning themselves by the pool for four days?”
Mitchell replied: “It is possible.”
Asked about another occasion when he is alleged to have spoken down to a police officer, he said had “no recollection” of hurrying a PC to open a gate by telling her “chop, chop”.
Mitchell said they amounted to a “handful of occasions”, in the “literally thousands of harmonious incidents” with police.
In his witness statement to the court, Mitchell said he believed that “the fact that I complained about the obstructive behaviour of some officers may have made me a marked man”. The case continues.
