Top police chief says anti-racism guidance fueled two-tier policing perception

Sir Stephen Watson, who runs Greater Manchester police, sat down with reporters in Stockport and said something that cuts to the heart of a crisis now consuming British policing: the force has inadvertently created the very perception it was trying to prevent. Police departments across the country, he argued, have "adopted the language of activism" in their rush to address racism—and in doing so, they've handed ammunition to those claiming the system now favors some people over others based on skin color. Watson himself doesn't believe two-tier policing exists. He rejects the notion that officers are biased against white people. But he understands, he said, why millions of Britons now think it does.

The turning point came with Henry Nowak's murder. The circumstances of how officers treated Nowak before his death sparked riots in Southampton and gave Nigel Farage, along with figures in the Trump administration, a rallying cry: proof, they claimed, that British policing had become discriminatory in the opposite direction. Watson, who has spent nearly four decades in uniform and is being watched as a potential successor to lead the Metropolitan police, acknowledged the damage. "Particularly in the light of the tragic murder of Henry Nowak, I do understand that this idea that two-tier policing takes place is now widespread," he said. "I don't think it's justified, but I can understand where it's coming from."

The culprit, in Watson's view, is guidance issued by the National Police Chiefs' Council in 2025. That document instructed officers to "respond to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised." It explicitly rejected the idea of treating everyone identically or being "colour blind." The guidance was written with good intentions—to acknowledge that racism exists and that policing must account for it. But Watson argues it backfired. By telling officers to treat people differently based on ethnicity, the guidance created the impression that police were not, in fact, policing "without fear or favour," the foundational principle of British law enforcement. Now that guidance is under review.

Watson's critique goes deeper than one policy document. He argues that policing has "in some cases over-corrected" and that forces have been "uncritical in adopting certain elements of language." He pointed to the language of activism itself as the problem. "We've sometimes taken on board what are challenged concepts and we've written those into policy and intent—all with the best of reasons—but these issues then get held up almost as exhibit X, as the proof that we do not treat people equally." Police, he said, should not describe themselves as "anti-racist" because that language implies they have "some activist role." "Of course we're fiercely opposed to racism but we're the police," he said. "We are not activists."

Watson is no stranger to controversy over these questions. In 2021, he instructed officers not to take the knee during Black Lives Matter protests, saying it would undermine impartiality. He told reporters he would "probably kneel before the queen, God and Mrs Watson, that's it." He has since been called Britain's "anti-woke" police chief. Yet his current argument is more nuanced than that label suggests. He is not saying police should ignore racism or pretend it doesn't exist. He is saying that the way they've tried to address it has created a credibility crisis.

The policing minister, Sarah Jones, weighed in earlier this month, acknowledging that "there has been a history of racism in policing" but calling the guidance wrong. Watson's force, meanwhile, has shown measurable improvement since he took over in 2021. Greater Manchester police was in special measures at that time after a fifth of crimes went unrecorded. Since then, arrests have more than doubled, and crime figures for 2025 show theft, shoplifting, and criminal damage falling faster than the national average.

But Watson's larger warning is about the state of the country itself. He said British policing faces a bigger challenge than at any point in his career because "distrust, disorder and division" is more visible across society than it has been since the 1980s. He suggested it would not be surprising if widespread disorder erupted across England again this summer, given what he called "the temperature of contemporary events" and the way social media amplifies inflammatory rhetoric from high-profile figures. Police, he said, must "don't do anything to fuel the fire." How public figures conduct themselves, he added, is "a matter for them and their conscience." But the stakes for policing—and for public trust—have never been higher.