Murdered Police Hero is Honoured at Last

Manchester BNP has welcomed the posthumous award of a Queen’s Gallantry Medal to Detective Constable Stephen Oake, six years after he became the first British police officer to be murdered by al-Qaeda.

DC Stephen Oake, 40, was stabbed to death at a house in Crumpsall, north Manchester in January 2003 as he tried to prevent the escape of Muslim terrorist Kamel Bourgass. Bourgass, an Algerian asylum seeker and al-Qaeda operative, was sentenced to life in prison in June 2004 for the murder of DC Oake and the attempted murder of three other police officers.

Following DC Oake’s murder, a campaign by his fellow officers to secure the award of a posthumous George Cross attracted thousands of public signatures and won formal backing from Greater Manchester Police. However, the campaign was
shockingly snubbed by a Home Office committee which perversely concluded that there was nothing extraordinary about Stephen Oake’s conduct on that day. Many of DC Oake’s former colleagues suspected that the Home Office’s denial of a George Cross was motivated more by Labour’s desire to ensure that DC Oake’s murder was quickly forgotten, rather than by any doubts about DC Oake’s status as a genuine hero.

This prolonged injustice has now been partly remedied by the belated award of the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, which recognises gallantry of an exceptional order undertaken in the prevention of crime, or during the arrest of dangerous criminals.

The British National Party has justifiably been highly critical of politically-correct senior police officers, including the benighted leadership of Greater Manchester Police. In stark contrast to some of his unworthy ’superiors’, DC Oake represented the finest traditions of British policing. He was a committed Christian and a devoted public servant, a brave officer of whom the whole city of Manchester can be proud. So in addition to his posthumous gallantry medal, DC Oake deserves a permanent memorial. If roads are to be named in honour of local heroes, as a recent local government report recommended, then surely Manchester ought to have a Stephen Oake Street?

BNP NEWS TEAM