A retired Brighton-based journalist has been summoned to appear in court after drawing attention to an obscene Twitter/X message posted by the account of former Labour MP Ivor Caplin.
Greg Hadfield is a former head of digital development at the Telegraph and founder of weekly newspaper the Brighton and Hove Independent, which was sold to Johnston Press in 2015.
He said he has been concerned for some time about the output on X of the Ivor Caplin account and he has also questioned why he has been targeted for police action when hundreds of other accounts share similar output. Hadfield is a former Labour Party member who was expelled from the party in 2021 for reasons connected with his support for ex-party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Hadfield was visited at home by police officers in September 2024 and asked about his output on X. He was then interviewed under caution at a local police station.
He was offered the chance to accept a caution for an offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 of “sending by public communication network offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message/matter”, which he declined. Hadfield has now received a summons to appear at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on 13 February.
The potential charge apparently relates to a message posted by Hadfield on X on 25 June 2024 which contained a screengrab of an explicit pornographic image shared by the Ivor Caplin X account.
Hadfield said in his message that he was sure a named Labour Party colleague of Caplin “has known about @ivorcaplin’s ‘likes’ – and likes – for a very long time. Why didn’t she say something?”
Depending on an X user’s account settings, they would have seen an obscured version of the screengrab with an adult content warning requiring them to then open the image if they wanted to see it.
A heavily redacted image of the Twitter post from Hadfield, as seen by a user if they chose to open it, is shared below.
Hadfield said he was concerned that accepting the caution would lead to unfair stigma being attached to him.
In a piece about the affair written on his own blog Hadfield said: “You know the sort of headline that results: Award-winning journalist charged [with] online gay porn.”
Kaplin, 66, was Labour MP for Hove between 1997 and 2004, defence minister under Tony Blair and most recently (in November 2021) was elected to the Labour Party’s Southeast Regional Board which had influence over the selection of prospective parliamentary candidates.
Caplin is also a parliamentary pass holder and a consultant/lobbyist.
The Ivor Caplin account on X has now been removed but up until this month it has been sharing, liking and interacting with posts showing explicit pornography – including pictures and videos of naked young people having sex.
Hadfield said the post over which he faces a charge was “a very modest example of the hundreds he [Caplin] has liked/posted/replied to over the last 20 months and which have been seen every day by his 3,342 followers”.
Hadfield said: “I am a whistleblower who now faces a court hearing for a single tweet made in a long-running attempt to highlight how many senior Labour Party figures must have known what Caplin was doing – even as he was appointed to Labour’s Southeast Regional Board to approve or disapprove election candidates across not only Brighton and Hove, but also the whole of the region.” Hadfield noted that many senior Labour Party figures (including current MPs and ministers) followed the Ivor Caplin X account.
A spokesperson for Sussex Police said: “Sussex Police can confirm that Greg Hadfield, 68, of Surrenden Road, Brighton, has received a postal requisition to attend Brighton Magistrates’ Court on February 13.
“He faces a charge of sending by a public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message or matter, contrary to the Communications Act 2003.”
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