Reform councillor arrested at Pride event after protesting concerns for children's safety

Following the incident at Winsford Pride in Cheshire in June, Ms Clare has had the charges of assault and criminal damage dropped.

The councillor declared the whole ordeal a "smear campaign" against Reform UK, due to them "doing well in the polls".

She told GB News: "I've been a councillor since 2019 and I've been campaigning within the council formally around a lot of areas of policy capture to do with the LGBTQ+ agenda.

"Pride was one of the areas I was interested in, and I'd seen some images of a drag queen on a stage with a bunch of children around him, and he was very scantily clad. And that raised the alarm bells a little bit."

She added: "So I thought, well, I'll go along, I'll just have a look and I'll just see what's going on for myself. And some of the things that I saw really concerned me.

"So I got photographs and I got video footage of those things because the stuff that's publicised around Pride events often looks nice and shiny and happy, but you don't always see some of the other stuff that's going on."

Noting the "extreme" nature of the merchandise being sold at Winsford Pride in the last few years, the councillor said: "The first Pride event that I went to was in 2023, and they had sex toys on sale around children in a child accessible area, some of which looked like children's toys - pastel colours, Unicorn shapes and things like that.

"They also had a burlesque striptease in front of children as well at that event, as well as all of the ideological stuff. So the next year at Winsford Pride they had promotion of double breast amputations to children.

"It's really quite severe, and actually some of the stuff that we've seen at Pride events, the expletives that have been used on some of the merch has been so extreme that we've been told as councillors that we can't mention those words in council meetings, because children might be watching the live stream. But on the other hand, it's fine for children to see them somehow at Pride events."

Recalling the incident which lead to her arrest, Ms Clare told GB News: "There were allegations of assault and criminal damage against me, but the officer that arrested me didn't see this, he just took somebody's word for it.

"This was after he'd seen myself and my friends incited against from the stage by the drag queen, by the drag act, who pointed me out and said that I was homophobic. We were then surrounded, three of us female friends by 40 people shouting, waving pride flags right in our faces, in front of our cameras, we were pushed and shoved, and my friend's phone was knocked out of her hand.

"Someone live streamed me and accused me of being there to photograph other people's children. But this is what they do, it's smear tactics all the way. The opposite of what I was accused of is what actually happened."

Noting the impact the arrest has had on her job and personal life, Ms Clare revealed: "I'm a Reform councillor, Reform are likely to be the next Government, and because of that, because we're doing so well in the polls, we are always vulnerable to smear campaigns from within the mainstream media and obviously other political parties.

"And I didn't know how long this was going to drag on for, and I know the power of a smear campaign, so I didn't want to impose that onto my employer, which was Sarah Pochin at the time. So I willingly resigned my post, but Reform retained the whip and have provided me with a lot of support behind the scenes and are delighted with the outcome, with the fact that the charges have been dropped."

Criticising how the ordeal was handled, the Reform councillor told GB News: "As a counsellor, it shouldn't be the case that I can't go along to a Pride event to check that it's safe for children.

"But because my views are known, because I've complained about some of the things that are happening, I actually thought twice about whether to go to this, because I've been threatened at the event the year before."

She concluded: "It's about your safety, whether as a counsellor you can actually carry out your role properly. They're asking you for funding towards these events, so you've got a perfect right when they've admitted that they've judged it wrongly previously and they've put new policies in place to go and check what's happening.

"But I felt at the time that this happened, I didn't know if I would ever work again because the smear headlines and the amount of defamatory false information online, it's there forever."

A spokesman for Cheshire Police said: "The Crown Prosecution Service has a duty to keep all cases under continuing review and following a further review, they concluded there was no longer sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.

"They have determined that the legal test for prosecution is no longer met and have discontinued the case. Ms Clare has been informed of the decision and the charges against her have been dropped."