page_title: Plebgate
section_title: Incident and initial aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Plebgate / Incident and initial aftermath
caption_attribution_description: The gates at the entrance to Downing Street, London. Taken by Adrian Pingstone in June 2005 and released to the public domain.
context_page_description: "Plebgate" was a British political scandal which started in September 2012. The trigger was an altercation between Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, who resigned from his position as the Government Chief Whip because of the incident, and the police. Plebgate gained notoriety initially for the conduct claimed of Mitchell and again two months later when, subsequent to Mitchell's resignation, CCTV and other evidence was revealed which appeared to call into question some of the evidence against him.
  Leaked police logs, later apparently backed up by eyewitness evidence, suggested that Mitchell had sworn at police officers on duty at Downing Street and called them "plebs" when they refused to open the main gate for him as he attempted to leave with his bicycle, telling him to walk through the adjacent pedestrian gate instead. Mitchell apologised but denied using the words claimed and in particular calling police officers "plebs". However, finding his position untenable amid the media storm surrounding the incident, he resigned from office a month later.
context_section_description: On the evening of Wednesday 19 September 2012, at approximately 7:30 pm, Mitchell left the office of the Chief Whip at 9 Downing Street, the street containing the official residence of the Prime Minister (Number Ten) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Number 11) and therefore under heavy security. The whole street was gated decades ago. Mitchell, who was cycling, swore when a police officer told him to exit Downing Street through the pedestrian gate rather than by the main gate. The official police log of the incident states that Mitchell said:
  "Best you learn your fucking place. You don't run this fucking government ... You're fucking plebs."
  The log reported Mitchell as saying:
  "you haven’t heard the last of this."
  On Thursday 20 September, before the incident was publicly reported, an email was also received by John Randall, MP, the Government's Deputy Chief Whip. It appeared to offer independent corroboration of the version of events in the police log. The author stated he was a member of the public who had been present outside the gates of Downing Street at the time, with his nephew from Hong Kong; and that the incident had been witnessed by other tourists nearby. This email later proved to be quite false and in fact came from a police officer who had not been present.
  These allegations became known in the media as "Plebgate". Members of the West Midlands branch of the Police Federation of England and Wales, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and a leader column in the Daily Telegraph called on Mitchell to resign or be sacked.
  The affair has occasionally been referred to as "Plodgate" ("plod" being mildly derogatory British slang for a police officer). The Week magazine called it "Gategate", which was picked up by Business Insider, saying that this use of the -gate suffix for scandals had taken "the practice to its logical conclusion" as a "new height of absurdity".
caption: Pedestrian gate to the left, car gates at centre
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