RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: We do not know the identification of the officer who confronted down a gaggle of Muslim males and reminded them in Britain we’ve got a convention of free speech. But she deserves a medal

Hallelujah! All hail the female police officer who faced down a gang of Muslim men objecting to a Christian street preacher in London’s East End.

The confrontation took place in Whitechapel, close to one of the biggest mosques in Europe, with a capacity for 7,000 worshippers.

The preacher may have been foolhardy – deliberately provocative, perhaps. But he wasn’t doing anything illegal, something the policewoman pointed out in no uncertain terms.

She was filmed on social media being approached by a man in a black mask insisting: ‘This is Whitechapel. This is a Muslim area.’ Another man accuses the preacher of ‘spreading hatred’.

The officer stands her ground, informing them politely but firmly: ‘In this country we have freedom of speech, the same way you guys have your freedom of speech.

‘You guys don’t need to see eye-to-eye, and you don’t need to agree. I understand that you don’t want to hear it, so I would recommend that you just move away and don’t listen to him. He’s not in your home.’

The officer was clearly concerned for the safety of the preacher who had been surrounded by protesters, one of whom shouted: ‘You come here and tell us to worship a Jewish man. Listen, we don’t want to worship a Jewish man.’

According to the last census, 51 per cent of the population of Whitechapel is Muslim. Walk down the streets, past the multitude of women in burkas and the men in traditional Islamic garb and sandals, and you’d be forgiven for guessing it was twice that.

The East End has always been a multicultural melting pot. Huguenots, then Jews, then Turks, then immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. These days, however, it feels like a Muslim monoculture. We’ve all seen pictures of the overspill from the mosque, hundreds of men praying in the streets.

The area has been awash lately with Palestinian flags, too. Not a Union flag or Cross of St George in sight.

This is what Manchester United boss Jim Ratcliffe meant when he talked recently about parts of Britain being ‘colonised’ by migrants, a point of view roundly condemned as ‘racist’ by the usual, knee-jerk far Left suspects, from the Prime Minister downwards.

Ratcliffe’s remarks were reinforced this week by fashion designer Jeff Banks, from the BBC’s Clothes Show, who posted a video from Whitechapel, his ‘old stomping ground’.

The area had lost ‘its Londoner sense of humour’, Banks said. ‘Everything had changed. No Eastenders, no Jews, no Turks. A different country and language.’

It’s the same picture elsewhere. As I wrote in the wake of Ratcliffe’s contentious comments, no one with eyes in their head can deny that mass migration has changed the face of parts of Britain irrevocably, as illustrated by Robert Hardman’s brilliant despatch from Birmingham in the Mail a couple of weeks ago.

When I worked in Brum in the late Seventies the city was genuinely multi-cultural. Today, in areas like Sparkhill, it’s monocultural – almost overwhelmingly Muslim.

Whitechapel is replicated in parts of the Midlands and many of the old mill towns in the north of England, where elections are now fought over Gaza, rather than potholes or the cost of living.

Gorton and Denton, which goes to the polls in a by-election on Thursday, is a classic example of a constituency divided on racial and religious grounds. In the west, an effective Muslim majority. In the east, the old white working class.

Journalists who have visited the area paint a depressing picture of segregation, of women unable or unwilling to speak English, subjugated by their menfolk. In the Sunday Times, the writer Matthew Syed – himself of Pakistani heritage – called it the ‘Balkanisation’ of Britain.

Shamefully, the Green Party is hoping to Hoover up the Muslim vote in Gorton and Denton with a display of naked anti-Semitism – debating a motion condemning Zionism as racism and tacitly justifying the slaughter of Jews by Hamas. Far from encouraging integration and tolerance, the far-Left are promoting division.

All this against a growing tide of anti-Semitism, enthusiastically embraced by the Islamists’ useful idiots on the Left under the guise of supporting Palestinians.

In the past week we’ve seen the brilliant comedian Matt Lucas abused by a ‘pro-Gaza’ nutcase on the London Underground, simply because he’s Jewish. And, as Paul Bracchi reported in the Mail at the weekend, activists in Brighton going door-to-door, menacing Jewish residents under the guise of calling for a boycott of businesses linked to Israel. Yet in the latter case, the Old Bill maintain no crime has been committed.

Not that I’m suggesting all Muslims go along with all this madness. I would imagine most just want to get on with their lives in peace, like the rest of us.

But the more militant elements of Islam are accustomed to getting their own way, as witnessed by the police banning Israeli football fans from attending a match at Villa Park because it might ‘inflame’ the local community.

Politicians pander to the perceived Muslim vote. The Government is working on a de facto blasphemy law designed to protect Islam, and only Islam.

When Muslims pray in the streets they are normally given a police escort. When Christians read out loud from the Bible, or even pray silently near abortion clinics, they are liable to get their collars felt.

A new report says police are deliberately turning a blind eye to the spread of sharia courts, just as they deliberately ignore some of the vile sermons of hatred spewing from the mouths of imams in the most extreme mosques.

Figures show that less than three per cent of so-called ‘honour’ crimes – including religiously-motivated killings, female genital mutilation and forced marriage – are ever prosecuted.

A parallel system of justice has been allowed to develop behind closed doors with no intervention from the state.

The Islamification of Britain has been gathering pace for years. Those of us who have had the temerity to draw attention to it have been routinely smeared as racists. But the slurs won’t wash any more.

I’ve never had a problem with immigration, provided it is controlled. There’s enough of the old Isle of Wight pop festival hippy left in me to believe in the melting pot. But the sheer scale of immigration in recent years has tipped the scale.

We really are seeing the Balkanisation of the country. And it’s not just new arrivals refusing to integrate. As we saw on the streets of Whitechapel, young men who have almost certainly been born and brought up here consider their patch a ‘Muslim area’ and view anyone who preaches the Christian gospel as ‘spreading hatred’.

They would have been taken aback when the female police officer dared to disagree. Militant Muslims have become used to being indulged by the authorities. Certainly the police give every impression of running scared.

While the Met allows regular displays of anti-Semitism on the streets, in the shape of so-called ‘pro-Gaza’ marches, they come down like a ton of hot horse manure on anything which might cause offence to Islam.

They recently banned a march through Whitechapel by what’s left of Ukip on the grounds that it could incite a violent reaction – the same excuse used by West Midlands police to ban Israeli football fans.

We don’t know the identity of the brave young female officer who faced down a group of agitated young Muslim men and reminded them that in Britain we have a tradition of tolerance and free speech.

Nor do we know how her pusillanimous senior officers will have reacted. But, if you ask me, she deserves a medal.