The Acceptable Face Of Prejudice by Les May

WHEN Davina McCall tweeted: 'Female abduction / murder is extremely rare. Yes we should all be vigilant when out alone. But this level of fear-mongering isn’t healthy. And men’s mental health is an issue as well. Calling all men out as dangerous is bad for our sons, brothers, partners.' she found herself being attacked by people eager to prove the equivalent of ‘black is white’.

As I pointed out a few days ago in the past eleven years an average 28% of killings of women were by someone not known to them compared with 51% of killings of men. In the same period on average more than twice as many men were murdered each year than women, 408 men and 189 women.

When I read that some of the responses referred to ‘an epidemic of violence against women’ I thought that either the definition of violence had been subtly changed whilst I wasn’t looking or the people who were making them were talking about something other than the seemingly random killing of a young woman which had prompted McCall’s original tweet.

What is not in question is that over the same 11 year period where the killer was known to a male victim in 6% of cases the killer was a partner or ex-partner, but where the victim was a woman the killer was a partner or ex-partner in 60% of cases. In spite of their marked asymmetry what these figures demonstrate is that violence leading to death is not exclusively the preserve of men. Some women are violent too and no amount of excuses designed to exonerate them will change that.

A common assumption is that domestic abuse is also something which is exclusively carried out be men. But the term itself embraces all forms of abuse within a domestic situation irrespective of the relationship between perpetrator and victim. A more useful approach is to examine ‘partner abuse’ which occurs within/between married or cohabiting couples.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that for the 12 months ending March this year 4% of people aged 16 to 74 were victims of partner abuse, e.g. non-physical, threats, force, sexual and stalking, on one or more occasions. A frequent complaint by women eager to over egg the pudding is that there is under reporting to the police of such incidents.

Not subject to this complaint as they were collected from a random sample of adults by means of a questionnaire, are data taken from the Home Office Statistical Bulletin published in 2012. This does not report sexual abuse and stalking by partners separately from the domestic context, however it does report non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners and it shows that 5% of women and 3% of men reported one or more such incidents in the previous year. It also reported that 24% of women and 12% of men claimed to have experienced at least one incident of non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners at some time in their lives between the ages of 16 and 59. What is clear is that women as well as men abuse their partners; only the extent of abuse differs. Vague talk about ‘changing the culture’ or demanding that misogyny be made a hate crime whilst always insisting that men are the problem and women are the victims, will not change things. It is no more than the socially acceptable face of prejudice. Similar levels of prejudice on the basis of skin colour would result in howls of protest. If we are shocked that 1 in 20 women experience abuse by a partner in any one year, we ought to be equally shocked that 1 in 33 men experience the same. If we are shocked that an average of 52 women a year die in random attacks we should be equally shocked to discover that for men the figure is four time higher at 209.

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Making The Streets Safe For Men by Les May

DONALD Trump introduced us to the world of ‘alternative facts’ or to give them their proper name ‘deliberate lies’. It worked and now a significant proportion of US voters continue to believe he is the legitimate president. But as we are seeing at the moment with the insistence of some Tory apologists that the ‘Test, Track, Trace’ scheme was wondrously good value for money, some people are willing to repeat the same thing over and over again on the assumption that people will start to believe that it is true.

Sometimes it’s not the result of politicians trying to persuade us that results in a public perception that something is true when it isn’t. What we read in the print media or see on TV is the result of selection by journalists of what they think is important enough to make a good story. A murder which figures prominently on our front pages or news headline, especially the murder of an attractive young woman, can by constant repetition, be made to give a distorted picture of reality unless one is careful to look at the data.

According to the Office of National Statistics:

In the 1960s, the proportion of homicide victims was fairly evenly split between males and females. Since then trends in homicide have generally been driven by changes in the number of male rather than female victims. Over the longer term, the number of female victims has tended to fluctuate between 200 and

250 a year from the 1960s. In contrast, the number of male victims increased…

In recent years the number of male victims has fluctuated from an average of 550 between 2001 and 2005, to 323 in 2015, the lowest number for a quarter of a century. Even in that year male victims still made up about two thirds of the total number.

Since 2000 some 40% of all murder victims have been in the age range 16 to 34. Young men made up 80% of victims between the ages of 16 and 24, and 72% between 25 and 34.

In the year ending March 2019, 14% of victims were Black and almost half of these were in the age range 16 to 24. White murder victims made up 71% of the total, 6% were Asian (Indian subcontinent), 4% ‘other’.

The claim sometimes made that our streets are particularly unsafe for women is not supported by the available data. Over the most recent eleven year period 51% of killings of men were by someone not previously known to them compared with 28% of women victims.

Contemplating figures like this is not a pleasant occupation, but it should warn us about the futility of a‘ knee jerk’ reaction to a single well publicised death. A more mature response might be to recognise that directing our efforts towards young men, perhaps especially young Black men, between the ages of 16 and 34 might pay the greatest dividend.

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Freedom of Expression & the High Court Decision

from Steve Starlord

A CLASH between the Right to Freedom of Expression in relation to Harry Miller's alleged transphobic tweets recorded by the police as a 'non-crime Hate Speech'.

Police officer’s ‘transphobic’ tweets were lawful, high court rules in landmark case (14 February 2020)

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/14/harry-miller-police-officer-transphobic-tweets-lawful-high-court-trans-media-watch/

Police officer’s ‘transphobic’ tweets were lawful, high court rules in l... Harry Miller, an ex-police officer accused of 'transphobic' tweets, has won a partial victory after a High Court... "Police officer’s ‘transphobic’ tweets were lawful, high court rules in landmark case" Not yet spotted anything else online about this apart from this article on Pink News. I've just seen it announced on BBCNews24 on TV. I mentioned this website the other day when we were chatting in IKEA. Police transgender rules breach right to free speech, court told (20 November 2019) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/20/police-transgender-rules-breach-right-to-free-speech-court-told Police transgender rules breach right to free speech, court told Owen Bowcott Ex-officer Harry Miller taking legal action after being accused of hate incident "Police transgender rules breach right to free speech, court told Ex-officer Harry Miller taking legal action after being accused of hate incident" ********************************************

When is a Hate Crime not a Hate Crime?

by Les May

Last Wednesday 23 October my local paper, the Rochdale Observer, carried a report of an incident in which a tree surgeon had his hand chopped off with an axe in an attack carried out by an armed gang of up to 20 men some of whom were carrying knives, machetes, knuckledusters and a claw hammer.

Further details of the attack, the attackers and the sentences received can be found at:

https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2019/october/Four-men-have-been-jailed-for-their-part-in-a-brutal-gang-attack-which-left-a-man-with-life-changing-injuries-after-being-hit-with-an-axe-in-Rochdale/

 'Black & White Bastards'?

Before the attack, which took place in the Newbold area of Rochdale, the four tree surgeons had been called ‘white bastards’ who were ‘in his country’ by one of the attackers. (This is taken from The Observer article and I assume that the ‘country’ referred to is the Newbold area of Rochdale.

What the Rochdale Observer did not make clear is that this attack was a ‘hate crime’.  We seem to have become so used to hearing these words to describe what in many cases are little more than hurt feelings being reported to the police, that we have lost track of what the term actually means.  What the term means is that a crime, in this case a violent and brutal attack with an axe, had coupled with it an aggravating factor involving one of several ‘protected categories’, of which a person’s race is one. We are not talking about references to ‘pillar boxes’ here, we are talking about a young man being subjected to an attack which left him with injuries which will affect him for the rest of his life.

See: https://www.cps.gov.uk/hate-crime

I do not believe it to be improper to suggest that had the attack been preceded by the words 'black bastards' it would have been reported as a 'hate crime'. 

Counter Productive Coyness!

If the intention of the wording of The Rochdale Observer report was to ensure continued harmony between the different communities in Rochdale then I suggest that it was counter-productive and was a potentially dangerous path to take, because it lays The Observer open to the charge that it treats reports of violent crimes differently based upon the colour of the victim's skin.

It would seem appropriate for all Rochdale councillors, and perhaps especially those who may feel they have some affinity with the perpetrators, to take the opportunity to utterly condemn this attack and the thinking behind it, both criminal and racially motivated.   By speaking for the people of Rochdale in this way it will deter those who try to exploit incidents like this for their own racially inspired motivation from claiming that it is they who speak for us.

Already we are beginning to see references being made to this attack on websites which contain material derogatory to people who would self identify as being of a different race.  Being coy about condemning racially motivated hate crimes when they are perpetrated by people who would not identify as ‘white’, only gives the conspiracy theorists ammunition.

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An Open Letter to Rochdale Councillors

Dear Councillor,

I am writing to you not as a representative of a political party, or of a particular ward, or because you happen to have been born with skin of a particular colour, but as someone who was elected to represent the people of Rochdale.

Two weeks ago the Rochdale Observer reported that a thug who had been ‘disrespected’ in ‘his country’ organised a gang of about twenty males who were armed with weapons such as knuckledusters, claw hammers and an axe to attack four men working as tree surgeons.  One of the men had his hand hacked off in the attack.  Before the attack the four men had been called ‘white bastards’.

Since at least the late 1980s Rochdale Council has operated an ‘anti-racism’ policy in its schools, has fair employment practices to combat discrimination and has a public stance which gives voice to these.   Why then has there been no words of condemnation of this horrific attack and the term used by the attackers?

It suggests to voters that our councillors are among the few people in Rochdale who do not believe that if a gang of twenty white men had attacked four men of asian origin and had preceded the attack with the term ‘black bastards’, it would have been roundly condemned by all our councillors and received massive publicity both in our local Rochdale Observer and in the national press.

If the complete silence from councillors and the Council as a body, and the evident reluctance of the local press to give adequate prominence to the underlying nature of the attack, is an attempt to promote community harmony it is the most ‘cackhanded’ move I can imagine, because its effect will be to do precisely the opposite.  Silence may seem an effective strategy in the short term, but what will your response be the next time our town has a group marching through it whose raison d’être is the promotion of disharmony between communities?

What is remarkable is that this attack has been condemned and aroused more interest in the surrounding towns of east Lancashire, than it has in the town in which it happened.

In the name of common decency I call upon all councillors, both individually and collectively, to condemn this attack and the language which preceded it, by bringing a motion to this effect before the full Council at its next meeting.

Les May

Rochdale

Letter to the Ed. from a Rochdale resident

 Editor:  This morning NV received the e-mail below

from a local lady.  Because the correspondent is clearly 

afraid, we have decided to withhold her name.

Good morning Brian,

Thank you for sending this [the post: 'When is a Hate Crime not a Hate Crime?'], I've read the article and the Blogspot and I'm still shocked that this hasn't been reported as a hate crime, because it most certainly is!

https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2019/october/Four-men-have-been-jailed-for-their-part-in-a-brutal-gang-attack-which-left-a-man-with-life-changing-injuries-after-being-hit-with-an-axe-in-Rochdale/

As the article states, if it had been reversed then it most surely would have been. I'm so fed up with everyone being scared of saying the wrong thing! Why is it in the interests of the community to lessen the impact of the story when it's Asian against white, but fully reported as a hate crime if it's the other way around? 

The problem is, we're not told 'everything' we're protected from knowing the truth about our areas/places we live in, because of fears there will be repercussions, but there has to be fairness in what's reported. 

When the grooming gangs were sentenced, all those years ago, I saw a group of men and women with placards gathered around the takeaway shop in Heywood. They weren't causing disruption, but the placards said things like "rapists get out" and "not in our town". There was a high police presence and as soon as new people arrived they were dispersed/sent home quickly. All of which I saw as I completed the short drive through the town centre. The thing is, I wasn't aware of why they were there, I looked for a news story but there wasn't one. Of course, the story did eventually break nationwide but it was a good while after.

Maybe 'they' think we couldn't handle knowing the truth? maybe it would start unrest? but this has to stop!  The speed at which the first man gathered up so many people to help him is scary.  The fact that they have weapons to hand, they can just 'grab and go', is incredibly frightening and as I said to you last night, would now make me think twice about helping someone I thought might be in need 

Bit by bit these sorts of incidents are breaking down the local and general community spirit and at a base level the normal feelings of empathy you have for a fellow human being.

Anyway, enjoy your Sunday.

Thanks,

Name redacted 

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Humbug from a Guardian Columnist

by Les May

TWO days ago The Guardian columnist Yomi Adegoke wrote:

‘The silence surrounding the Duchess of Sussex’s treatment by the press has become a roar. This treatment can be described as only one thing: racist.  Not saying so explicitly is part of a growing trend – the word “racist” is now dodged with more fervour than racial slurs themselves.’

You can find the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/the-treatment-of-meghan-is-racist-we-should-feel-able-to-say-so

Now this was published in a newspaper which did not even bother to mention that a Rochdale man who felt he had been ‘disrespected’ in his ‘country’ by workmen, first called them ‘white bastards’ then got together a gang of about twenty, who first tracked the men to where they were working, then attacked them resulting in one of them having his hand chopped off with an axe. But it raises the question about whether the Rochdale Observer and all the people who are remaining studiously silent, so dodging having to mention the words ‘racist’ and ‘hate crime’, are themselves behaving in a racist manner. Or do four workmen count for less than a Duchess?

When someone who might reasonably be seen as something of a ‘community leader’ was approached with a view to obtaining some background information on the gang, the response was in effect ‘are you blaming all Pakistanis?’ To which the answer is ‘No! But it might be nice if you were to give some sort of lead in condemning this sort of behaviour.’ And while he’s about it he might like to use his influence to get this attack debated and condemned at the next full meeting of Rochdale Council.

I’m not going to ‘call out’ the individual involved as I have no wish to pillory him for what is in my opinion an error of judgement, but he might like to reflect on the fact that at the next election he will be soliciting the votes from everyone in his ward irrespective of the colour of their skin and religious affiliation. Now might be a good time to show he serves them all.

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'Where There’s Muck There’s Brass’

by Les May

THE Financial Times (FT) recently carried an editorial about Facebook which included the following;

‘The platform does not intentionally cause harm to users.  Too often, however, Facebook’s business model allows harm to occur.  The biggest problem is Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge that to a large degree it is a publisher, not just a digital town square.’

The editors of Northern Voices (NV) carry out their job under the guiding principle that freedom of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.  But that does not mean that there is any obligation upon them to publish anything and everything that is sent to them.  As editors, they are treated by the law as the publishers of NV if, for example, someone claims they have been defamed or, an article is considered to incite violence or racial hatred. In other words if an article causes harm the actions of the editor are considered intentional.

As the FT article points out these strictures do not apply to Facebook because it claims NOT to be a publisher. In other words blogs like NV are expected to maintain higher standards in policing, and I use the word deliberately, their content for hate promoting or defamatory material, than Facebook.  Indeed Facebook benefits enormously when such material is posted on the platform because it leads to a backlash from people who disagree.  The more extreme the material, the greater the backlash, the more revenue it generates for Facebook.

The eagerness with which some people resort to calling something ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate crime’ whenever something is said or done which they do not like, only serves to obscure the real problem which is that some Facebook groups use the platform to incite hatred of, and violence toward, other ethnic groups. This played a part in the events in Myanmar where Rohingya and other muslims were targeted and the violence at Charlottesville.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

There’s an expectation that Facebook will act against the white-supremacist and neo-nazi groups which orchestrated the violence at Charlottesville. (In this case I think the use of the word ‘nazi’ is justified.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/charlottesville-white-supremacists-big-tech-failure-remove

And who could object if they did take down these posts when and wherever they occurred?  The people posting this stuff are well beyond the pale.  A war was fought to rid the world of ideologies like these.

But wait a minute.  As I have written previously the bar for what constitutes hate speech or a hate crime is constantly being lowered.  Do we really trust a private company to decide what is acceptable?  Do we really trust any government to do it? Here’s why I don’t.

The people who run Twitter have published policies about what constitutes hateful conduct here.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy

Scroll down a bit and you’ll find the line, ‘This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.’

In other words if you genuinely believe that someone with a full set of wedding tackle does not qualify to be considered a woman, just because he says he is, you’ll be contravening Twitter’s policies unless you refer to him as ‘she’.

Recently a panel of five judges sitting as the Supreme Court gave a ruling which reinforces our right to free speech and ensures that we cannot be forced to express views that we disagree with.  This was a case in which a Christian couple declined to supply a cake decorated with the words ‘Support Gay Marriage’.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/let-them-eat-cake.html

Twitter disagrees; if you want to use the platform the price you may have to pay is being forced to express a view you disagree with.  Canadian freelance journalist, Meghan Murphy, has been permanently banned for allegedly ‘deadnaming’ a trans person.  When discussing a story of a trans woman who was taking a bunch of beauticians to court for refusing to wax his balls, she used the phrase ‘yeah it’s him’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/11/28/meghan-murphy-and-the-silencing-of-women/

Following the ‘gay wedding cake’ ruling the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:

‘Freedom of expression – including the right not to express a view – and freedom of belief are rightfully protected in a democratic society and this case demonstrates the need for a more nuanced debate about how we balance competing rights’.

A nuanced debate would lead to something between Twitter’s insistence on telling people what they must think if they want to use the platform and Facebook’s ‘we’re not a publisher’.   I doubt there will be one.

I have no axe to grind on this because I use neither Facebook nor Twitter.  And I don’t think I’m missing much!

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Another Visit To Hate Speech

by Les May

IN his inaugural address on 4 March 1869 US President Ulysses S. Grant said:

‘I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution’.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant%27s_First_Inaugural_Address

I have written two earlier pieces in which I questioned the eagerness with which some people want to want to bring about a situation where others who say or do something they do not like can be prosecuted for ‘hate crime’.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/say-no-to-hate-crime.html

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/say-no-to-hate-crime-revisited.html

Just how ludicrous this can get is best illustrated by a case reported in the Sunday Post last weekend.

‘Police launched an investigation after a man claimed he was the victim of hate crime when a branch of the Post Office refused to accept his Scottish bank note. … An officer was asked to investigate the claim and it was recorded for official purposes as hate crime.’

Unfortunately in a burst of common sense the police decided not to bring a case against the Post Office, so we will never know if Grant’s dictum is correct. 

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Who should be charged over Grenfell?

by Andrew Wastling .

ARTICLE [Public Order & Bad Taste]  raises valid points about freedom of the individual.  The burning of any effigy of another human being could be considered incitement to hate - or alternatively as a collective way of channel anger into a less destructive avenue than real violence.  I have no qualms whatsoever ,for instance , when people in mining communities burnt the effigy of Margaret Thatcher on celebratory bonfires when she died and sang ' ding dong the witches dead' in a perfectly understandable communal response to the damage Her government dealt out to the mining communities.

On the other hand I'd be much more concerned by people burning books on bonfires, conjuring up as the image does obvious Nazi imagery and symbolism.

The swiftness of the State in this incident surely exposes the sheer hypocrisy & double standards of the authorities in choosing when and when not to act as suits their own agenda when we compare the relative speed in which the lowlifes who burnt an effigy of Grenfell were arrested, when compared to the rather posher lowlifes who burnt the real Grenfell.

When will they be arrested on charges of possible corporate manslaughter I wonder?

I know which many people will regard as the greater 'hate crime'; towards people, and which is the more deserving of police action and prosecution for criminality.

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Public Order & Bad Taste

Could Local Bonfires Become a Hate Crime? 
by Brian Bamford

POLICE are now considering charging six men with a public order offence following a video being posted of the burning of a model of Grenville Towers on a bonfire.

The Metropolitan Police said the men - two aged 49 and the others aged 19, 46 and 55 - handed themselves in at a south London station on Monday night.

A righteous tone was set by the Prime Minister Theresa May, who has called the video 'utterly unacceptable'.

Footage shows a large model bearing a Grenfell Tower sign, complete with paper figures at the windows, being set on fire.

Laughter can be heard off camera as the effigy is set alight, with onlookers shouting 'Help me! Help me!' and 'Jump out the window!'.

The men have been arrested under section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986, which covers intentional 'harassment, alarm or distress" caused via the use of 'threatening, abusive or insulting' words or signs.

Under this law offences committed on a private residence where a person 'had no reason to believe' it would be 'heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling' are protected from prosecution under the act.

On the face of it most anarchists ought to find these arrests disturbing and the reports yesterday of the police searching a property in South Norwood, south London, suggests a fishing expedition by the police and this not good news for those of us who believe in freedom in private life.  No decent person would surely want an East German regime such as was shown in the film 'The Lives of Others'.

If what happened in the garden at South Norwood was just a joke that was simply offensive and in bad taste, it would not seem to be sufficient for a prosecution.

There is also a historical dimension to this traditional event even if we accept that what happened was in bad taste.  It is worth  remembering that the burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes could itself be technically classed as a 'hate crime'.  Guy Fawkes was a catholic convert, and I understand that this is not practised in the Republic of Ireland; meanwhile a bonfire night held in Northern Ireland in July has many similarities to Guy Fawkes Night in that a vitriolic anti-Catholicism is celebrated and that the pope may be burned in effigy (alongside politicians like Gerry Adams).

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Say No To Hate Crime Revisited

by Les May

A couple of days ago it was mooted that misandry, defined as ‘hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men’, should be regarded as a ‘hate crime’.  A letter in the ‘i’ newspaper (18/10/18) shows why this is not a good idea. The author wrote:

‘If misogyny becomes a hate crime then misandry should too.   If you have one you should have the other.   Misandry is widespread and commonplace in society and men’s issues – which are serious and pressing, even life threatening – are generally overlooked.  They are certainly not given the sort of attention that women’s issues typically receive.  If the law is changed to make misandry a hate crime then perhaps men’s issues will move towards the centre ground, enter public discourse, and be given the attention they deserve.’

Contempt for men is a staple fare for many female columnists, particularly in the print media, along with bias and downright lies.  Criminalising it will not suddenly bring issues affecting men to the fore.

The reason for men being treated in this way is simply that too few of the men in the media, who could use their position to challenge it, have the balls to take on the women who write this stuff.  They’re afraid that if they do the ‘sisterhood’ will turn its ire on them.  Much better to buy into the idea that women are an oppressed group, by calling yourself a feminist.

When men organise to draw attention to things that affect them deeply the likelihood that they will get any positive publicity is slender. Have you even heard of the group ‘Families Need Fathers’?  Take a look at the recent press release from the group at https://fnf.org.uk/ .  Did you read about it in the press or see it on BBC TV? I think not.

There are plenty of men in the media who could change this, but who don’t.  The same goes for MPs.   The number of men who have lost contact with one or more of their children as a result of intransigence by an ex-partner is in the hundreds of thousands.  No one speaks for them.

If you are inclined to be sceptical about my comments about bias by female columnists how about this?

‘The concept of misandry is dangerously vague in comparison to the reality of misogyny.  I predict that if misandry is taken forward as a hate crime, it will be used to curb discussions of male violence and female oppression’, and ‘It’s already too easy for men to cry foul every time a woman says or does anything they don’t like.’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/misandry-hate-crime-abusive-men-law

Whilst labelling misogyny as a hate crime was the only game in town our brave women columnists were all for it.   Now that there’s a possibility that they might find themselves on the receiving end of an accusation of hate crime on the grounds of misandry there’s what is called in the feminist lexicon ‘a backlash’.

If they succeed in killing off the whole idea they will be doing everyone a favour. The police have enough to do without being given the job of investigating what Orwell in his book 1984 called ‘thought crime’. 

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Say 'No' To Hate Crime

by Les May

ELLA Whelan, author of the book ‘What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism’, has described the campaign by MP Stella Creasy to have misogyny classified as a hate crime as, ‘a top-down act of virtue-signalling by a handful of MPs and feminists, and an affront to freedom’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/09/06/stella-creasys-war-on-thoughtcrime/

It’s top down because as she points out women are not marching in the streets for the criminalisation of misogyny.  It’s an affront to freedom because it seeks to punish individuals for what they think, not what they do, i.e. thought crime.

Now whilst I share Ella Whelan’s view on this there is I think a more practical objection.   If you think you’ve witnessed a hate crime, who you gonna call? Certainly not ‘The Ghost Busters’!  It’s the police of course.

The problem is that the police may not understand what constitutes a hate crime and what constitutes free speech.

A week ago it was reported that in Bath city centre a Christian street preacher by the name of Dale McAlpine was threatened with arrest and forced to leave the area.  Police issued a dispersal notice to a group of preachers and ordered them to leave the city centre.   It seems that one of the officers involved claimed they were committing a ‘hate crime’.

The outcome? Avon and Somerset police have contacted all police staff in Bath ‘to ensure they understand the importance of freedom of expression’.

https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Police-apologise-to-Bath-street-preacher-threatened-with-arrest

It isn’t the first time that McAlpine has been in trouble for expressing unpopular views.   In 2010 was arrested after he told a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) that as a Christian he believed homosexuality was a sin.   As the term ‘hate crime’ was not fashionable then, the PCSO contented himself with having McAlpine arrested for making ‘homophobic remarks’.

The outcome? The charges were dropped and police in Cumbria agreed to pay him £7,000 in compensation as well as his legal costs.  McAlpine responded ‘I hope the police will in future do their duty defending freedom of speech.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339843/Homosexuality-sin-street-preacher-wins-7k-police.html

I may not have any sympathy with McAlpine’s beliefs, but I’m glad that he’s there.  It’s people like him that remind us that freedom of expression applies to people you disagree with as well as those whose views coincide with yours.  The alternative is the echo chamber of social media where you need only listen to views that coincide with your own.

My motivation in writing this is primarily my concern that the eagerness of some people on hearing something they do not like to resort to words like, racist, anti-semitic, islamo-phobic, misogynistic, trans-phobic, homo-phobic, patriarchal or hate speech, prevents reasoned discussion and, if we self censor to avoid being so labelled, effectively denies us freedom of expression.   (It is not without interest that the PCSO who had McAlpine arrested is himself a homosexual.)  But in Stella Creasy’s case there is something else.

Creasy is credited with having championed payday loan fee caps and more recently has urged a crackdown on high cost credit cards. I admire this and say more power to her elbow. I just wish she would not waste her time trying to solve a non-existent problem. Perhaps she is not immune to vanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/27/stella-creasy-to-call-for-crackdown-on-high-cost-credit-cards