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.by Brian Bamford
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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1 comment:
Article 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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