Sticks and Stones

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." That was something my Mother would say to me if I came home from school and complained to her that someone had said something hurtful to me. It has to be said that it's a bit glib and not much comfort to people who are on the receiving end of bullying taunts on a daily basis, and now that cyber bullying is sadly such a common phenomena, even less helpful as a response to victims, but...

I rather fear that society these days has got its proverbial knickers in a twist over the differences between free speech, personal insults and hate crimes. The right to freedom of expression that we enjoy in the United Kingdom is rightly balanced by exceptions on the grounds of  threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace, various prohibitions on the grounds of indecency, incitement to racial hatred, incitement to religious hatred, incitement to terrorism including encouragement of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist publications, glorifying terrorism,  treason,  etc, etc. So far, so sensible, but...

What we seem to rushing headlong towards is a state in which anything that is said can, if enough people so decide, turn out to be an abuse of our freedom of expression. There have been some recent examples, not all I would argue, treated consistently. Prospective Ukip Parliamentary candidate Kerry Smith made homophobic, racist and obscene comments and was promptly dropped by his party. Ukip leader Nigel Farage appeared on radio and tied himself in knots, on the one hand defending Smith's use of the term "Chinky" by saying "If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" but then telling the interviewer that he himself had never and would never use the term. Sorry, Nige, I don't believe you.

Farage, tying himslef in knots on radio.

Then we had Wigan Athletic owner using the same word for a Chinese restaurant, being forced to apologise and being banned from football for six weeks and fined £50,000 although the Football Association said it was "satisfied" Whelan "is not a racist" and did not intend to cause offence by his comments. On that basis one might ask what exactly his offense was. Whelan is of a generation that undoubtedly were casually racist, sexist and homophobic; you only have to watch the majority of British sit-coms made in the Seventies to see that. On The Buses, Mind Your Language and the execrable Love Thy Neighbour perpetuated all sorts of stereotypes and attitudes, attitudes that remain common among people of my parents' generation. Not that I am defending these attitudes or language, but it is more a case of times changing but people not, rather than anything more sinister. Attitudes and behaviours that have been ingrained over a lifetime are difficult to change; imagine if a word that is now considered benign, like socialist, or democrat, suddenly became proscribed, do you imagine that everyone would suddenly stop using it, even absent mindedly?

The Love Thy Neighbour cast

Then there is Katie Hopkins. Hopkins is a weekly columnist with The Sun and a former contestant on The Apprentice. She holds some fairly controversial and somewhat unconventional views and is wont to tweet many of them when not holding forth in the press or on television. Her recent remarks, unfortunate at best, about the Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola after working in Africa, have seen her described by Adam Hills on TV and Twitter as "a professional s***stirrer" and compared with a convicted paedophile, to which the Twitteratti responded favourably. So it is perfectly acceptable to be as offensive as you like in countering someone who you think has been offensive? So much for reasoned debate.

 

Katie Hopkins and a typical example of her Twitter output.

Now I hold no brief for Katie Hopkins, and I'd better be careful that I don't fall into the trap that other people who have started sentences like that have, and end up agreeing with her, but this last week she was also accused of a hate crime after calling someone fat.  The "victim" called the police, who chose not to attend the scene of the crime. Actually, what she said was that the person in question was unhealthy because of the weight she was carrying and  while that is a quite personal remark, one which some people might take offense at it, is it a hate crime? On balance, I don't think so, especially since the remark was made on a television programme that the "victim" was appearing on, voluntarily presumably, called My Fat Story. If our "victim" was so sensitive about their weight what in heaven's name were they doing appearing on such a show?

And as for Russell Brand...Actually I cannot abide him or his humour, but that is a matter of taste. I admit to having had a laugh when he called Nigel Farage "a pound shop Enoch Powell," recently but now he has described Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls as a “clicky-wristed snidey c***” on Channel 4's Big Fat Anniversary Quiz. The Enoch Powell remark was a relatively witty analogy and was at least directed to Farage face to face, whereas the insult aimed at Balls was spiteful, offensive and unfunny. I think it perfectly reasonable to describe it as a hate crime under the current definition, but should any action be taken? Categorically not, unless impersonating a comedian is now a crime. After all, Ed Balls is a high profile politician, so as the saying goes, if he can't take a joke he shouldn't have joined.

Russell Brand

Ed Balls

Of course hate crime (and how I dislike that expression, borrowed as it has been from Orwell and overworked to the point where it loses any real meaning), is often merely the precursor to a crime of violence against the person or of criminal damage and however we look at "hate crime", violent crime that results is a serious matter. What concerns many people is that crimes that have a "hate" element will be prioritised by the police and treated more severely by the courts than identical offences where there is no "hate" factor.

And while we are on that subject, which is more of a hate crime anyway, describing a Chinese restaurant as a "Chinky" or a fellow human being as a “clicky-wristed snidey c***”? Why does society find the latter more acceptable than the former?