What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID.
What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID. Paul had been expressing his great satisfaction that a shaven-headed lumpenprole idiot called Andrew Ryan had been sentenced to 70 days in prison for burning a copy of the Koran in public. Speaking in the manner of a Premier League football club manager, Marshall said: ‘Today’s result shows how seriously we take hate crime.’ And he added: ‘The incident was highly unusual for Cumbria in that we have such low levels of hate crime in the county.’
Really? Well, how about Derek Bird? Derek, if you remember, wandered around Cumbria shooting people in the head, leaving a total of 12 people dead. Perhaps Marshall thinks he did this out of a misplaced sense of love and affection. Or perhaps because Bird shot people in the head in an inclusive and non-discriminatory manner, rather than singling out, say, Zoroastrians or Welshmen, the crime was rather less serious than would otherwise be the case. Bird was not committing a hate crime, but was simply somewhat annoyed. Had he not shot himself in the head at the end of it all one supposes that a judge would have had to take this into account and be slightly more lenient in his sentencing. He may have shot all those people, but at least he didn’t do so for horrible reasons.
Marshall’s comments were just one of the minor pleasures to be gleaned from the Andrew Ryan case. Ryan, who apparently had a history of violence, had stolen a copy of the Koran from a public library in Carlisle and tried to set it on fire near a mosque, with the presumed purpose of annoying Muslims. Unconsciously aping the hilarious incompetence of the various al-Qa’eda operatives who record bloodcurdling and breast-beating videos and then fail to blow themselves up on planes or at airports, Ryan found himself unable to set fire to the book with his box of matches and had to abandon the operation briefly in order to buy a cigarette lighter. That, I think, is quite funny. Then there are the comments of the district judge in the case, a chap called Derek Chalk: ‘This is a case of theatrical bigotry.’ I don’t know why I find that description funny, but I do. It sounds like the sort of charge you might lay at the door of the Black and White Minstrels although it doesn’t, to me, necessarily imply illegality. Then there was the sentence: 30 days in chokey for nicking the book, 70 days for annoying the Muslims. Annoying people, infringing their sensibilities, making them feel a bit aggrieved, is these days considered a far more heinous crime than stealing something. District Judge Chalk did not quote from Bertrand Russell in summing up his case: ‘In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged.’ But then the law has for a long time now considered Lord Russell an ass, and this declaration has itself become an outrage.
But of course the main source of interest in the case of the unpleasant Mr Ryan is the contrast it provided with the case of a man called Emdadur Choudhury, a radical Muslim and member of the exciting sect ‘Muslims Against Crusaders’, who set fire to a few plastic poppies on Armistice Day in order to annoy people who had gathered to commemorate the dead of two world wars. Now, I personally am not in favour of setting things on fire in order to annoy people — there are plenty of ways to annoy people without recourse to that sort of activity. But I respect the rights of others to set things on fire in order to annoy people and do not think that it should be a criminal offence, unless you set on fire a house or a person. But if it is to be a criminal offence, then I believe there should be a level playing field for people who set things on fire to annoy other people.
And yet this does not seem to be the case. The sentence handed down to the hugely odious Mr Choudhury was a £50 fine, end of story. Even taking into account Mr Ryan’s previous convictions, the treatment meted out to these two idiots strikes me as gravely unequal. All the more so when you consider that Mr Choudhury certainly annoyed more people in Britain by setting fire to those poppies than Mr Ryan did when he tried, with variable success, to set fire to the Koran. And indeed, while setting the poppies on fire, Mr Choudhury also allegedly shouted out horrible things about British soldiers, which — if we are to have this absurd law — strikes me as an aggravating action.
But the sentences could scarcely have been more different and whatever the specifics of each case, past histories etc, you are surely forced to the conclusion that in this country, at the moment, annoying Muslims by setting something on fire is considered a far, far more serious crime than annoying anyone else by setting something on fire. This, I would argue, is a consequence of a confused and patronising attitude on the part of our courts and prosecutors. It assumes that the white non-Muslim majority are an amenable bunch and not easily inflamed by acts of, uh, theatrical bigotry which in reality actually hurt nobody, but that the Muslim minority is preternaturally sensitive and should therefore be treated differently under the law. In other words it is a racist assumption and one which stokes up resentment, however irrationally, against the Muslim minority. It is not, after all, the Muslims who are responsible for sentencing, but the likes of District Judge Chalk. Perhaps we should set his wig on fire as a protest, if he has one.
Offer ends in:
