Closing the file
Inciting violence against women is perfectly fine, says someone who claims to speak for the police.
That doesn’t sound like the police to me. It sounds like a teenager who is maybe there to sweep the floors and empty the bins. It sounds ignorant and wrong. The issue isn’t “a hate crime” so much as it is incitement to violence, in particular from a violent ex-con out on lifetime parole. “The female” is not a female, he’s a male, calling for violence against women. The issue isn’t the hate, it’s the violence. Freedom of expression has exceptions, and incitement to murder or violence is high on the list of exceptions. If whatever fool wrote that bilge is really a cop, London is in even more trouble than I thought.
Getting a bit legalistically pedantic:
The report to the police was of a “public order” offence, and the police reply mentions Section 5 of the Public Order Act (1986). The police reply is likely technically correct that, if there were no “TERF” present being threatened, then there was no offence under that act, since that offence needs to take place: “… within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”.
If there happens to have been a bystander who wants to state that they were alarmed, then that might change things.
However, there’s also the Serious Crime Act (2007). Section 45 (replacing the earlier crime of “incitement”) says:
“A person commits an offence if—
(a) he does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence; and
(b) he believes—
(i) that the offence will be committed; and
(ii) that his act will encourage or assist its commission.”
So the “punch a TERF” speaker could be guilty of that, but one would have to establish that his words were not just a rhetorical flourish and that he did believe that someone would act on his words.
So, had there been a person present with an “I’m a TERF” placard, then the language used likely would have been a criminal offence; absent such, it likely was not.
Thank you, legalistic pedantry can be useful. I saw after I posted this that it was a complaint under the Public Order Act, when I’d been assuming it was a generic incitement to violence type of complaint. Maybe there is no such thing? But there is such a thing as incitement to violence, so I hope there’s at least one law against it…
A different perspective from the ever Wonderful Dennis Noel Kavanagh. He may be on to something here.
https://twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1678078577663696896
Dennis has been on fire all day.
As usual. I am as straight as the railway line across the Nullabor, but his intellect makes me swoon.
@Ophelia:
In the UK the specific law about “incitement” was removed in 2007 and replaced by the sections 44 to 46 of the Serious Crime Act, as quoted above and in Dennis Kavanagh’s Tweet.