This week’s conviction of five Luton Muslim men for the public order offence of ‘using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’ during the home-coming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment last March (here) is regrettable and wrong.
Our increasingly unconfident and insecure society is, one by one, closing down the freedoms for which previous generations worked and fought and, inch by inch, reducing public space for the genuine difference and debate that’s the life-blood of democratic vitality and progress. We’ve left behind the glad confident morn of the 18th and 19th centuries when Non-Conformity flourished and many of our freedoms were formed and honed; we’ve used up the public moral capital bequeathed us by the Victorians; we’ve replaced public Christianity with a God-less public secularity (if there is such a word) – and our small-minded restrictive nanny state is the inevitable result.
Commenting on the convictions (here), the often admirable Peter Tatchell – no friend of Christianity as he defines it, of course, since he converted to Science-Is-God in his late teens – is exactly right:
“The conviction of these five men is a dangerous infringement of free speech and the right to protest.
“I abhor everything they stand for, but defend their right to freedom of expression. Even though what they said was offensive to many people, their right to speak their mind is one of the hallmarks of a democratic society.
“They want to destroy our democracy and freedoms. I want to defend these values. If we silence and criminalise their views, we are little better than them…
“Democracy is superior to their proposed theocratic state and we need to prove it by demonstrating that we allow objectionable opinions and contest them by debate, not by repression and censorship…
“I defend their right to express their opinions, even though they are offensive and distressing to many people.
“Insult and offence are not sufficient grounds in a democratic society to criminalise words and actions.
“The criminalisation of insulting, abusive or offensive speech is wrong. The only words that should be criminalised are untrue defamations and threats of violence, such as falsely branding someone as a paedophile or inciting murder…
“The best way to respond to such fanatics is expose and refute their hateful, bigoted opinions.
“Rational argument is more effective and ethical than using an authoritarian law to censor and suppress them.”
There’s more to it than this naturally, and certainly it’s right to protect people from verbal harassment in the workplace and children from verbal persecution and bullying in the playground for instance. But the main thrust of Tatchell’s argument is spot on despite the visible distress to members of the public caused by the Luton protest.
However, while rational argument and debate is central to our democracy, they’re not the only weapon in our democratic armoury. Political satire and mockery has an honourable tradition in the UK and that’s also what we need to do against such malicious effrontery. Lampooning, cartooning, buffooning, spoofing and sending-up is what these men should experience in full measure. Their ears should echo with the derision, mocking and ridicule of the Great British Public as we laugh these wacky but dangerous Islamists, their disreputable Caliphate and their misogynistic Sharia law out of mainstream media and off most public stages.
And we have another weapon of mass derision that someone somewhere has suggested: pork scratchings. Or, if they are in short supply due to the decline in the pub trade (here), bacon rashers.
The next time such men make a similarly offensive public protest, they should be showered with pork scratchings or bacon rashers – in large quantities. No one will be hurt by these soft projectiles and the only people who may object is the local Council who would have to clear up afterwards.
But on this occasion I suspect Luton Council would have been delighted to oblige.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Edmund Standing had this right:-
Peter Tatchell is dead wrong, where he writes opposing the conviction under the Public Order Act of five al-Muhajiroun Islamists who insulted British troops in Luton.
Our freedoms come with responsibilities. The proposed march by Islam4UK through Wooton Bassett was a prime example of abusing this freedom and ignoring the responsibilities that come with it.
Some folks want to destroy our freedoms by abusing them and then have the cheek to cite them in their defense.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:09 am
Stuart,
Standing writes “These are the enemies of the West, traitors against the freedoms that were won by thousands of Britons who died fighting Hitler. They are heirs to the Nazis and should be treated as such.”
But so are the BNP. Should we do the same to them?
No, our society should be big enough and confident enough to handle them without simply banning them when they offend us.
But I acknowledge that would mean us first renewing our Christian roots and thereby our collective moral backbone.
Alan
January 19th, 2010 at 11:59 am
mmm, very good point Alan.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Would you recommend the same act of derision, if the protesters were Jewish…making similarly outrageous demands?
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:15 am
Pork scratchings would be very appropriate again if that were the case.