411 snitching centres across Scotland
From next month in Scotland you’ll be able to drop into a sex shop, make an anonymous accusation of hate crime against someone you dislike and potentially see your bete noir locked up. You think I’m joking – that this is an April Fool come early. I only wish it [were]. In two weeks’ time, this will be the law of the land in Scotland under the SNP’s iniquitous Hate Crime Act which makes ‘stirring up hatred’ a criminal offence punishable by 7 years in jail.
The sex shop in question is an LGBTQ-friendly establishment in Glasgow’s Merchant City. It is a ‘third-party reporting centre’ set up by Police Scotland to make it easier to accuse someone of hate crime. There will be 411 of these snitching centres across Scotland located everywhere from mushroom farms to caravan sites. Trans activists across the land will be able to accuse JK Rowling, 24/7, of being a transphobe.
I have questions. Isn’t all this accusing someone of hate crime itself “stirring up hatred”? Can’t we in turn just accuse our accuser of “stirring up hatred”? Won’t the whole thing just turn into a dense knot of people accusing each other until they run out of breath?
The trans campaigner India Willoughby has already tried to have the novelist prosecuted for misgendering him/her. After the complaint was dismissed by Northumberland Police, Willoughby’s supporters made clear they will be accusing her in Scotland. They might even succeed.
Oh? We have boatloads of examples of Willz stirring up hatred. He hardly ever does anything else.
The Scottish government’s definition of ‘stirring up hatred’ is so vague that ministers have given up trying to explain it. They just refer you to the Police Scotland website where a hate crime is defined as ‘any crime which is understood by the victim or any other person as being motivated, wholly or partly[,] by malice or ill will towards a social group’.
Well then it’s a crime we’re all convicted of the second the accusation is made. If all it needs is someone “understanding” what you say as being motivated, wholly or partly by malice or ill will towards a social group then there is no way you can defend yourself against the charge. You can’t prove that your accuser doesn’t understand it that way, and neither can anyone else. Bang: guilty as charged.
The Scottish Police Federation, an organisation not perhaps known for defending freedom of speech, has warned that the law would ‘paralyse freedom of expression for individuals and organisations by threatening prosecution for the mere expression of opinion’. The First Minister, Humza Yousaf, insisted that this was scaremongering and no one could be prosecuted for what they think. However, it is clear that what they say can and will be prosecuted if the ‘victims’ perceive what they think and say to be discriminatory.
If no one will be prosecuted for what they think, why is the law worded the way it is?
In some ways, the “best” thing that could happen here would be for the Scottish authorities to charge Rowling immediately. She would have the resources and the will to fight the charges and have the law either struck down or effectively neutered by the courts, which would be a huge benefit to all Scots who would otherwise live under the threat of such charges. The alternative is that the law just hovers out there as a threat that intimidates people into silence.
Of course, that’s easy for me to say; Rowling might not find that to be the best case scenario!
Well, well, well. This could end up being appealed to the European Human Rights Court. With some luck, they may be able to neuter the law in its entirety. It would probably take a long time, though. And the law will cause much misery in the mean time.
And before anyone mentions Brexit, that is not relevant here. The EHRC is a court of the Council of Europe, which is different from the EU. The United Kingdom is still in.
Thought you’d like to know the RBG awards to Musk etc. were cancelled: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/18/rbg-elon-musk-rupert-murdoch
I think this is unbelievably clever. The last referendum on independence saw a lot of non-voters in the rest of the UK saying they thought it would be a mistake.
Now the Scottish government has found a way to get nearly everyone else to say “just go, please, before we catch whatever you’ve got”!
They’re sort of right that people won’t be prosecuted for what they think; they will be prosecuted for what other people think they think.
You might be right bascule, alternatively at some point the general population will get peaked and toss the SNP and set back the dream of independence by decades. I just really don’t understand why this has become a hill to die on for so many political parties. The real politic of the situation just doesn’t make sense if the voting population are ever forced to confront the issues.
Thanks Lisa (@ 3), I do like to know that!
My eyebrows rose when I got to ‘understood by the victim’, knowing already that this would make the law wide open to abuse. I thought that sufficient to be a fatal flaw in a law. And then my jaw dropped – ‘or any other person’ are you fucking kidding me.
The law is grotesque and the only thing that will shake them of this stupid notion is to flood it.
God I missed that “or any other person” – so incensed by “understood by the victim” to pay attention for another four words. Yes I’ll just ask my cousin Arabella in Zimbabwe what she thinks about this incident in Dumfries, that will be useful.
FIFY
Also: Choosing a sex shop as a good place for the general citizenry to go to report criminal activity? Seems like it’s a thumb-on-the-scale venue designed to encourage motivated political attacks by “folk” with a vested interest in a particular viewpoint. It’s actually calculated to “stir up hatred” against uppity women. Women are not included as a class of people protected against actual hate crimes.
P. S., I couldn’t help reading “411 snitching centers” as “snitching center information.” In the USA, the system telephone number 411 stands for “information,” in the same way that 911 means “emergency services.” It took me a bit to realize that 411 was a literal number: they are establishing 411 separate locations for people to go, to report their neighbors for wrong think. I wonder what would happen if they set up over 400 specifically dedicated centers for women victims of violence to go to report their abusers/rapists.
Look, I know that worked for Noah, but I’d really miss Scotch if that happened here.
I may misunderstand something, but the definition says
‘any crime …’
So in order for something to be a hate crime, it has to be a crime first, doesn’t it? But if that is so, then why add additional snitching centers – if it’s a crime, go to the police, if it’s not a crime, nothing to be done?
Is this deliberately confusing?
@Screechy
My understanding, based on her tweets, is that Rowling is ready and willing. I’m sure she’s preparing as we speak.