Simple vandalism or race hate crime?
Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 10:53 A European election candidate has been arrested in Winchester.
According to the Daily Mail, Paul Weston, chairman of Liberty GB, was arrested "for failing to comply with their request to move on under the powers of a dispersal order made against him".
He was also "detained on suspicion of racial harassment" after quoting a passage from Winston Churchill's 1899 book The River War.
I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of Weston's arrest. Dan Hannan has a go here (Britain has just witnessed a political arrest. Where is the liberal outrage?) and I don't entirely agree with him.
Truth is, it's a bit naive to turn up with a megaphone on the steps of the local guildhall and not expect to be moved on. To describe it as a "political arrest" is stretching things, irrespective of what may or may not have been said.
The reason I mention this story is because a friend recently drew my attention to something he had written in 2012 and I've been looking for a topical peg on which to hang it. (This isn't it but I shall press on. It's a slow news day.)
What he told me was this: two cars in his street had been damaged by someone scratching the words 'frog' and 'Nazi' on, respectively, a Renault and a BMW.
The assumption among neighbours was that drink had been involved and this was an example of petty vandalism. However the Community Support Officer decided it was a race hate crime and logged it as such.
Now, I've no idea what motivated the person to vandalise those cars (it can't have been envy because who would envy the owner of a Renault Espace!) but I wouldn't jump to the conclusion it was motivated by racial hatred.
Unfortunately that's what the police seem to do these days when a better description (in this instance) might have been 'drunken, moronic prank'.
See: Race hate or plain criminality (Gary Ling)
As for Paul Weston of Liberty GB, the best place for him is Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. (Perhaps the authorities could allocate a similar space for him in Winchester.) If he gets arrested there we really do have a problem.
PS. I shouldn't have to say this but I will, in case anyone gets the wrong impression about my attitude to racial hatred, which I do not take lightly.
One of the few things I'm proud of having done is getting a fellow 'supporter' thrown out of a football ground for racially abusing an opposition player.
The player was Basile Boli, the opposition was Rangers, and it was a pre-season 'friendly'!
Reader Comments (3)
Basile Boli.. the man who headbutt Stuart Pearce, and lived. Racially abusing him isn't an act of hatred, it's a suicide attempt.
Weston got arrested after a complaint from a member of the public, Plod turned up within 3 minutes to arrest him.
Weston maybe considered by many to be unsavoury but his party and nomination papers are in order and as a candidate for the Euro elections, like any politician has the right to make his manifesto known in a public place.
What Weston's arrest exposes double standards. Muslims demonstrating in London on the 18th April as reported in Breitbart London said "Call me a terrorist, call me an extremist" and Islamists were "baying for blood." Not one word said by the police let alone an arrest.
So therefore Simon any politician or indeed a member of the public says something in public which offends someone else the police can be called and the person arrested?
First they came for the smokers....
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/19/Islamists-and-EDL-clash-outside-Regents-Park-Mosque
What really annoys me about this and the idiots writing and passing these laws is that we white British, white French and white Germans are the same damn race. It would appear that idiot politicians have granted race of man status to a nationality. Irish travellers are deemed a race of man in law, yet they are all caucasians too as in white Europeans. This is ridiculous. I think Muslims are seen as a race too, except a Muslim can be Chinese, Black African or white too. This is all utter nonsense!