Brian Monteith: Hate crimes fit Orwell's vision

Sometimes there is a political issue that deserves attention but does not have enough head of steam for it to gain traction with the media or the public consciousness. One such issue is hate crime.

Like that bus that never comes along and then there's a wait of them, hate crime finally burst into full view in the past week on three occasions.

The first was an article in last Friday's Spectator by Melanie Phillips that is required reading by anyone who cares about the way our bullying state is travelling - and how in true Orwellian fashion British society is becoming less tolerant while our masters tell us they are acting in the name of tolerance and understanding.

As Melanie Phillips argued, the British political elite would like our country to have an international reputation for being liberal and caring - but the tolerance for minorities does not include citizens that disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy or challenge such views.

Melanie Phillips is an influential writer in the metropolis and her words will be taken seriously. Her timing could not be better for with a new government and, from this week a new opposition, there is an opportunity to convince those that govern us to change their ways.

By itself Melanie Phillips's rumination would not have been enough for me to write about the subject, but then another bus turned up, and then another.

On Wednesday a story emerged of how a new set of guidelines were going to help our police give more emphasis to so-called hate crimes, to the extent that they would apparently receive a priority over crime where hate might appear absent.

How the police switchboard was going to distinguish an emergency call for help was not exactly explained.

Would the victim be asked if he or she is a member of a minority such as a Celtic fan walking through Govan on 12 July or some other such abstract construct?

And if no such boxes were ticked would our plea for help fall behind a queue of homophobic assaults or racist abuse of immigrants?

In other words, can those of us who are not punched, spat on or sexually assaulted because of our colour, religion, sexual preference or other such distinguishing factor but simply because we are in the wrong place at the wrong time expect less help, less attention, less support and especially a slower response time?

The implication that we could whistle in the wind was certainly given from Lothian & Borders finest.It was of course not the police but Holyrood politicians that codified and created the hate crimes that the law enforcement agencies are working out how to attend to, nevertheless, I think a good number of MSPs would be surprised if they had known that hate crimes would end up being treated above other crimes just as offensive or even barbaric.

Then the Evening News contributed to the growing debate by revealing the plight of an Edinburgh mum who has faced a three-year campaign of hate mail, including death threats to her and her four children, due to their mixed race parentage.

Despite this example illustrating the sick nature of some people I still believe that there is no need to give priority to this crime over others because of the presumed motive than it would already attract because it is a threat of violence.

What needs to be recognised is before the hate crime legislation came in, it was already possible for people to be prosecuted for doing nasty criminal things to each other irrespective of their motive. The sender of such hate mail could still have been locked up.

It was also possible for judges to give additional weight in sentencing to an aggravation attached to a crime such as religious or racial bigotry.

By creating a new set of laws the politicians did two things. They sent a signal to the chief constables that hate crime was to be given an additional importance and they created a new statistical pool of figures that required to be collected and which could cause them embarrassment if the police could not show they were giving a priority to such crimes.

That's why such guidelines are produced and, in an effort to please the political bosses, we shouldn't be surprised if some policies come over as rather enthusiastic about it all.

Elevating the importance of one mugging over another mugging, or one murder over another, because of what someone was thinking at the time they perpetrated the crime is dangerous. It is essentially saying that what they were thinking is a crime too - and nowhere have I heard it said that we should be prosecuted for our thoughts - unless it is in a science fiction novel or those who believe the Orwellian state should be our ambition.

The way to defeat hate is to expose ignorance to truth with reason and argument. Oh, and it requires effective policing - not pandering to the whims of politicians. Is that too much to ask?