“Think before you speak, or tweet, is wise advice at the best of times – but never more so than now,” says the Mail’s Graham Grant. “You could be reported to police for a hate crime by someone you’ve never met, and officers are duty-bound to investigate.” He continues:
Is your name in a secret police log, without your knowledge, for something you’ve posted on social media, or something you’ve said in public, overheard by a third party who contacted the police?
The FSU is now supporting leading Conservative MSP, Murdo Fraser, after he found out, almost be accident, that his name was in police files.
Officers ruled no crime had taken place but the ‘hate incident’ was noted. It remains on a database.
As Mr Fraser rightly points out, his tweet took issue with a government ‘non-binary equality action plan’ – suggesting that the police have been ‘captured’ by the SNP policy agenda.
This is how totalitarian states operate but it’s happening in 21st century Scotland. You could be the next unwitting victim.
Astonishingly, Police Scotland recorded ‘non-crime hate incidents’ on more than 5,500 occasions in less than a year.
If you think that’s bad – the stuff of a police state – then stick around because by this time next week the SNP’s new hate crime legislation will be in force.
Three years after it was passed at Holyrood, it’s finally a reality – or almost – with the delay in enforcement caused by the small matter of training up police officers, who complain their preparation for April 1 has been scant.
Offences are considered aggravated if they involve prejudice on the basis of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variation in sex characteristics.
The legislation creates a new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’ – which previously applied only to race – and the law can be broken in private homes, meaning that dinner party conversations could be criminalised.
For their part, ministers are burying their heads in the sand, parroting patronising platitudes to the effect that everything will be all right, and we shouldn’t worry.
If this sounds familiar, it should. We’ve been here before countless times with botched legislation which has been pushed through with threadbare consultation and minimal debate.
Critics such as Nationalist MP Joanna Cherry, who backed Mr Fraser and accused her own party of ‘McCarthyism’, are routinely demonised or sidelined.
Abortive transgender reforms, blocked by the UK Government, and the Named Person scheme, which sought to appoint state guardians to every child in the country, including unborn babies, are only a couple of examples of dangerously ham-fisted SNP lawmaking.
In both cases, there were dire warnings about the possible fallout, both for women’s rights and the interference of the state in family life. Named Person, a profoundly illiberal initiative, was deemed by the Supreme Court to be largely unlawful, but only after the SNP fought tooth and nail to salvage it, wasting time and taxpayers’ money in the process.
History is repeating itself, but this time the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The freedom to speak your mind or criticise your political masters is – or should be – hard-wired into any credible democracy.
But next Monday, when the Scottish Government’s new hate crime legislation is activated, will mark one of the lowest points in the history of a country that once championed freedom of speech – and is now firmly on the path towards an Orwellian nightmare.
Worth reading in full.
If you’re resident in Scotland and worried about having a ‘non-crime hate incident’ recorded against you following the activation of the Scottish Hate Crime Act on April 1st, join the Free Speech Union today – we’ll do everything we can to get it scrubbed from the record.
