NCHI Day of Action - May 20th 2023
What is a 'Non Crime Hate Incident' and why do we seem to be stuck with them?
I was happy to be invited by Andrew Doyle to speak about ‘Non Crime Hate Incidents’ on Free Speech Nation on Sunday April 23rd. You can listen to our conversation here.
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1650240758144724996?s=20
Fair Cop have organised a ‘Day of Action’ on May 20th (the birthday of John Stuart Mill) where we are asking people to make a Data Subject Access Request of their local police force, to find out what is recorded against their name and to see if the police will delete it. We didn’t think that almost 2 years after the Court of Appeal judgment declared the College of Police guidance about ‘perception based recording’ an unlawful breach of Article 10 ECHR, that we would still be fighting this. But here we are.
If you are interested in knowing more about how we got here and why freedom of speech is considered so fundamental to a functioning democracy, the first judgment in Miller v College of Policing is worth a read. The court cites and relies upon in particular R v Shayler [2003] 1 AC 247, [21] where Lord Bingham emphasised the connection between freedom of expression and democracy:
The reasons why the right to free expression is regarded as fundamental are familiar, but merit brief restatement in the present context. Modern democratic government means government of the people by the people for the people. But there can be no government by the people if they are ignorant of the issues to be resolved, the arguments for and against different solutions and the facts underlying those arguments. The business of government is not an activity about which only those professionally engaged are entitled to receive information and express opinions. It is, or should be, a participatory process. But there can be no assurance that government is carried out for the people unless the facts are made known, the issues publicly ventilated…
The first instance judgment declared unlawful only the actions of Humberside Police who visited Harry Miller at his work to ‘check his thinking’, stating that the actual Hate Crimes Guidance did not breach Article 10 ECHR. The Court of Appeal judgment, a year later, disagreed and declared the College of Policing guidance an unlawful and disproportionate breach, with a significant ‘chilling effect.’
This does not appear to have fully registered with the College of Policing, even after a Parliamentary Code of Practice in March 2023 which set out clearly the importance of freedom of speech and the dangers of recording ‘irrational’ and malicious complaints.
The College of Policing instead issued their own ‘consultation’ with the misleading ‘spin’ that it ‘followed a legal ruling that sought to strike a balance between freedom of speech and protecting vulnerable members of the public.’ The ‘examples’ relied upon in the CoP document are also a worrying indication that they have yet to abandon their partial adherence to the particular political ideology of ‘gender identity’.
The local authority and the police respond to community concerns reported to them about anti-transgender posters that were posted at the scene of an LGBT+ Pride event. The local authority removed the posters and the police recorded the complaint as a non-crime incident, adding a hate and prejudice qualifier on the grounds of hostility towards transgender identity. This was because the posters were assessed as containing threatening material. A person sees an online article about this and reports a hate crime on the grounds of religious hostility, saying that by removing the posters, the local authority have offended their philosophical faith around biological gender. The police review the complaint and decide that the actions of the local authority do not amount to a crime, and that it is irrational to record a non-crime hate incident. The complainant is asking the police to record legal activity by the local authority. Furthermore, this activity is not motivated by hostility. To record the complaint as a non-crime hate incident would not be rational.
There is no ‘philosophical faith around biological gender’. There is a protected belief that sex is real and it matters. What is meant here by ‘anti- transgender’ posters? what is meant by ‘threatening’? This is an astonishing ‘example’ given that it was the unlawful interference with Harry Miller’s protected political speech around transgender issues, that kicked off all the trouble in 2018.
So why are the College of Policing having so much trouble accepting their previous guidance was unlawful? The answer is probably found on the wider European and international stage, where support for the ‘hate crimes industry’ is widespread and longstanding, despite the apparent inexorable rise in all types of ‘hate’ since the inception of ‘action plans’ and ‘campaigns’ to stamp it out.
The UN jumped into the fray recently with a bizarre tweet, directly conflating speech with violence.
https://twitter.com/UN/status/1649171835387518976?s=20
The tweet refers to an ‘Action Plan’ rolled out in 2019 by the UN, which has a fantastically woolly definition of ‘hate speech’, which is based on any kind of ‘discriminatory’ speech against any kind of claimed identity. Although the document repeats that freedom of speech is and remains very important, there is no attempt to set out how that right will be balanced against the perception of another that they are being subject to something ‘hateful’. The first ‘key element’ of the action plan is to support states to continue recording and storing data about alleged ‘hate’.
The consequences of making ‘hate speech’ dependent on the subjective perception of one prevailing ideology are terrible and they are all around us. Women have lost their jobs and their social media accounts for simply referencing biological sex, whereas men apparently feel sufficiently emboldened by being on the ‘Right Side of History’ that they can join the Women’s Institute while at the same time drawing up ‘kill lists’ of ‘prominent Terfs’ who should be murdered and boasting about it on line.
I have been contacted by a woman who raised a safeguarding concern against a trans identifying male who posed in fetish gear and with guns; the police are refusing to delete the NCHI recorded against her, indeed seem annoyed that they cannot go ahead and prosecute her.
It was unlawful to restrict Harry Miller’s protected political speech. It is not merely unlawful, but catastrophic for any functioning society to send a message that even safeguarding is ‘hate’ if it does not sufficiently validate the desires of trans identified men to be seen as women.
Please join us on the 20th May. Fair Cop will be very interested to learn what is recorded against you, and even more interested to know if the police won’t delete it. Of course there is benefit for the police in gathering intelligence about ‘hot spots’, areas or people who are at risk of ‘escalating’ into serious crime. But recording trivial complaints by malicious bad actors simply renders the police a laughing stock. As the College of Policing admitted before the Court of Appeal, the numbers of NCHIs now gathered are so great that it is simply impossible to analyse them. Let’s help get rid of as many as possible, and continue to campaign that no more will rise in their place.
Hi Sarah, could you possibly clarify what is exactly, legally speaking, the College of Policing? I find it extraordinary that after a ruling of the Court of Appeal, and express directions of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, some outfit of unclear provenance and authority seems fit to launch their own "consultation" and engage in verbal acrobatics to advance an ideological approach found to be unlawful? Who the hell is College of Policing and why anyone is paying any attention to what they say, when the Court of Appeal has delivered its judgment and the Home Secretary issued her guidance? Who funds them and who appoints their management/board of directors?
Excellent interview with Andrew Doyle. Well done Sarah