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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat happens under "hate speech" laws: UK election candidate arrested for quoting Churchill
Paul Weston, chairman of Liberty GB, was making the speech on the steps of Winchester Guildhall in Hampshire on Saturday after a passer-by complained. He was detained after failing to comply with a request by police to move on under the powers of a dispersal order. He was further arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment.
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"Reportedly, a woman came out of the Guildhall and asked Mr Weston if he had the authorisation to make this speech. "When he answered that he didn't, she told him: 'It's disgusting', and then called the police. "Six or seven officers arrived. They talked with the people standing nearby, asking questions about what had happened. The police had a long discussion with Mr Weston, lasting about 40 minutes. At about 3pm he was arrested. They searched him, put him in a police van and took him away.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-27186573
The "dispersal" charges were quickly dropped; the only pending charge is for "religious/racial harrassment".
I'm not defending the content of this guy's speech, but to have an election candidate arrested, bundled into a police van and driven away because someone found his speech offensive is just mind-boggling to me. But then again I am used to having a First Amendment.
Jake Stern
(3,145 posts)thousands of dollars for, among other things, "hurt feelings".
Can't make this stuff up.
alp227
(32,060 posts)Please consider the full context.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)This was not speech people had chosen to listen to - he was forcing it on people in a public place (a normal shopping street, not Hyde Park Corner or similar). Notice the "failing to comply with a request by police to move on under the powers of a dispersal order". Not knowing the contents of The River War, I find it quite likely that it's offensive, and that his purpose was to either harrass a Muslim if one heard it, or to hope to stir up hatred among others. The opinion of a young officer from over 100 years ago having just fought a war is not that relevant to the 21st century.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)What is to stop the police from arresting a British person who posts offensive stuff about Christianity on the internet, under the same principle?
If this guy had been arrested purely for breaching the peace or something like that I would not have a complaint.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)It depends on what they say, who they say it to, and where they say it - if it's a reply to someone's blog, it's more likely to be harassing than if it's on a known extremist site where you might assume people are looking for it.
FWIW, it's not clear if the harassment was about the quotes or something else he said, maybe to a passerby, maybe during the 40 minute discussion with police - from the local paper:
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/11185557._Political_arrest__of_election_candidate_slammed_by_MP/
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)apparently unwilling audience. And while I'm normally dubious about "hate speech" laws - I can foresee all kinds of unintended consequences - freedom of speech doesn't include an absolute right to be listened to.
Response to muriel_volestrangler (Reply #2)
Name removed Message auto-removed
snooper2
(30,151 posts)MO_Moderate
(377 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)Why am I a racist? It's very simple: I wish to preserve the culture of my country, I wish to preserve the people of my country, and in doing so that makes me a designated racist in today's society.
Now this is something that's been moved by the Left the goalposts have been moved by the Left a considerable distance on this. In order to be termed a racist thirty or forty years ago, you had to actively dislike foreign people. I don't dislike foreign people. What I do like, what I love, is my country, my culture and my people, and I see them under a terrible threat at the moment.
Britain is a very small country that's opened its doors to the mass immigrants of the Third World, and we are simply being overwhelmed. Our schools can't cope, our hospitals can't cope, very little can cope any more. Our welfare system is on the verge of buckling as well. So if I want to defend what I grew up in, what I was born into my country, my British culture, my heritage and my history I am apparently, according to absolutely everybody today, a racist.
http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/home/root/news-libertygb/5851-my-name-is-paul-weston-and-i-am-a-racist
"My (white?) country, my culture (white?), my people (white?) ..." Pam Geller and our tea party zealots could not have said it better. I am sure that Geller is envious of the publicity that Weston has received. I wonder if she will be looking for quotes from dead American presidents that appear to support her xenophobia particularly towards Muslims.
Most European countries, including the UK, do not have First Amendment protections but do have Hate Speech restrictions. Pam Geller or a tea party congressional candidate could say the same things that Weston said in the UK and be totally protected from any government action.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)And if this had happened in the US, the ACLU would be defending him to the hilt. As they should.
pampango
(24,692 posts)The UK and many other countries balance free speech and hate speech differently. I like the way we do it. I imagine that liberals in many other countries like the way that they do it.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Laws against Holocaust denial are counterproductive.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)Visit the Holocaust Museum in DC. Visit a concentration camp.
A civil society needs certain rules.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)in recommending that I visit the Holocaust museum in the United States, a country that does not and never will have any laws against Holocaust denial (so not a "civil country" by your standards) then we will never see eye to eye on this issue.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)Have you ever visited the museum? Can you answer that?
It dowsn't matter where the museum is located. That is not relevant to my point.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)deniers" - or whatever you would call our equivalent to Holocaust deniers - slapped with a fine for running their big mouths about how slavery wasn't so bad and some people are natural slaves etc. etc. You can't outlaw ignorance but you can certainly discourage its propagation.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)If he is against diversity in the UK, the idea of 'diversity' in the royal family must keep him awake at night.
What if Harry marries someone from India or Jamaica? I suspect we would have to clean up the damage at Mr. Weston's house.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)If I recall my history, the UK royal family does not even like for white foreigners (including Americans, historically) to marry into the family. I doubt that an Arab would have been any more acceptable than an Indian or a Jamaican.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Also, the first Catholic monarch.
Admittedly there will probably not be a monarch of color, or a Jewish monarch, anytime soon.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Or we'd have this happening in the US.
This is one of my biggest gripes about Europe.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)The Nick Griffins and Nigel Farages make me nervous.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)while reserving the US right to pepper spray protesters, drag them away, destroy Occupy camps, arrest Dan Choi for saying 'equality' in front of the White House?
Because you seem to be suggesting that the US never arrests those who protest in public. That is simply not the case. Do you post about 'free speech' when it is LGBT people being dragged to jail for demonstrating? Somehow I don't think so.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)And my understanding is that Lt Choi was arrested for chaining himself to the White House fence, not for uttering the word "equality".
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Care to address things I actually said?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)And did I not address your comments about Lt Choi being arrested? Do you think that he was arrested for uttering the word "equality", or for chaining himself to the White House fence and refusing to unlock his chains? Do you think that people have the First Amendment right to chain themselves to the White House fence?
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Choi chained himself to the fence to resist that order. The guy in London simply continued shouting into his megaphone to resist the order. I mentioned Choi because the charges were basically identical.
So you think that Englishman had First Amendment rights to cause a racial disturbance? They don't have that law. But we do, and we still manage to drag protesters away on other charges, like failure to disperse or lack of a permit, or just on a whim with pepper spray and handcuffs. What do you make of all those arrested US protesters, in the context of free political speech and the First Amendment, which does apply in the US?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)There was no "racial disturbance". A woman simply complained to the police that she found his speech (quoting Winston Churchill) offensive. There was no rioting, no violence, and no threat of violence.
Choi was arrested for chaining himself to the White House fence (contrary to your first post in this thread where you claimed that he was arrested for uttering the word "equality" . I actually don't have a problem with the police not allowing people to handcuff themselves to the White House fence; I don't really see this as "speech". (And I don't recall the ACLU kicking up much of a fuss over this).
As for your question "what do you make of all those arrested US protestors", that is quite a general question. I do support the First Amendment rights of people to demonstrate and protest. Having said that, I support reasonable limits; an example of this would be that I don't think an anti-abortion fanatic has the right to scream in the face of a patient who is entering or leaving an abortion clinic, but I do think these folks have the right to protest at a reasonable distance from the facility.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Which there was absolutely not in this case. No violence, no threats of violence. A woman who heard the speech found it offensive and called the police, who duly bundled the election candidate into the back of a car and drove him away to the station.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)influence frightens me. On the other hand, though, I recognize there's no simple solution.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Do I have so much as a shred of sympathy for his obnoxious, racist ass? Hell no!
struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)section 4 of the Public Order Act:
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he
(a) uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or
(b) distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.
(2) An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation is distributed or displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and the other person is also inside that or another dwelling ...
This resembles somewhat the "clear and present danger" standard under which speech in the US may be curtailed, though it's not exactly the same. The crime alleged he is not that he said something offensive but that he did so either (1) with intent to provoke immediate unlawful violence against another or (2) with intent to cause another to believe that unlawful violence would be used.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Reading a paragraph from a book by Winston Churchill could never imaginably be ruled as "fighting words" or as an immediate incitement to violence, which is the US standard.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I was once arrested for displaying a copy of the preamble of the Constitution.
Granted, it is tattooed on my penis, and it was a crowded subway train.
But, "reading a paragraph from a book by Winston Churchill" is not a complete description of what this guy was doing.
Time. Place. Manner.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)whether the "time, place and manner" is appropriate or not? And if they find some fault in this regard the guy gets taken away by the police?
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)That he was on the sidewalk with a megaphone?
Yeah, if I stand outside of your house at 3AM using amplification to read the First Amendment over and over, I'm pretty sure the police are going to take me away. I will not have a First Amendment defense because of well known US law on the subject of time, place and manner.
I'm not familiar with UK law on the subject, and frankly don't care.
Yes or no: You are okay with my public display of the Constitution preamble as written on my penis?
Because if you are going to say I cannot display the Constitution in that manner, then we are simply engaging in a line-drawing exercise.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)This guy was not arrested fot disturbing the peace or yelling outside someone's house. The charges are "racial/ religious harrassment", based upon the content of the excerpt that he read from Churchill's book.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)As I told you, I'm not a UK lawyer, so I don't give a rat's ass what form of public nuisance with which he was charged.
Do I or do I not, in the US, have the First Amendment right to communicate whatever I want, whenever I want, and wherever I want.
Your ignorance of the case law of First Amendment protection of nudity as a form of Constitutionally protected expression is appalling for someone who wants to lecture others on the subject of freedom of speech.
BARNES v. GLEN THEATRE, INC., 501 U.S. 560 (1991):
(D)ancing as a performance directed to an actual or hypothetical audience gives expression at least to generalized emotion or feeling, and where the dancer is nude or nearly so, the feeling expressed, in the absence of some contrary clue, is eroticism, carrying an endorsement of erotic experience. Such is the expressive content of the dances described in the record.
Mine carries more than that message, because I sing the words of the Constitution while swinging around my imprinted penis in time to the music, to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy.
And you are going to tell me that is not an expressive activity?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)we're done.
Have a good day.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I'm not endowed by my Creator with enough space for the whole thing.
However, you really don't want to discuss scenarios in which, in your opinion, an expressive activity can be limited, because it doesn't let you sit on the high horse of "defender of rights", when in reality we have been drawing lines between forms of "conduct" and "speech" for a long time.
And getting into that discussion doesn't let you draw the moral bright lines that people who believe themselves to be morally superior enjoy so much.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)application of said quote - like here, in the context of arguable racial incitement.
We can debate the merits of hate speech law - and I certainly have qualms myself - but claiming that this guy is being persecuted for a mere speech-act is a tad disingenuous.
struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)I have no idea exactly what he said. The website, of the party he founded, has posted that he was charged with violation of , which is styled "Fear or provocation of violence." The alleged Churchill quote, as reported, is quite offensive to modern ears, I think, but it would not suffice alone for a conviction under section 4 of the Public Order Act, as quoted above. Since I expect the UK courts are entirely competent to determine whether he is guilty as charged, I see no particular need to take a stand on that question myself
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)I'm not so hot on restricting freedom of speech myself, but I can understand why a country suffering from ongoing racially charged unrest would wish to discourage the propagation of racist rhetoric. Keep in mind I'm not endorsing the British approach to this issue, only trying to put it in context.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)They're no different to the BNP or, in US terms, the Klan.
Now, our hate speech laws are pretty complicated. But simply reading from a book by someone does not give you a defence against hate speech laws, especially when you shout that part is isolation. Standing in the street with a megaphone repeating the "they shall both be put to death" anti-gay verses from the OT would get you arrested as well. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a publicity stunt and the guy deliberately intended to get arrested as part of Liberty GB's "pity teh white man" platform.
We do actually have a guarantee of free speech under the ECHR but that doesn't extend to hate speech.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Here is the excerpt:
Awful stuff, but nowhere near "fighting words" or incitement to violence.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)The passage is pretty reprehensible but, absent anything else, it doesn't seem like it rises to the level of either hate speech or sufficient to satisfy the religious hatred laws. That said, teh religious hatred laws are so vague in their wording that even comedians find them stifling.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)It's why Nye doesn't want to discuss my recitation of the Constitution imprinted on my penis for public display.
Clearly, she thinks that is ridiculous, and facially illegal.
What she doesn't want to discuss, however, is that the line between "conduct" and "speech" exists on a continuum.
Can I follow you down the street shouting the Pledge of Allegiance?
There are contexts in which "what the person said" is entirely secondary to the impact of the CONDUCT accompanying their speech, and what their INTENT is toward others for engaging in that conduct.
But, and I certainly wasn't on that street, so I don't know what specifically he was doing, the notion that this guy was engaging in public lectures in Great Quotes is all we are supposed to know.
There is unlawful conduct which can accompany what would otherwise be protected speech absent that conduct, and there are people who like to push that boundary of "how much was speech and how much was conduct". It's really nothing new but always rhetorically fun.
I was, in fact, once detained by police for reciting poetry. No shit.
struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)he pasted at his website?
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)The text of the Churchill quote will provide no insight into what his conduct while reading it was.
struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)his whole speech, so I have no basis at this time for forming any opinion regarding the charges, though I agree with you that context matters.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)Video here:
The rest of it is:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/component/content/article/33-datelines/622-datelines-fh-113
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)that would love to have a lot like that here in the US.which is kind of short sighted because they're entirely subjective and not objective which means it could be twisted against the people who supported it when they are are no longer in power
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Mind you, I have no wish to see such legislation enacted in the U.S., especially knowing how right-wing fundies would abuse it to try and silence their critics.