Worried about Orwell's 1984? We live in it - Steven Barrett
Allison Pearson speaks out about how Britain’s police state hunted her down …
GB News
‘Police the streets, not the tweets’ was the inevitable cry when reports first emerged of an investigation into respected Telegraph Journalist Allison Pearson.
The investigation is said to be over a tweet sent but deleted 12 months ago. As it’s a live investigation (Essex Police and Crime Commissioner, Roger Hirst refuses to back down) we best leave that there.
But how did we get to be such an Orwellian state?
Like the proverbial frog, we have been boiled slowly. And it began to take shape with the Public Order Act in 1986.
This was when the concept of racist hate crimes truly coalesced. The Act made it an offence to say or do things if you intend to stir up racial hatred, or, having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.
Barrister Steven Barrett
GB NewsIntention was to be the gatekeeper, stopping all this getting out of hand – given that ‘regard to all the circumstances’ is quite wide.
And it may well yet save anyone prosecuted, because there is a specific defence if you genuinely didn’t intend to cause racial hatred.
But there it is, the established idea that spreading ‘hate’ is somehow wrong or somehow causes harm.
Before going any further, let’s all remember that the idea that ‘hate’ is causative of harm was very popular in the 1980s.
As a child I personally played video games that people like Mary Whitehouse claimed would turn me into a psychopathic killer. Reader, not only did they not, but looking back at the graphics, the idea is utterly risible.
But ideological belief, like religious belief, requires no reason. But it’s worth our noting that since the 1980s no one has managed to prove that rude words cause things – not a single study has shown it.
A lot of extremely silly claims were made about the Southport events, but if you think a tweet caused them, you really don’t understand causation.
But slowly, the people who think rude words cause’ things have advanced that quasi-religious belief through our laws.
I did a short series of videos on Free Speech Laws, and I was depressed to discover that I had to devote 5 of the 6 shows to laws banning speech in Britain.
The idea that rudeness, or the idea that you might have offended somebody somewhere, possibly if we squint, and thus deserve punishment is everywhere.
Often with a brand-new law, brought in in the last 35 years or so – and usually without any thought to whether the crime exists already. Politicians of all parties have been making new laws like an out-of-control printer.
The apex of this nonsense is Non-Crime Hate Incidents. These were brought in by an obscure and unaccountable body called the College of Policing – why they gained the power to make law, I will never understand.
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In 2022, probably in a half-fisted attempt to at least delay the madness, they were put into an Act of Parliament the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
They are defined (if that really is the right term) as:
'Hate incident' means an incident or alleged incident which involves or is alleged to involve an act by a person ('the alleged perpetrator') which is perceived by a person other than the alleged perpetrator to be motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility or prejudice towards persons with a particular characteristic.
Which as law is complete nonsense – it could mean anything. You could have one recorded against you for an alleged thing (that didn’t happen) allegedly by you (but it wasn’t) that a total stranger believes is motivated by hate.
Worried about Orwell's 1984? We live in it.
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