Misogyny is moronic. But making it a hate crime is the justice of the Mad Hatter

This may be the first newspaper column i have ever begun with a personal appeal to my readers. My defence is that we are living in such strange times. Unprecedented even. And for once i’m not referring to the Covid crisis.

some of you may disagree with what i write.

in normal times that wouldn’t worry me in the slightest. Any columnist who shrinks from an argument should start looking for another job. some of you might even be offended. That would obviously not be my intention, but occasionally i have been known to let my rhetoric cloud my judgment.

And, finally, some of you — i assume at least half — will be women. it is to you i make my appeal.

Please do not accuse me of being a misogynist. it’s not that i have anything to hide. Like any other reasonably civilised human being, i regard misogynists as both contemptible and very, very stupid.

But it was revealed this week that the Law Commission wants to make misogyny illegal. it wants to make it a ‘hate crime’. And that’s what scares me. Because there is a terrible failing in the very concept of hate crime that should scare all of us.

Let’s assume that the Law Commission gets its way (it usually does) and someone did accuse me of misogyny. Obviously i would plead innocent and claim that there is not a shred of evidence against me.

i would point to the oldest and proudest belief underpinning our system of justice. it came into being millennia ago and has stood the test of time in every country that dares lay claim to democratic credentials. We are innocent until we are proven guilty. BUT

the way hate crime is interpreted has taken us into an Alice in Wonderland world. That towering principle has faded like the face of the Cheshire Cat, leaving just the grin. it is the grin on the faces of those who seemingly don’t give a fig about what justice means. it says: who needs proof of guilt when we’re talking hate crime?

When the College of Policing published its new hate Crime Operational Guidance five years ago, it was sent to every police force in England and Wales. it remains in force to this day.

it states that a comment reported as hateful by a victim must be recorded ‘irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element’.

in other words, you no longer have to do anything as oldfashioned as provide some proof that you have actually been harmed in any way. All you have to do is perceive that you have been. And that word ‘victim’ is crucial. if you perceive you are a victim, that is enough for the police to come calling. The same police, perhaps, as those who destroyed the reputations of some of the most respected public servants in this land on the word of Carl Beech, a paedophile and fantasist now serving a long prison sentence.

Beech had claimed he was a victim and the police had believed him.

The latest figures show that 34 police forces recorded 120,000 ‘noncrime’ hate incidents in the five years since the Mad hatter took over our penal policy.

‘Recorded’ is another seemingly innocuous little word there that packs a mighty punch. Try getting a job in, say, teaching or (God forbid) the police force if your name crops up when the obligatory search of the criminal records is made. No chance. And now imagine the amount of time spent on each of those incidents. And then set that against police protestations that they are so hardpressed they don’t have the time to deal with such tiresome events as burglaries.

Misogyny will be the latest in a growing list of socalled noncrime incidents. They already include race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability.

The most senior police officer in the land is a woman: Dame Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. she is seriously worried.

here’s how she put it when misogyny was first mooted as a hate crime: ‘We should be focusing on what the public tell me they care about . . . My officers are very busy, very stretched. We have young people in London subject to gang violence, drugdealing, stabbings . . . lots of priorities.’

You can say that again. According to the latest home Office statistics, the number of criminal offences solved in England and Wales has halved in the past five years to 7.8 per cent.

Violent crime is on the rise. There were more than 44,000 offences involving knives in the 12 months up to June 2019. in my middleclass corner of West London, it’s hard to find a single parent of a teenage boy who does not breathe a sigh of relief when he comes home unscathed. But perhaps, in spite of my protests at the top of this column, i am, indeed, displaying misogynistic tendencies when i argue against these latest hate crime proposals. surely women need protection from men who hate women and try to harm them? Yes, of course they do. Which is why we already have laws that do precisely that. if my daughter is attacked in the street by a womanhating moron, he will, i hope, be locked up. if my son is attacked by another moron who happens to hate those he regards as posh boys, he should be locked up, too. But if the law changes, my daughter’s attacker would get a harsher sentence — for the same crime. is that justice?

hate crime legislation was born from a wish to protect persecuted minorities. Women are not a persecuted minority. They happen to be a majority.

The next step the Law Commission is considering is including older people. What about vulnerable younger men? What about the entire population?

But perhaps i am underplaying the reality of hate crime in this country. Remember how the nation was shamed by violence against foreigners in the aftermath of the EU referendum in 2016? it was widely reported at the time. But it never happened.

As this newspaper’s peerless investigative reporter Guy Adams has painstakingly demonstrated over recent years, what does exist is a powerful lobby insisting that the nation is suffering from a crippling level of hate crime.

At one of the regular conferences organised by Capita, a company that has grown rich on lucrative government contracts, a senior police officer made the preposterous claim that ‘there is more hate crime in London than in the whole of the United states’. Perhaps he believed it. The crime statistics tell a very different story.

One bright note to end on. harry Miller is a retired police officer who set up a successful company. he posted a number of tweets between November 2018 and January 2019 about transgender issues as part of the debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act.

in one of them he wrote: ‘i was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t misspecies me.’

Big mistake. A complaint was made and he was visited by humberside Police at his work. he was told he had not committed a crime, but it would be recorded as a noncrime ‘hate incident’. he would have a police record. he says the constable added that the police wanted to ‘check his thinking’.

Mr Miller was both angry and deeply worried. he took the police to court. And he won.

Last year the court found the force’s actions were a ‘disproportionate interference’ with his right to freedom of expression. The judge said the police had undervalued ‘a cardinal democratic freedom’.

And he added these words: ‘in this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.’

Long may it remain so. Misogyny is moronic. Let’s not make it a crime.