SNP’s Orwellian law has turned our dining rooms into crime scenes

MY late grandmother, who was a woman of her time, used to tell my brother and me that children should be seen and not heard.

She did not coin the phrase, of course. The proverb dates from the 15th century but it was still current at our dinner table in the 1970s when Gran came to stay.

My mother profoundly disagreed with her mother on this point. The dinner table, among much-loved and trusted family members, was the ideal place for children to find their voices, she believed. Looking back, I feel sure it is where I found mine.

Through the prism of my mother’s views, I began to understand that my grandmother may not be right about everything – indeed, that some of her ways of thinking would weather badly going forward.

Revelation

I remember, for example, a dinner table discussion about the poem Monday’s Child and the revelation from my mother that I was born on a Sunday.

According to the poem, ‘The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.’ ‘Well,’ said Gran with a titter, ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t turn out to be gay.’ Yes, when I was growing up there were grandmothers who would rather have heterosexual grandchildren than homosexual ones and, in the privacy of the family home, had no compunction in saying so.

Did this make my grandmother a bad person? Not in my view. It made her a woman of her time. More importantly, she was a much-loved matriarch who, occasional unreconstructed opinion aside, spoke a great deal of common sense and was invariably at her best when helping others, which she did tirelessly.

She died a decade ago – and I would in a heartbeat brave the odd fogyish clanger for the chance to dine with her again.

I doubt whether she would jump at the opportunity, mind you, if every off-colour remark could be taken down and used in evidence in a criminal case against her. That, in effect, is what the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill passed in the Scottish parliament yesterday will give family members a charter to do.

An elderly relative lapses into language from a bygone era which offends modern sensibilities? Teach him or her a lesson by telling police what was said over the Sunday roast and having him or her arrested.

Dad is troubled about the boy you are seeing? Show him who’s boss by turning it into a race or religious hate crime and shopping him.

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf tells MSPs that, every day, there are an estimated 18 hate crimes committed in Scotland.

I wonder if he has any notion of the numbers there might be when it is open season on every dinner table discussion on teenage relationships, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender issues and every other booby trap issue of the day.

Indeed, on transgender issues, it is particularly absurd to suggest criminal proceedings might arise from strident opinions expressed in the privacy of people’s homes.

Mr Yousaf’s own party is deeply split over them.

Is it such a stretch to imagine the same arguments being played out, perhaps heatedly, in living rooms across Scotland?

Family

Is the family home not, in fact, the one place where it should be entirely unproblematic to have such a discussion?

Arguing against the hate crime law invading our homes and intruding into private discussions, the parliament’s justice committee convener Adam Tomkins asked fellow MSPs to imagine a Friday night supper attended by an unreconstructed elderly uncle and his somewhat oversensitive 15-year-old greatniece. This is remarkably easy to imagine.

Who has not sat down at an extended family gathering where the young and old are on different pages – perhaps even reading from different moral guidebooks?

To a greater or lesser extent, it happens at every extended family dinner I attend. I imagine yours are little different.

We hear occasional views which we may not share, expressed in language we may not choose, from elderly members of the gathering. And from the young – rightly, these days, encouraged to say their piece – we hear the modish, often rather woke, challenge.

This, actually, is the way family life works.

‘They wouldn’t have got away with it in my day,’ opines the patriarch. ‘Oh, Grandpa!’ scolds the next but one generation. ‘You can’t say that!’ ‘It’s my house…’ he says with a chuckle. And so family life goes on. But to continue Mr Tomkins’s example, the elderly uncle makes a disparaging remark about a same-sex couple which offends his great-niece, who tells her best friend whose father happens to be a police officer.

‘Is this really where we want the Hate Crime Bill to go?’ asks the Conservative MSP.

If it is where the Justice Secretary wants it to go, then I fear he has allowed zealotry to cloud all reasonable judgment.

Of course stirring up hatred in public should be a criminal offence. I have no difficulty in believing it happens at least 18 times a day in Scotland and, if we include abuse hurled on social media, I suspect many more times than that.

But the family home is not a public place. Quite the reverse, the family home provides a private forum which allows us to air much of what we might hesitate to speak of in public.

Who knows how wide – and possibly offensive – will be the range of subjects up for discussion in homes across the land at dinner time tonight? Who can imagine the full gamut of utterances that may, in the harsh light of public scrutiny, be judged by some as bigoted, hateful and, thus, criminal?

Somewhere in Scotland tonight, behind closed doors, a father will tell a daughter why she shouldn’t go out with a boy from a different ethnic group. A member of one religious order will make snide comments about members of another. An octogenarian will use a word which has no place in today’s society. A son will be accused of bringing a family into disrepute. And a phone call to the police is the last thing which will make it better.

My grandmother was wrong. Children should be seen and heard. It should not have mattered whether I turned out gay or straight.

But the idea that saying something wrong at the dinner table should carry the risk of a criminal conviction is as offensive to me as the transgressions Mr Yousaf seeks to outlaw.

Archaic

I dare say I heard much at family gatherings in the 1970s which would be considered far from suitable for children’s ears today. But recognising archaic views and understanding what fuels them is part of our personal development.

It is why those with grownup views on education have not yet binned Shakespeare and other literary giants whose view of the world may not chime with 21st century mores. You do not read their works and convert to bigotry.

You dismiss the obsolete and soak up the learning, the wisdom and the richness of language.

Those with simplistic views on education and personal development wish to drain society of all offensive content and cancel anyone giving it oxygen, especially in front of the children.

Some of this offensive content – as evinced by the transgender debate – they cannot even agree on themselves.

Now, with a chilling Orwellian flourish, they have breached the dining room and are coming after Gran.