How hissing a politician became a “hate crime”

Councillors in Newham in east London have turned the police on their political opponents

Hate crime has, for the last 25 years or so, been defined within the criminal justice system as “a criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice” towards people under five protected characteristics: race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity. The promise by the state after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in 1998 was to prioritise the concerns of victims of these crimes.

Before any hate crime is recorded, however, there must first exist evidence of an actual crime. Even then, this does not become a ‘hate crime’ if there is no basis to conclude that it was motivated by hostility for reasons set out above.

In practice, the policing of racist crimes have been a “systemic failure”, disability hate crime figures are “shocking” and attacks on the transgender community are at a record high. There is quite obviously a hierarchy of charging decisions too: prosecutions are far more likely if the victim is a police officer.

In 2023, to restrict the over-recording of “non-crime hate incidents” when police decide there is insufficient evidence to make arrests and to force officers to prioritise freedom of expression, a new statutory police code of practice was also introduced by the then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the scourge of anything ‘woke’.

She insisted the police would “only record non-crime hate incidents when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate and not simply because someone is offended”.

Not long after this, the government’s proclaimed commitment to freedom of speech quickly fell apart with Israel’s war on the population in Gaza and minister’s smears and condemnation of Palestine solidarity marches as “hate marches”. Under immense pressure from the Home Secretary, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley suddenly insisted hate crime laws “need redrawing”.

There has, unquestionably, been a significant increase in both attacks on visibly Jewish and Muslim communities, although some alleged “hate crimes” at protests — like claims (again by Braverman, back in October) about the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — are always vigorously contested.

Protesters arrested

All of which highlights the complexities of what is and is not hate crime and brings us to Newham Council in east London setting a controversial budget that included more than £22 million of cuts.

Councils up and down the country are voting to cut services too and packed meetings are facing local protests. In Newham, the budget debate on Thursday 29 February 2024 was fractious, with councillors heckled and the public gallery eventually cleared. This is not the first time this has happened in the borough.

However, over the following 48 hours, three campaigners who had protested at the meeting were visited at their homes by the Metropolitan Police and arrested for racially aggravated public order offences, two just before midnight the following evening and the third on the Saturday morning. All we held for almost 24 hours and eventually released on pre-charge bail pending a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decision on whether to charge them, which will not happen until May.

It is alleged that the three committed an antisemitic hate crime by hissing a councillor who was presenting an amendment to the budget and who is Jewish. They all deny these accusations.

Even if — as Newham council claims — events at the budget meeting had reached the threshold of “threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour” under section 5 of the Public Order Act (rather than the noisy cut and thrust of local politics, repeated around Britain whenever services are jeopardised), it remains unclear why these three people in particular, not others, were targeted by the police.

The assumption will grow it is because they are all local organisers. More than anything else, this looks like the weaponisation of political outrage at a time when there is a national panic about “extremism” and “threats” to elected representatives.

It is also difficult to see how these arrests meet the CPS definition of a hate crime — even if perceived by the complainant or others as motivated by hostility or prejudice — unless there is demonstrable evidence of intent. In any event, prosecutors must consider whether it is in the public interest to bring a case to court.

‘Antisemitic trope’

What has followed subsequently, though, has been quite extraordinary. Newham Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz put out a condemnatory statement with a detailed etymology of why the council insists hissing is not only antisemitic, but that also invokes the genocides in Rwanda and Myanmar.

To begin with, this seems recklessly prejudicial to individuals who are still awaiting the possibility of facing prosecution. Convicting them in a press statement seems like encouraging the CPS to look favourably on a “public interest” case for bringing charges and risks affecting their access to a fair and impartial judicial process.

It has already resulted in one of the three suspended from their job — without pay — by their employer.

Furthermore, it does seem that whoever in the council or the Labour Party drafted the Mayor’s statement has borrowed ideas about ‘dangerous speech’ and snakes as a “dehumanization trope” that they went looking for online but have failed to properly understand.

As this blog post by Paweł Trzaskowski for the US-based Dangerous Speech Project points out, animal symbolism as a sign of contempt for opponents is far from unusual but is “typically not treated as something very harmful or dangerous”. A recent example of this — ugly and callous, certainly, but not in itself dangerous — was a Labour Party source reportedly referred to Labour councillors leaving their party over its policy on Israel’s destruction of Gaza as “shaking off the fleas”.

However, the Dangerous Speech Project does highlight how this certainly can change — as soon as words of images are intended to “convince audiences to condone or commit violence” against members of another group.

Context is essential though: particularly, for example, if the message comes from an influential speaker or the audience is notably susceptible to inflammatory language. There must exist, however, demonstrable evidence of an intention to encourage such violence.

Much of the language and arguments about the historically negative symbolism of snakes used in the Mayor’s statement does seem remarkably similar to Trzaskowski’s blog post, as are the genocidal examples the Mayor cites. Rwanda and Myanmar certainly fall into a category of ‘dangerous speech’. However, there is a world of difference between them and the implication that simply hissing at another individual, without any of this important context, is automatically a common dehumanization trope. It is a wild and unjustifiable comparison to make.

Amplified out of context

Instead, the council’s position appears to have embraced the circular reasoning of a Labour councillor who felt offended, who insisted without explanation (other than the fact he is Jewish) that the only possible motivation was antisemitism and a council that later found — most probably from searching, as I did, online — a ‘trope’ that in certain specific circumstances has been used to fuel violence against entire minority groups. It then amplified this out of context.

Suddenly, hissing an elected representative has become the same ‘dangerous speech’ as Donald Trump telling supporters that immigrants are “destroying the blood of our country” or Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant telling his troops to see Gazans as “human animals”.

I have seen social media comments defending the Mayor’s statement by pointing to hissing of Spurs fans by rival supporters as an indicator that this trope is somehow well-known as an allusion to gas chambers. But once again, context matters: in this case quite specifically the decades of Chelsea’s (and West Ham’s) unchecked antisemitism directed at Spurs’ perceived Jewish heritage. As someone who is both a part-owner of an anti-fascist football club and has been involved in anti-racist organising for decades, I know all about this, but plenty of others will never have heard of it.

Offending a councillor, moreover, did not take place in the context of a public meeting where accusations of antisemitism were more often directed against expressions of solidarity for Palestinians, or where Jewishness and its relationship to the actions of the Israeli state might appear to have been unfairly conflated. It wasn’t a heated debate about the war in Gaza, but a meeting about cuts in Newham.

In this instance, therefore, it is not even clear that anyone hissing a non-Orthodox Jewish councillor would automatically have known, without prior knowledge, that he is Jewish, never mind whether hissing is an antisemitic ‘trope’.

So where was the demonstrable evidence of significant harm or racially motivated intent to threaten or abuse that warranted the police deciding to make arrests?

Defend the Newham 3

Sometimes retrospectively tying up opponents with weak evidence of an antisemitic trope is effective, as climate activist Greta Thunberg discovered, but it can also backfire.

Unfounded claims about a blue octopus toy on the BBC’s ‘University Challenge’ quiz programme led to a libel case, the payment of damages and an apology from a Tory peer who had patently weaponised accusations of antisemitism against the only visibly Muslim contestant.

Newham council appears unconcerned that an escalation into criminal charges might backfire. However, it does seem to recognise, by invoking concerns about rising Islamophobia, that a stereotypically racialised characterisation of predominantly Muslim protesters as “bullying” and “abusive” might lead to a backlash.

Worse, Newham council appears untroubled about crossing the ethical red line of using its political capital to pressure the police to arrest people on the thinnest of evidence—three local residents who now have to wait for a decision that has already had a profound impact on their lives and their careers.

Meanwhile, local government minister Michael Gove and current Home Secretary James Cleverly have been eager to jump on this as more evidence of the need to crack down on the right to protest even further.

Nobody who genuinely cares about freedom of expression, rising antisemitism and Islamophobia or even the physical safety of councillors can benefit from any of this. It is clearly unjust.

That is why I hope the Newham 3 who were arrested are exonerated soon and why I hope they then sue the police for wrongful arrest.

Although it is expensive, they may also have the option, like the ‘University Challenge’ student, to sue for libel if they receive the legal support they would need. I hope they get that opportunity too.

NOTE: a campaign in defence of the Newham 3 is in its early stages and I will update this post with details when I have them