Memorandum submitted by Dave Taylor (CJ&I 156)

Dear Members of Parliament,

I am writing to express my deep concern about the proposed amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which would make it a criminal offence to 'incite hatred on the grounds of sexuality'.  Long reflection on the philosophic, scientific, legal and practical issues involved has convinced me that the introduction of this type of legislation is ill advised and poses a considerable danger to freedom of speech and freedom of religion in our nation.

This particular amendment is both unnecessary and inequitable. All people are protected from assault and threatening words or behaviour under the current criminal law.  In addition, the law concerning incitement to commit a criminal offence would make it an offence for any person to incite an act of violence against another person, for whatever reason.  To specifically protect any one group (eg homosexuals, feminists) is inequitable, because it encourages that group (and opens other groups) to accusations of abuse or of illegally not protecting, not taking into account misunderstandings due to personality clashes, and that discussion requires differences of opinion to be expressed.  Even attempting to specifically protect all major groups leaves the possibility of loners being unjustly accused.  Therefore the law should be left as it was, equally applicable to everyone.

A question which needs to be addressed, therefore, is why this and similar group-specific legislation, is being proposed in the first place.  The philosophic issues cannot be evaded.  "Is the glass half full or half empty?"  Is the legal presumption to be that people are innocent until found guilty, or that Government is innocent and entitled to presume other citizens are likely to be guilty?   Are we encouraging people to aspire to a Christian family of the whole human race of which God is the loving Father, or are we stuck in a Nietzschian/Darwinian/Malthusianism in which those whose position of power has given them the illusion of being Supermen, who consider inconvenient mere humans as dispensible pawns in an international clash of Titans?   Nietzsche, compensating for his own feebleness with illusions of power; Darwin, seeing men as higher animals rather than potential Children of God; Malthus, rightly seeing the population problem but not the solution of learning how to deal with it intelligently.  

The evidence is consistently that "absolute power corrupts absolutely", that national policies are being decided by the power rather than the intelligence of pressure groups, and that where media control prevents these issues from being openly articulated we end up with police states run by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and George Bush (grandson of Hitler's financier and inheritor of the evil tradition of the Monroe Doctrine).   Should we be aspiring to be worthy members of a Christian-inspired European Community or Commonwealth, or are we (as General de Gaulle and Noam Chomsky have so clearly understood) American vassals shamefully willing to play the Trojan Horse to sneak back a fascist philosophy of European Union?

Given the extent of media control, a special responsibility falls on Members of Parliament, who are paid to represent their interests of the constituents and country, not their own interests.  Whether we end up with unjust laws and no opportunity to reject, let alone discuss alternatives to, the proposed power-based Constitution of Europe, depends ultimately on the philosophy they choose: whether to refill or drain the half-empty glass.  

October 2007