Hate Crimes Bill

May 2021

A person is arrested on suspicion of saying something likely to insult another person.

This is because the SNP’s Hate Crime Act has made this an offence in Scotland. If convicted the accused will have a criminal record and years inside.

Since the bill passed it has been open season on the Roman Catholic Church. Interest groups seeking test cases have targeted Catholics referring in any way to some doctrines of their faith.

As the existing law stood even before the Hate Crimes Act, changes in police procedure had made certain that anyone targeted in that way would have police notes recorded that said she had been investigated for a hate crime, and which made it impossible for her to be given enhanced disclosure. Many jobs dealing with the public now require enhanced disclosure. People were already careful in case their lives were ruined.

Isolated arrests took place while lockdown was still in force. Never had Scotland experienced in modern times a period in which the police were less accountable. The combination of a vague remit for the police during second lockdown and the passage of the Hate Crime legislation as drafted by the SNP took everyone by surprise. The issues really came together when a visitor to Sunday mass was insulted by the sermon, because the numbers attending were one over the regulation limit and somebody unthinkingly sang.

The Law Society, the Faculty of Advocates, the Humanists and the churches, had all expressed grave concerns about the bill but during lockdown, and recession, the preoccupied electorate didn’t know it was happening and didn’t really credit it if ever anyone told them.

The SNP were overwhelmingly re-elected in the absence of credible opposition and with considerable help from Boris Johnson. Even fewer people were willing to speak against independence this time than had spoken against it before the referendum that the SNP lost, in 2014. It seemed that many of those who did speak out against the impracticalities of independence had also made a number of comments likely to threaten or insult others on completely unconnected issues. A small spike occurred in the numbers stirring up hatred, who were dealt with.

No one saw in advance just how few days it would take for these lineaments of totalitarianism to get out of hand. As if in some country in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, suddenly factions of the SNP began to devour one another, though this went unreported.