TRAINING OR INDOCTRINATION?

 

by TheJusticeofthePeace @ 20. Nov. 2010. – 12:25:05

There has been recently a mayoral election in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This east London area has been the first home for generations of immigrants to England. Huguenots, Irish, Jews, Bengalis and others have, over the centuries, brought the skills, knowledge, labour and vitality necessary for any country to continually re stock its gene pool both metaphorically and physiologically. In an area where once stood dozens of synagogues mosques are the preferred places where monotheistic religion is most widely observed. And naturally enough the majority of a population will gravitate in elections to sympathetic consideration of one of their own. Last month Lutfur Rahman was elected mayor amid what can be graciously described as a certain amount of controversy.

Whether or not this man is a fundamentalist Islamist sympathetically disposed towards peaceful initiatives that others would obtain by more direct action I know not. What is incontrovertible is that this incumbent is no Tory. He is a socialist by any other name and that philosophy if no other will be his underlying driving force. This is democracy. Courts are not democratic. Nobody elects our judges and magistrates. Police are not democratic. The Crown Prosecution Service is not democratic. These individuals and organisations are part of just one pillar holding up a system which allows the voters of Tower Hamlets and elsewhere to put whomsoever they please in the big chair at the head of the table. 

Under the auspices of the borough council is the “Tower Hamlets No Place for Hate Forum”; another organisation selecting a name as if in opposition to an implacable opposite number……..The Whatever Place for Hate.org. Be that as it may the Tower Hamlets lot have persuaded HMCS to provide “training in hate crime awareness” to magistrates at Thames Magistrates` Court. Not being involved in that court I know nothing of the detail but that does not prevent observations on the general principle being applied by HMCS.

The definition of what constitutes hate in the criminal law has expanded steadily in the last twenty years just as the term discrimination has expanded. From a state of affairs in the 1950s where the doors of bed and breakfast establishments in now fashionable Notting Hill could be daubed with crude signs, “No dogs, no Irish, no blacks” to situations where in addition to sexual orientation, race, skin colour, religion, marriage status, a tendency to become pregnant, weight, height, etc could be construed as criminal discrimination “hate” is the word of choice to describe transgressors by those in Tower Hamlets and elsewhere. Elsewhere could be said to include another east London area; Barking or it could include Stoke. Both these areas have the British National Party as a small but not insignificant first choice for voters. The B.N.P. is just the latest in a long line of quasi fascist groups with nazi tendencies which have existed here since before the second world war. But in the unlikely event of this disgusting apology for a political party gaining control of a town or borough council what would be the reaction if an offshoot with its own camouflage of respectability provided a recommendation to its local court for there to be awareness training on the over sympathetic application of discriminatory legislation in the application of the law? 

There is in my opinion no clear demarcation between magistrates` awareness of what constitutes discrimination and what constitutes the application of law in that respect. There are those legally qualified who would opine that the term “bloody foreigner” is enough to add “racially aggravated” to a charge. I disagree. Magistrates who choose to attend such courses as described and act upon the political motivations of those propagating such views should consider very carefully whether or not they can still do justice according to their oath of office.