Chillingly, Scotland has introduced a new law to, in effect, end free speech there. Knowing this, I reflected on two notable authors, George Orwell and J. K. Rowling. The first envisioned in both Animal Farm and 1984 a fictional world where truth no longer mattered because only one ‘correct’ view of the world prevailed. Orwell, inspired by his experience and detestation of Communism, gloried in Britain’s very different way of life, at the cornerstone of which is the freedom to debate and disagree.
J. K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, has become a contemporary champion of free speech as forces as dark as anything she invented in print threaten the very right to challenge any ‘politically correct’ assumption; contradict anyone’s deeply held sentiments; even to express an ‘unfashionable’ opinion. Which is why when, last week, a new law came into force meaning that something said which might cause offence can be deemed criminal, she spoke out. Even children can report their parents to Police Scotland, with its 500 ‘hate crime champions’ at more than 400 new reporting centres, including one in a Glasgow sex shop and another at a mushroom farm.
If an individual feels anything said might be hateful, they can still report a crime without proof. In other words, creating the ‘wrong impression’ may be a hate crime. What a far-cry from a proudly open society Orwell lionised. This new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 is the product of a liberal political culture which dictates what is and isn’t ‘acceptable’ thinking.
Laws which deal with threatening behaviour already and quite properly exist, and inciting violence or terrorism have long, rightly, been illegal. But what now prevails in Scotland is the equivalent of a modern, secular blasphemy law in favour of those who are perpetually offended. J.K. Rowling has explained how this new law would criminalise women especially who seek to point out that transgender individuals committing sexual offences are not actually biological women! Disturbingly, within 24 hours of this new law going live, over 3,800 new crimes have already been reported. No one is safe as police time is being wasted on fictious or malicious claims while real crimes, which ruin lives, go uninvestigated, and so unpunished.
Here in England, the police have been provoked by activist lawyers and militant protestors to overstep their role. In 2022, my colleague Bob Stewart MP was convicted for a “racially aggravated public order offence” for telling a Bahraini protestor – who was shouting at him outside the Bahraini embassy – to “go back to Bahrain”! Thankfully this outrageous conviction has been quashed, but much more needs to be done.
But Bob Stewart was not alone in his ordeal, as according to Big Brother Watch by July 2022 there had been 120,000 of such non-crime hate ‘incidents’ recorded in the UK, all of which could appear on an enhanced DBS check. Which is why my colleague, the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, was right to clamp down on these ‘incidents’ by issuing new guidance on the recording of so-called non-crime hate incidents to ensure that our police prioritised freedom of expression.
Our society has apparently accepted that the private experience of individuals is a proper matter for the state – that hurt feelings are as much the concern of the law as murder or theft. Yet simultaneously activists feel at liberty to bear banners calling for violence against Jews or glue themselves to roads to stop ambulances on emergency calls.
This juxtaposition between the treatment of people expressing different views – and its manifestation in law in Scotland – is the product of a minority of Britain-hating activists who seek to make us ashamed of the very things that have, over centuries, made Britain a what it is. Suella rightly condemned the liberal elite which sees everything “through the lens of race or gender, plead victimhood and point the finger at an oppressor.”
When Orwell wrote his perpetually salient books, the Cold War – between the free West and the Communist East – had started following the fall of the Nazi menace. Yet since, as the ‘free world’ has lost its grip on the relationship between moral values and political decisions, precious freedoms are slipping from our grasps.
Just as Orwell stood against all forms of totalitarian government in the 20th century, J. K. Rowling is taking up his mantle in the 21st, daring the police to arrest her for simply expressing opinions. Her brave stand against the liberal left’s ‘Big Brother’ law deserves the support of all who cherish the freedoms that make Britain great.
