Actually, Paul Gascoigne's request to his black bouncer (alleged to have been "can you smile please, because I can't see you") is indefensible. So no, I have nothing to say in Gascoigne's defence.
However just because I can't find anything good to say about Gascoigne's comment doesn't mean the ex-footballer should have got a criminal conviction.
Gascoigne was apparently charged under section 31(1)(c) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. A person is guilty of this offence if he commits an offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 which is racially or religiously aggravated. That's to say to commit an offence under the 1998 Act you must have committed an offence under the earlier Act with some religious or racial aggravation added on.
Section 5 of the POA says you're guilty of an offence if (inter alia) you use "threatening or abusive words or behaviour . . . within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby." Gascoigne certainly didn't use any threatening behaviour, so the allegation must have been that he used "abusive words".
Is "Can you smile please, because I can't see you" abusive? It suggests of course that by reason of the bouncer's dark skin he was hard to see. But that's not exactly abuse. Calling someone a fat cunt is abuse. Gascoigne's words may have been humiliating and insulting, but it isn't an offence to humiliate or insult someone (actually we know this specifically in the case of s.5 because it contained the word insulting until February 2014, when it was removed from the Act).
If Gascoigne's words aren't abusive he hasn't committed an offence. And were his words likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress? Harassment suggests a continuous course of behaviour; this was a one-off. A bouncer employed by Gascoigne is unlikely to have felt alarm. Distress seems a bit nearer the mark, although I'm surprised Gascoigne's barrister didn't argue that distress requires a degree of extreme pain beyond annoyance and offence.
So it looks as if Gascoigne had a reasonable chance of acquittal on either the meaning of abusive or the meaning of distress. And yet he, presumably on the advice of his brief, decided to plead guilty. Strange.
I worry desperately about the use of the law to impose liberalism's norms on public discourse. In case you think I'm alone in this, here's Matthew Norman, writing on the Gascoigne case recently in the Independent - "Personally, I think the infringement of the criminal law into matters of taste is clumsy and generally counterproductive, and that the sanctity of freedom of speech outweighs the need to protect people from being offended . . . in what surreal madhouse is an offensive joke automatically conflated with a criminal offence? Here we find the quality of mercy strained to destruction".
There is a place for constraint of free speech. Well actually two of them. The first is that if the words are defamatory you should be able to secure damages in the civil courts. The second is where the words either put a person in fear of violence, or make it likely that violence will ensue. Free speech is too precious to mess about with in any other circumstances.
And the best remedy for people like Gascoigne is to know them, pity them and, if persistent, shun and avoid them.
Tuesday 20 September 2016
Tuesday 13 September 2016
Grammar schools and the centre ground
Like a lot of people wobbling around the centre ground of British politics, I viewed the elevation of Theresa May with a certain amount of relief. She was bright, thorough, hard-working and capable. And she was not either Andrea Leadsom or Jeremy Corbyn.
But oh Theresa, what's this stuff about education?
Two quick points. Grammar schools suck in the brightest and best. Bully for them; but where does that leave everyone else? One of the biggest problems besetting working class children is that they are more likely to be brought up by parents who never got anything out of education themselves, and are less likely to be committed to its benefits. I know from my own kids' experiences that there is a strong anti-education ethos among some denizens of comprehensive schools. Bright, well-supported middle class kids are a modest corrective in such places. Diminishing their numbers would be a disaster.
And letting faith schools select more children by religious practice runs the return of grammars close for stupidity. Leaving aside the injustice (it's unfair to tell people that their children can't go to the local school their taxes have helped pay for, just because they practice the wrong - or no - religion), what does such division do for integration? It prevents it. Labour MP Angela Rayner stood up in the Commons and accused May of "Segregation, segregation, segregation". Given Labour's dismal record of encouraging multiculturalism that's galling to hear. But Ms Rayner is right. What Britain urgently needs is 20 years or so of kids of all faiths going to school together, falling in love, doing sport, going out clubbing, drinking cider in bus stops and all the rest.
Personally I would do away with state-funded faith schools altogether. When I put this to a Christian friend he said, "Yes, but you're forgetting that C of E schools are the last repository in society for teaching Christian values". Whether you think this is a good thing depends on your point of view; as a non-Christian I can value the immense contribution of Christianity to the Enlightenment whilst thinking that perhaps Christian values should sink or swim on their own. Certainly I think (and the Birmingham Trojan Horse experience bears this out) that Islamic schools are a catastrophe in the making (a family friend who works with the Government's Prevent scheme tells me he is very worried about radicalisation, which he says is breeding a society within a society; and this guy is staunch Old Labour with a lifetime's experience in social work).
I went to a private school (which, God knows, was like the Wild West in some ways), but I am not an enthusiast. Not even a Corbyn government would ban them (and I wouldn't want to live in a society so authoritarian), but their tax privileges are hard to justify. Private schools are not charities; not in a society where state education is freely available. They exist to provide safe haven and advantage for the children of the monied. Removing their charitable status would force many more bright, well-supported children into the state system. Those kids would cope, and their presence help the less fortunate.
Centre ground? Perhaps I've got so right-wing that I'm coming round the other way again. May out! Corbyn in!
But oh Theresa, what's this stuff about education?
Two quick points. Grammar schools suck in the brightest and best. Bully for them; but where does that leave everyone else? One of the biggest problems besetting working class children is that they are more likely to be brought up by parents who never got anything out of education themselves, and are less likely to be committed to its benefits. I know from my own kids' experiences that there is a strong anti-education ethos among some denizens of comprehensive schools. Bright, well-supported middle class kids are a modest corrective in such places. Diminishing their numbers would be a disaster.
And letting faith schools select more children by religious practice runs the return of grammars close for stupidity. Leaving aside the injustice (it's unfair to tell people that their children can't go to the local school their taxes have helped pay for, just because they practice the wrong - or no - religion), what does such division do for integration? It prevents it. Labour MP Angela Rayner stood up in the Commons and accused May of "Segregation, segregation, segregation". Given Labour's dismal record of encouraging multiculturalism that's galling to hear. But Ms Rayner is right. What Britain urgently needs is 20 years or so of kids of all faiths going to school together, falling in love, doing sport, going out clubbing, drinking cider in bus stops and all the rest.
Personally I would do away with state-funded faith schools altogether. When I put this to a Christian friend he said, "Yes, but you're forgetting that C of E schools are the last repository in society for teaching Christian values". Whether you think this is a good thing depends on your point of view; as a non-Christian I can value the immense contribution of Christianity to the Enlightenment whilst thinking that perhaps Christian values should sink or swim on their own. Certainly I think (and the Birmingham Trojan Horse experience bears this out) that Islamic schools are a catastrophe in the making (a family friend who works with the Government's Prevent scheme tells me he is very worried about radicalisation, which he says is breeding a society within a society; and this guy is staunch Old Labour with a lifetime's experience in social work).
I went to a private school (which, God knows, was like the Wild West in some ways), but I am not an enthusiast. Not even a Corbyn government would ban them (and I wouldn't want to live in a society so authoritarian), but their tax privileges are hard to justify. Private schools are not charities; not in a society where state education is freely available. They exist to provide safe haven and advantage for the children of the monied. Removing their charitable status would force many more bright, well-supported children into the state system. Those kids would cope, and their presence help the less fortunate.
Centre ground? Perhaps I've got so right-wing that I'm coming round the other way again. May out! Corbyn in!
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