A bad way to tackle bigotry

OPINION | SCOTLAND’S OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOUR AT FOOTBALL AND THREATENING COMMUNICATIONS ACT

BY JIM SLAVEN IN EDINBURGH

THE Scottish Government’s Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act has proved to be one of the most contentious pieces of legislation to pass through the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish National Party Government’s legislation is aimed at outlawing offensive songs and chants at football and over the Internet. Opponents of the law — including all the Opposition parties, human rights groups and many Celtic and Rangers supporters — view it as an attack on free speech. It carries a maximum five-year prison term.

The OBFTBA (or the ‘Bigotry Bill’ as it’s known) is divided into two parts. The first deals with behaviour “offensive to a reasonable person” in the context of a football match. There are numerous problems with this. Firstly, it is not only behaviour at or near a football match that this law addresses but anywhere where football is being shown (like a club or pub, even in a different city to the match) and anywhere football fans are travelling (like a train or bus even if you are not actually going to a match). There is also no definition of what it is that is offensive to a “reasonable person”, so no one can be certain exactly which words are deemed criminal and which are not.

This legislation will do nothing to combat anti-Irish racism or religious bigotry in Scottish society — rather it increases police powers and limits free speech

The second part of the Bill deals with threatening behaviour over the Internet and this also carries a five-year imprisonment penalty. Whereas in the first part of the Bill the definition is extremely broad (“offensive to a reasonable person”), in the second part the law is very specific: it relates to behaviour “intended to stir up religious hatred”. Why this should be the case is one of many unanswered questions.

While ostensibly introduced to tackle behaviour at football matches following a particularly heated Celtic v Rangers clash, in fact the origins of this legislation can be traced to the earliest days of the first SNP government in 2007. After taking power the SNP made an error when they first got into office of downplaying the ethno-religious problem that Scotland faced. To mention it was said to be ‘talking Scotland down’ and the problem was deemed ‘not a priority’. As predicted at the time, this situation could not hold and when faced with some high-profile incidents the SNP were left vulnerable to the accusation that they had taken their eye off the ball and oversaw deterioration in the situation. Rather than pause at this point they made another mistake of accepting a wish-list from the police and prosecutors which quickly became the Offensive Behaviour Bill. Hence they compounded an error with another error.

 Statistics show that Catholics are up to six times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than Protestants in Scotland

Statistics relating to existing legislation dealing with religiously-aggravated offences show that Catholics are up to six times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than Protestants in Scotland. Despite this, much of the focus of the current debate has been on the cultural and political expressions of the Irish community at football matches. Politicians and police have made it clear that expressions of support for Irish republicanism or Irish reunification will be targeted. First Minister Alex Salmond has repeatedly referred to unacceptable songs about “a terrorist organisation” and the Scottish Premier League have, in their guidelines to clubs, directly linked offensive behaviour with organisations listed as proscribed by the British state’s Terrorism Act.

This legislation will do nothing to combat anti-Irish racism or religious bigotry in Scottish society — rather it increases police powers and limits free speech. The decision of the SNP to ignore the legitimate concerns of the law’s opponents and use its majority to quickly force it through parliament did nothing to enhance the reputation of SNP or the parliament. As one commentator put it:

“It is not a braw step for the brave new Scotland to create a new class of ‘Thought Crime’, criminalising opinions merely because parliamentarians find those views distasteful.”

The Scottish Government has shown no willingness to target the most reactionary elements of Scottish society. They have failed to address the institutional discrimination in the police and justice system which leads to Catholics being twice as likely to end up in prison as indigenous Scots. Indeed, in all the rhetoric about ending ‘sectarianism’ there has been no mention of the Orange Order despite the fact recent figures show there are more Orange marches in Glasgow than in Belfast and Derry combined.

‘Will middle-class rugby fans be arrested for singing anti-English songs?’

Comedian Frankie Boyle

Instead, the focus is on football fans and the likely outcome is that a generation of predominantly young, working-class people will be criminalised or at the very least drawn into the criminal justice system for behaviour no one believes is criminal. As comedian Frankie Boyle correctly argued:

“It’s basically an attack on freedom of speech. It’s the ruling classes telling the working classes what to say and think. Will middle-class rugby fans be arrested for singing anti-English songs? The idea is laughable.”