Are the police still allowed to use common sense? Trevor Barnes wonders
THEY say that if you go to the remote edge of that windswept moorland near
Killarney in south-west Ireland known as McGillicuddy’s Reeks, you will find a
sign. On this sign, so the story goes, is written an instruction. And the
instruction reads: "Do not throw stones at this sign." As an exercise in
futility it is matchless.
I was reminded of this sign last week as the Bill to outlaw religious hatred
made its way though Parliament, only to be watered down after what many saw as
a humiliating Government defeat. You see, this is the problem with rules,
regulations, and legislation. When ill-judged and otiose, they serve, like the
Killarney sign, to create offences where there would have been none, and
potentially to criminalise the law-abiding or the merely dissident.
The veteran Labour activist Walter Wolfgang found this out to his cost at
last year’s Labour Party conference, when he dared to heckle from the audience,
and was ejected and refused re-entry. Mark Wallace knows it, too. He is a
campaign manager for the Freedom Association, who fell foul of the Terrorism
Act of 2000 when he attempted to collect signatures outside the same conference
for a petition opposing ID cards.
Under the legislation, Mr Wallace was filmed by a police videocamera,
detained, and questioned by police officers. He has now been told that details
of his "offence" will be kept on file indefinitely. Potentially tarnished by
what he says are entirely spurious terror associations, he now fears his
freedom to travel abroad in the future could be compromised.
Now, the police, who one assumes are still allowed to use common sense and
good judgement, could have surely seen that Mr Wallace was no terrorist — that
no backpack, bulky clothing, or trailing wires were in evidence to suggest
impending mayhem. Yet still they swooped, with the full force of the law behind
them. Strange, however, that at last weekend’s London march against the Danish
cartoons depicting the Prophet, the Muslim youth who was wearing Hamas-style,
suicide-bomber fatigues escaped without having his collar felt until later. But
that is another story, and I digress.
Traditionally in this country, the rule of law has been balanced by the
principle of order. Some years ago at a quite different Islamist march in
London, I watched as a small but noisy group shouted inflammatory threats in
the general direction of the American Embassy. "Isn’t this incitement to
hatred?" I asked the officer in charge. "Shouldn’t you be doing something about
it?" Calmly and, I think wisely, he explained that the small demo was under
surveillance and that to wade in and make arrests would potentially exacerbate
a situation that was essentially under control. In other words, as there was
order, why bother with the blunt instrument of the law.
Increasingly though, we seem to be losing sight of this dual principle of
law and order, preferring instead to introduce such a volume of legislation
that judges (along with the Archbishop of York) have expressed concern. This
increase does little to keep us safe from robbery and violence, as the latest
statistics on street crime show.
The fact is that too often the laws we already have are underused. Take
stop-and-search. A sustained, targeted, and respectful campaign of
stop-and-search on city streets at known troublespots could make a serious dent
in knife crime, for instance. A regular police presence on our streets would
induce confidence and a feeling of security. Even the simple expedient of
sending officers out singly, rather than in twos (remember the police adage:
"Two coppers talk to each other. One copper talks to the public") could make a
difference to our sense of well-being.
Better to use what laws we have effectively before we hastily introduce new
ones that will criminalise everyone from the comedian who cries "Humbug" to the
pensioner who shouts "Shame."