How Not to Kill Bad Ideas.

Somebody from my home town has today been found guilty of using racially inflammatory language on his website and given a suspended jail sentence. He’s an ex BNP councillor. For the benefit of those who don’t know, the BNP is a far right British political party composed of small minded thugs who want the country swept clean of all skins that are not properly white.

So let’s be sensible here. Holding racist views isn’t illegal. From what I can gather from earlier reports, the charge related to a term he used. He called black people ‘darkies,’ and this was deemed to be racially inflammatory. You could reasonably argue, therefore, that the full weight of the law has been thrown at him for using a politically incorrect word, and that’s likely to inflame the very problem that the action is supposed to be addressing. It makes him a martyr to the believers, and it’s likely to make the waverers stop and say ‘Hang on a minute. This is ridiculous. The bloke’s got a point, hasn’t he?’

This man is contemptible; his party is contemptible; everything it and its followers stand for is contemptible. But it’s more than that: it’s small minded and obviously pathetic. So shouldn’t we be finding a way of holding it up to ridicule, instead of trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer? If the culprit had been actively involved in orchestrating violence towards black people, then prison would be where he belongs. But what he actually did was express an opinion – albeit bigoted and narrow – and did so using politically incorrect language. The giving of a prison sentence, suspended or not, is only likely to be seen as nanny state once more strangling herself with her own knickers and being unable to know where sensible lines should be drawn.

The strong arm of the law won’t kill prejudice. The law has never been able to kill ideas, and rightly so. It takes the right kind of education to do that.