The dreadful return of the non-crime hate incident

‘In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.’

These were the words of the UK High Court judge, Mr Justice Julian Knowles. In 2020, he condemned Humberside Police for turning up at a man’s place of work and previously recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against his name. The ‘non-crime’ that brought the police to an innocent man’s door? He had tweeted a limerick poking fun at the trans issue.

Since then, the use of NCHIs has been pared back significantly. Last year, Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman issued new guidance telling the police to only record an incident if there is a real risk that matters might escalate into a full-on crime and cause significant harm. This was widely cheered as a victory for free speech against an out-of-control thoughtpolice.

Worryingly, the High Court’s stark warning against the Orwellianism of the old NCHI regime seems to have been lost on new home secretary Yvette Cooper. The Telegraph reports today that she is planning to drop the Tories’ guidance and significantly expand police powers to monitor and make records of supposedly hateful speech. Apparently, this is part of a new ‘zero tolerance’ approach to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

It is hard to understate just how sinister this plan is – and what a huge threat it poses to free speech. Under the old rules, soon to be revived, NCHIs could be recorded by police whenever someone was accused of showing ‘hostility towards religion, race or transgender identity’. The police did not need any evidence of such hostility before recording an NCHI against your name. What mattered was that someone, somewhere, had perceived another person’s legal speech or non-criminal behaviour as being motivated by hate.

Worse still, if you were accused of this non-crime, then you might have got a phone call or a knock on the door from the police. Or you may not have even been informed at all. As the perception of hate was all that mattered, you would not have been able to defend yourself against an accusation in any case. While no one has ever served time for committing a non-crime, NCHIs can appear on enhanced DBS checks. This is police-enforced cancel culture.

Before the use of NCHIs was curtailed, hundreds of thousands had been recorded against Britons for all kinds of trivial incidents. Infamous examples included a man whistling the Bob the Builder theme song at his neighbour, a dog pooing on someone’s lawn, an Asian man calling his friend a ‘terrorist’, and an elderly woman beeping her horn at a slow driver. Not even children were safe from the speechpolice. Over 2,000 NCHIs were recorded against under-17s.

Just how authoritarian must our new home secretary be to see no problem with any of this? The return of the non-crime hate incident is yet another clear sign that free speech is in serious jeopardy under this Labour government.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.