Policing ‘hate speech’ is just the latest method of enforcing Left-wing orthodoxy

One reason the police officers who turned up at Allison Pearson's door on Remembrance Sunday refused to tell her what they were investigating her for might be that they didn't want her to burst out laughing.

That was the reaction of barrister Sarah Phillimore three years ago when she learnt that the police were investigating her for a tweet in which she described her cat as a Methodist. Was she guilty of stirring up hatred against a group based on their religion, a criminal offence under the Public Order Act? In the end, the police concluded her comment wasn't in fact a " hate crime ", but recorded it as a "non-crime hate incident" (NCHI).

This particular form of policing – dutifully recording "non-crimes" – is more widespread than you'd think. According to FOI requests submitted by The Telegraph in 2019, the police in England and Wales had recorded 119,934 NCHIs since 2014 when the concept was first devised by the College of Policing, and that number has probably doubled since then. That's an average of about 65 a day. Little wonder that in parts of Essex, where Pearson lives, 93 per cent of car-related crimes last year went without a single suspect being identified.

NCHIs sound like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four , but the writer who deserves the most credit for anticipating them is Philip K Dick, who came up with the concept of "pre-crime" in Minority Report, his 1956 novella that later became a film starring Tom Cruise. In Dick's nightmarish society of the future, specially trained telepaths are able to foresee serious crimes and a division of the police is tasked with arresting the "perpetrators" before they have a chance to commit them.

NCHIs are a form of "pre-crime", with the idea being that if you put the frighteners on someone guilty of saying something "hateful", but which isn't against the law, you deter them from taking the next step, which would be to commit a hate crime.

That was the rationale provided by Paul Giannasi, a retired police officer and now the Hate Crime Policy Lead at the National Police Chiefs' Council, in a witness statement he submitted on behalf of the College of Policing when it was being sued by Harry Miller. Miller, an ex-cop, sued both Humberside Police and the arm's-length body after an NCHI was recorded against him in 2019.

"Failure to address non-crime hate incidents is likely to lead to their increase, and ultimately increase the risk of serious violence and societal damage," said Giannasi.

In his witness statement, Giannasi said this supposition – that NCHIs, if not "addressed", would inevitably lead to more and more serious crimes – was based on the work of Gordon Allport, an American social psychologist, who wrote a book in 1954 called The Nature of Prejudice. According to Allport, there's a pyramid of hate – a five-stage model – with disparaging remarks about "out groups" at the bottom and what he called "extermination" at the top. Failure to tackle this nexus of hatred when "stage one" rears its ugly head can lead to genocide.

When Harry Miller discovered the guidance the police were following was based on this 70-year-old book, he submitted an FOI request to the College to see if it had any evidence to substantiate this hypothesis.

Had any research been done to see if the number of hate crimes being committed in England and Wales had declined since NCHIs were introduced in 2014? No, was the answer. They couldn't undertake any research of that nature because the data is all held at a local level. He was told to direct his query to individual police forces.

Harry dutifully sent off FOI requests to all 43 police forces in England and Wales. Had any data gathering been carried out? The answer was no again. Those forces that bothered to reply all used the same phrase to explain why no such work had been done: hate crimes and NCHIs were "separate and distinct" and therefore couldn't be compared.

You would have thought that if the police are spending so much time investigating and recording NCHIs – 65 a day! – they'd be more curious to find out if it's having any beneficial effect. But apparently not.

Which brings us to the nub of the issue. The reason Essex Police dispatched two officers to interview a middle-aged journalist about a year-old tweet on a Sunday morning wasn't because they genuinely believed she might embark on a crime spree if her "hateful" behaviour wasn't nipped in the bud, or that she might incite racial hatred. It's because those responsible for devising national police policy – people such as Paul Giannasi – believe that if you openly flout the new woke public morality you should be punished.

Say something that upsets or offends a member of a minority group – or one of their self-appointed guardians – and you might get a visit from the police.

That's why you're more likely to have an NCHI logged against your name if you're Right-of-centre than Left-of-centre. To date, an ex-Conservative home secretary, a former vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and the ex-deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives have all had NCHIs recorded against them, but I don't know of a Labour MP who's suffered the same fate.

Those hailing from the Left who have been investigated, such as Ian Austin and Julie Bindel, have generally diverged from progressive orthodoxy.

This goes to show NCHIs are a way to keep people in line and persecute heretics, not prevent crime.

The last Conservative government could have got rid of them, but chose not to. Let's hope that if the Tories ever get back into power they put a stop to this thought policing.