What a difference a jury makes. The acquittal today of Labour councillor and trade unionist Ricky Jones, after he called for far-right protesters’ throats to be slit at an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration in north-east London last year, reminds us why 12 ordinary men and women are an infinitely superior defence against illiberalism and overly harsh punishment than any ‘enlightened’ judge.
Last August, at a Stand Up To Racism rally in Walthamstow, in the wake of the anti-migrant Southport riots, Jones picked up the mic to denounce ‘disgusting Nazi fascists’, adding ‘we need to cut their throats and get rid of them’. He ran a finger across his neck for dramatic effect. A clip of his speech, which naturally received rapturous applause from the crowd, went viral, and he was charged with encouraging violent disorder.
To say that people were locked up for saying much less after Southport is an understatement. Racist memes landed some people in prison. But there was no serious prospect of Jones’s violent rhetoric being acted upon. There were no fascists in attendance to knife: the Walthamstow protest was called in response to rumours of a far-right demo that mysteriously never materialised. He also argued, apparently successfully, that he never intended those words to be taken literally and even edited them out of a clip he later posted. Unless you believe that rash, stupid words should result in a lengthy spell in prison, then this can surely be the only correct, proportionate, liberty-protecting decision. If only we’d seen more of them amid the post-Southport mania.
The reason we didn’t is that, unlike Jones, many of those nabbed for speech-related crimes last summer pleaded guilty. Had Northampton childminder Lucy Connolly – convicted of ‘stirring up racial hatred’ and sentenced to 31 months for posting on X, ‘Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’ – pleaded not guilty, she may well have been spared prison, too. That she remains inside while Jones has just walked free isn’t so much two-tier justice as it is two-tier legal advice. Not to mention two different offences – Jones’s charge of encouraging violent disorder, notes free-speech lawyer Preston Byrne, is a ‘narrower conduct offence that’s harder to prove’. Still, whether it was wise counsel or sheer bloody mindedness on his part, Jones’s decision to leave his fate in the hands of a jury of his peers, rather than some jaundiced, imperious beak, may well have made all the difference here.
This raises uncomfortable questions about the Southport speech criminals, many of whom pleaded guilty under the not-so-wise guidance of their duty solicitors. Hoping for leniency, many have ended up doing longer stretches than even violent criminals. Connolly received a heftier sentence than one Philip Prescot, an actual Southport rioter. He was part of the mob that menaced the town’s mosque. We might also ask why Jones, while remanded in custody at first, was later granted bail, while Connolly was not, piling yet more pressure on the defendant.
Depressingly, this is hardly anything new. The better advised – most often, the better-off – have always been less likely to see the inside of a cell. The original two-tier justice. But this will have surely been exacerbated by the climate of official hysteria after the Southport riots, in which the word came from the very top that those who engaged in hateful speech would be made as much an example of as those who partook in hateful violence. In which government social-media accounts blared out those chilling words, ‘Think before you post’, and the director of public prosecutions took to the airwaves to warn that even reposting bigoted things online could secure you one of those fetching grey prison tracksuits.
Jones and Connolly might not elicit much sympathy, jabbering darkly about slitting throats and burning down hotels. But many more people were caught in the riptide after Southport. People like Jamie Michael, the former Royal Marine from Wales who was charged with ‘stirring up racial hatred’. His ‘crime’ was to post a video on Facebook, merely calling for a public meeting about illegal migration and security around parks and schools. He was held in police custody for 17 days, and eventually sent home on a tag. Two different solicitors suggested he plead guilty, but Michael was having none of it and sacked them, allowing time for the estimable Free Speech Union to find out about him and furnish him with better advice. In the end, he was acquitted by a jury in just 17 minutes, one for every day he was remanded in custody. He told me his tea didn’t even have time to cool down before he was ushered back in for the verdict.
If we need to take a knife to anything, it’s to our speech laws. We should take some inspiration here from the US, where even Connolly’s and Jones’s words would be considered protected under the First Amendment. No one, no matter how hotheaded or hateful, should be arrested purely for what they say, provided they don’t stray into direct incitement to violence, or threats. But these jury acquittals remind us of another, even more essential, safeguard: ordinary people. If you are unlucky enough to have your collar felt by the speech police, stop, think, get in touch with the Free Speech Union, and trust your peers. If there is hope, it lies in the jurors.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater
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