"Lawful protest and free speech are fundamental rights, but we cannot allow them to be abused to spread hate or cause disorder. The law must be fit for purpose and consistently applied. So said the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, last year on appointing Lord MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, to lead a review of public order and hate-crime legislation. He will soon report."
"For all who prize the historic right to protest, as have so many generations before us, the omens aren't good. Laws govern the right to protest, but one of the lessons I learned from my time as the solicitor for the family of Stephen Lawrence is that the law is not, as Mahmood put it, consistently applied: it does not listen to everyone in the same way."
Lord MacDonald, former director of public prosecutions, leads a review of public order and hate-crime legislation. Lawful protest and free speech are fundamental rights that can be abused to spread hate or cause disorder. Legal application is inconsistent, as shown by the unequal response to Stephen Lawrence's family. Racialised groups remain disproportionately unprotected because perception shapes law enforcement. Muslim communities record the highest levels of recorded hate crime in England and Wales, yet legal responses to Islamophobia face objections and narrow thresholds for religious discrimination. Public life treats Muslims as a single group with ascribed shared characteristics. Scholars show racial groups are produced by societal and institutional practice.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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