Bob Stewart MP convicted of 'hate crime'

Veteran Tory MP Bob Stewart was convicted of a hate crime last week, after being deemed to have committed a “racially aggravated public-order offence” during an altercation with a heckler on the street (Express, Telegraph, Times). According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) press release, “he used racist language towards the victim”, and demonstrated “racial hostility likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to those present at the time”.

Anyone reading that description of Mr Stewart could be forgiven for conjuring images of a card-carrying member of the National Front who regards everything that’s happened in Great Britain since Emperor Claudius’s invasion in AD 43 as evidence the country has ‘gone to the dogs’, and who has been reduced to eking out what meagre pleasure he can from the squalor of multicultural life via gratuitous public displays of extreme prejudice.

And yet raw footage of the incident reveals that the reality was rather different.

A video recorded by Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei from the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, shows him confronting Mr Stewart last December while the MP was leaving an event organised by the Bahraini embassy at the Foreign Office’s Leicester House.

Mr Alwadaei, who is off camera, can be heard accusing Mr Stewart of “selling” himself to Bahrain (the former Army Officer was stationed in Bahrain in the 1960s). Visibly annoyed, Mr Stewart responds: “Get stuffed. Bahrain’s a great place. End of.” A fractious exchange ensues, and at one point Mr Stewart can be heard telling Mr Alwadaei to “Go back to Bahrain”.

All part of the rough and tumble of democratic politics, you might think. Animal spirits. Rowdy persiflage. A boisterous kerfuffle. The sort of thing that, in the trite but irresistibly gnomic parlance of the tightly shirted modern football pundit, would be dismissed with the word ‘handbags’.

And yet the Metropolitan Police saw things differently – so much so, in fact, that when a complaint was lodged by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy regarding Mr Stewart’s off-the-cuff one-liner about Mr Alwadaei “going back to Bahrain”, they scurried off to launch an investigation.

The sorry denouement came last week at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Asked during the one-day trial how Mr Stewart’s comments made him feel, Mr Alwadaei replied: “I feel that I was dehumanised, that I was someone who is not wanted in the UK. I did not feel safe after that incident.”

Following the trial, Mr Stewart was found guilty of racially abusing a member of the public, convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence and fined ￡600. The court also let it be known that Mr Stewart would have been fined just ￡400 had it not been for “the seriousness of the hate crime he committed”.

As cautionary tales about the perils of perception-based policing go, it could hardly be improved upon. Writing for Spiked, Fraser Myers makes the point that the fact the CPS ever considered this spat to be serious enough to warrant prosecution nicely demonstrates that what constitutes a ‘hate crime’ is determined not by any objective criteria, but by the sensitivities and political biases of those working for the state.

Labour and the Lib Dems have since led calls for Rishi Sunak to act against what they describe as the “totally unacceptable” and “dangerous” behaviour of the backbencher – although the former Army Colonel has now cleverly outmanoeuvred them both with a masterful retreat, surrendering the party whip until a possible appeal against his conviction is resolved (Sky News).

If you’d like to help Mr Stewart cover his fine and all associated legal costs, click here. The veteran MP served in the Army for nearly 30 years, including stints in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and has pledged to donate to the Royal British Legion any amount above the level needed to meet his costs.