Samuel Williams vs Lucy Connolly

For Samuel Williams, the Oxford PPE student who led a chant at the pro-Palestine march in London last weekend, to be successfully prosecuted the Police and the CPS will have to equate Zionists with Jews. I’m a Zionist, but I’m not a Jew. Someone like Zack Polanski is a Jew but, seemingly not a Zionist.

Allowing the pro-Palestinian marches week after week to chant anti-Zionist slogans is only justifiable if Zionists and Jews aren’t synonymous.  If they were the same, then the chants would be illegal.

Of course, there’s an elaborate charade going on. We all understand that the marchers mean ‘Jews’ when they say ‘Zionists’ but that the authorities have to believe that they don’t.

For Williams to be guilty of stirring up racial or religious hatred then Jews and Zionists have to be regarded as one and the same. If Zionists are neither a racial nor religious group then Williams, like Ricky Jones, who, with reference to white counter-protesters, wanted to “cut all their throats”, has committed no crime.

Equate Jews with Zionists and it means that much of the virulent anti-‘Zionist’ narrative that’s played out with impunity on Britain’s streets over the past two years was illegal, and the authorities should have acted to stop it.

As I write this, we don’t yet know Samuel Williams’s fate, whether he’ll be charged at all and, if so, what he’ll be charged with. However, in the light of both the Lucy Connolly case and the Ricky Jones case, the decision will be an interesting one.

My suspicion is that, while his actions are almost identical to Ricky Jones’s, Williams will not be prosecuted – though it may take months for this decision to be announced as the authorities will delay in the hope that the incendiary nature of the war in the Palestinian territories dampens down.

In contrast to the Connolly case, I doubt Williams will be held in custody, whatever his fate.

Why the different outcome for virtually identical actions? The answer lies in discriminatory laws. The law deems it less of a sin to demand that the throats of white people are cut than that Jews are ‘put in the ground’, or for expressing a lack of concern if migrants are burnt inside their hotels. If people of all creeds and all colours are equal, why does UK law not treat them equally? It’s a paradox: equality legislation is discriminatory!

Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred for a tweet in which (see full tweet below) she wrote, “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care”. Despite later the same day deleting the post, she was sentenced to 31 months in prison.

Ricky Jones pleaded not guilty to inciting violence at a protest in London. During an impromptu amplified speech to a crowd he said, with reference to other protesters nearby, who were mainly white that, “they are disgusting Nazi scum and we need to cut all their throats”.

In a previous article I wrote in the Daily Sceptic you can find a more detailed comparison of the two cases.

Connolly was prosecuted under Section 19 (1) of The Public Order Act 1986.

19  Distributing, showing or playing a recording.

(1) A person who distributes, or shows or plays, a recording of visual images or sounds which are threatening, abusive or insulting is guilty of an offence if —

(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or

(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby

For Connolly to be guilty of this offence her actions had merely to be “likely” to stir up racial hatred; no resultant violence was required. She could have been found guilty if someone, already predisposed to dislike migrants, having read her tweet was inclined to ‘hate’ migrants more.

Jones, on the other hand, was prosecuted under section 45 of the 2007 Serious Crimes Act (see below). Because the targets of his rant were ‘white’, with no protected characteristic, it wasn’t enough for him to incite ‘hatred’, there had to be the expectation of consequential violence against the target group.

45  Encouraging or assisting an offence believing it will be committed

A person commits an offence if —

(a) he does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence; and

(b) he believes —

(i) that the offence will be committed; and

(ii) that his act will encourage or assist its commission.

The jury didn’t think that either Jones or the crowd were about to ‘cut throats’, therefore he wasn’t guilty of the offence.

So, which way will the authorities jump? Will they decide Zionists are a group with a protected characteristic and treat Williams like Connolly? Migrants in Connolly’s case were deemed to be racial group, though they included people of multiple ethnic origin. In which case they would be likely to prosecute him under the 1986 Public Order Act, which was amended in 2006 to include religious as well as racial groups.

Or will they continue to treat Zionists as neither a racial nor religious group and fall back on Section 45 of the 2007 Serious Crimes Act? If so, taking their lead from the Ricky Jones case, the prospect of a conviction must be slight, in which case, Williams will walk free as no charges will be brought forward.

Personally, I don’t think any of these cases should have resulted in criminal charges. However, I fail to see that Connolly’s actions were any more reprehensible than either Jones’s or Williams’s. For the man on the Clapham omnibus, the law appears to be producing unfair outcomes. It’s time to rethink our incitement laws.