Recent Developments in, and Present Position of, Incitement to Racial Hatred

Date01 April 1978
Published date01 April 1978
AuthorA. N. Khan
DOI10.1177/0032258X7805100207
Subject MatterArticle
A. N.
KHAN,
M.A.,
Dip.Ed.(Engl.);
M.A.(Litt),
LL.B(Pak.);
F.I.L.;
A.F.A.I.M.
Lecturer in Law, Dep.
of
Management", The University
of
Western
Australia
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
IN,
AND
PRESENT POSITION OF,
INCITEMENT
TO RACIAL
HATRED
Should the sanctions
of
criminal law be invoked to make racial
discrimination
and
incitement
of
racial
hatred
undesirable? A lot
of
discussion has taken place on this topic.
It
is
not
the aim
of
this
paper
to repeat these arguments,
but
to explain the recent past
history
and
the present criminal legal elements
of
the subject.
However, it may be observed
that
it
had
been decided earlier in the
developments
of
the Race Relations Law
that
while criminal law
can be
of
use
and
help in giving some protection to racial minorities
against the incitement
of
racial hatred, its desirability was question-
able in the area
of
racial discrimination.I
The 1965 Act
The
Race Relations Act 19652created a new offence
of
Incitement!
to Racial
Hatred."
Previous to this, incitement to racial violence
(not
necessarily hatred)
had
to be dealt with,
and
tried under, various
branches of the criminal law, e.g. Sedition:" Public
Order
Act
1936;6
Affecting aPublic Mischief';" Criminal Libel;" Affray;" Assault
and
Wounding
with intent to do grievous bodily harrn.!? But these
offences were extremely limited in their scope, application
and
pur-
pose;
and
were rarely used
and
seldom successful.'!
Furthermore,'?
"no
attempt
has
been made to invoke the offences
of
conspiring to
corrupt
public morals (where no violence is involved).
The
judges
have often seemed to echo Gladstone's sentiment
that
in this
country
there is a great
and
just
unwillingness to interfere with the expression
of
any
opinion
that
is
not
attended with danger to the public peace't.P
Such crimes, as mentioned above, were
not
meant to,
and
were ill-
equipped to cope with, the new social evil against a new minority.!"
"These
ponderous
weapons
tend
to be invoked rarely.
It
was felt
that
the law needed to be amended at the lower level in
order
to
combat
racial incitement".15
The
aim
of
S.6
of
the Race Relations
Act
1965 was to penalize
incitement to racial
hatred,
without
bringing in the breach
of
the
201 April 1978

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