Why criminalising abuse of our soldiers is a dangerous idea

This weekend Ed Miliband made a fairly quiet announcement, after a trip to Afghanistan, that Labour would make it a specific criminal offence “to discriminate against members of the armed forces”. He proposed to change the law so a physical or verbal assault upon a member of the Armed Forces would be classed as an aggravated crime, where being in the Armed Forces was the motive for that assault. The press office told me Labour would introduce this in the first Queen’s Speech if elected in 2015.

I’m surprised more people haven’t realised the gravity of what is being proposed here. In 2012 a teenager was arrested and found guilty of posting a rant about soldiers to his private Facebook account. As he was Muslim, the EDL tried to use the incident for political gain. A few months later, a Kent man was arrested for posting a picture of him burning a poppy on Facebook. He was eventually let off after his father pleaded that he was merely drunk and acting silly. Both did something foolish that most would find offensive, but they did not harm anyone or discriminate against anyone.

What Ed Miliband proposes could have an even more dangerous chilling effect on free speech. Imagine a scenario where an army general goes on TV and proposes military action against another country. What if hundreds of people took to social media to criticise his words using colourful language. They would all be arrested. What if I criticised British military action in another country? How would that be exempt under such a law? The police could argue my opinion constituted a verbal assault on soldiers. The above arrests illustrate that the police already misuse other laws along these lines.

My father served as an officer in the Indian army for decades before retiring. My brother was an officer in the British army for four years. I have a lot of respect for members of the Armed Forces who risk their lives to protect our country, even as I opposed wars such as the one in Iraq.

Miliband’s commitment was sealed after research by Lord Ashcroft showed that nearly 20% of military personnel has been refused service in pubs, hotels and shops because they were in uniform. It also found that 6% have been attacked in the street and 21% have had strangers shout abuse at them merely because they were soldiers.

These are awful statistics and I would hate the idea of people, who could easily be my father or brother, being abused merely because they served in the army. I also agree that service personnel losing their jobs must get every chance to move smoothly from military to civilian life, as Jim Murphy MP has said.

But creating such a law is the wrong way to deal with the problem. The United States has a much more patriotic culture where soldiers are treated like celebrities, yet their constitution gives odious people like Westboro Church the right to protest with signs saying ‘Pray for More Dead soldiers’.

Many of the laws against discrimination on the basis of race and religion, which Miliband wants to model this on, are also misused and rarely protect those they were meant to help. The law against discrimination on the basis of religion hasn’t helped Muslims avoid discrimination at all – in fact verbal abuse against them has risen in recent years. Prosecutions under the Race Relations Act too are very rare and did little to change minds on racism.

I repeat: I find it abhorrent that soldiers who risk their lives to protect our freedom are abused for wearing a uniform. But there are laws already to protect them from abuse. If we want Britons to have more respect for our soldiers, we have to convince them that such respect is warranted, not try to beat them into submission with laws.

Britons already face an unprecedented attack on our right to free speech as the police misuse the Malicious Communications Act to arrest people for saying things on social media. Remember Paul Chambers being arrested for making a joke about “blowing up” Robin Hood Airport?

This law could be used to effectively silence or criminalise opposing British military action, a massive setback to our tradition of free speech.

Labour certainly won’t change any attitudes towards the Armed Forces that way – it may end up creating more resentment and criminalise many people who it wasn’t intended for. That would not serve the interests of the our soldiers.