Causing offence is not an offence

A Crawley Town FC fan has been arrested. Not for Hooliganism or drunkenness, but under the Public Order Act on suspicion of causing harassment, alarm or distress. He was featured on the Crawley Town Football Club music video for their forthcoming FA cup tie against Manchester United, where he apparently imitated an aeroplane, which apparently has offended the survivors of the Munich Air Crash.

Having seen the re-edited video without the offensive scene, I am not entirely sure that the Crawley Town fan was deliberately causing offence (basically it's a band with a load of blokes swaying about badly in the background, doing a plane in not that unusual on a Saturday night out is it?). But assuming he is deliberately causing offence why should he be arrested?

It does actually really concern me that somebody can actually be arrested for this, while (assuming he was deliberately causing offence) it isn't very funny, and I can understand why survivors may feel upset. But this surely it is not arrestable, comedians every day make grossly offensive statements, that may cause the recipient of that joke great alarm or distress. Recently, I went to a comedy gig where Frankie Boyle made a very nasty joke about Katie Price's eldest child Harvey. But would we want Frankie Boyle locked up for that? the answer is no, we don't want our comedians imprisoned for making offensive jokes as we would consider this an unfair restriction on our right to freedom of speech.

I do accept that there has to be limits to freedom of speech on broadly feminist, anti-discriminatory lines. I do also accept there has to be some anti-harassment element to restricting freedom of speech (we don't want a granny to be continually abused by kids shouting at her - this intuitively is wrong.) But I do not accept the case that somebody being alarmed or distressed should be protected. Being alarmed or distressed by a particular comment or action does not mean you are not necessarily right. My Great Aunt used to be greatly alarmed and distressed when a black man entered her shop, this certainly didn't make her right.

I have not read the legislation and it may be that the law was badly applied and that the Crawley Town Fan should never have being arrested (he is still on bail though). Either way the law needs to be amended so that people who are suffering harassment, i.e. are being bullied are protected, but people aren't arrested for making a bad joke.