Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, like other noble Lords I have experienced religious insults. I was brought up in the Glasgow Catholic community and when we made our way to school there were regular taunts about the Pope’s sexuality and whether he was indeed the anti-Christ. My identity remains very strongly linked to that background and I am conscious of the way that obscenities and prejudice can disfigure people’s lives. But people within communities can be torn between their loyalty to their tribe and their desire to be freed from the stranglehold of excessive dogma. Perhaps true confidence of one’s place in the wider polity comes when one can comfortably laugh at aspects of one’s own belief system and see them from the perspective of others. Perhaps laughter only comes comfortably when one’s sense of belonging has become secure. It may be that at this moment there is a great deal of insecurity. But I want to speak for the importance of laughter, and of laughter at oneself. I particularly remember the liberation of laughter when Tom Lehrer sang ““The Vatican Rag”” in the 1960s. Although it gave the clergy, and my mother, heart failure, I remember the words very well today. It went like this, but I’m not going to sing!"““Then the guy who’s got religion will      Tell you if your sin’s original.       If it is, try playing it safer,      Drink the wine and chew the wafer.      Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate””." For many, Tom Lehrer was utterly sacrilegious but by being way out there in the scurrilous zone, he and other satirists lifted a taboo and made more space for dissent about contraception, women’s reproductive freedom and the authoritarianism of the Church. I mention that because women in the Muslim community have come to me and spoken about their concerns about this law. It goes back to the very phrase that was used by the Lord Chancellor, ““the chilling effect””. Because the women who work at Southall Black Sisters or at the Newham Asian Women’s Rights Group, or who work with women who have faced domestic violence or authoritarianism inside their own families and communities are very anxious that there should be space in which they can argue for a better position for women. They are very concerned that this law will have the very ““chilling effect”” that is being pushed to one side and is not seen as being a matter of concern. I am also concerned about the way in which we are raising expectations that will lead to disappointment. As other noble Lords have said, this is not blasphemy legislation. But I am afraid that many within communities believe that it is and when it fails to fulfil their expectations that it will mean successful prosecutions of things in the media, books, television programmes or portrayals that they find unacceptable, there will be people from minorities who will feel disappointed that prosecutions are not brought. The other great problem in this particularly sensitive time is that we will probably see it used most effectively against radical Muslims. The fear that it might inflame further disaffection and a sense of being particularly spotlighted is a difficulty of which we should be very conscious. We should also look again at the value of free expression. It seems very much the prerogative of the liberal classes, the intellectuals in the universities or in the media. But it is one of the values that we should be extolling when we are talking about the things that Britain stands for. For many new communities, particularly people who have come from emerging democracies or from places where the traditions of democracy were not well rooted, the idea of free expression seems less important. We have to be making the arguments for why it is absolutely important to have free expression as one of those very values that we should be looking to when we are presenting the things that should be uniting us as a nation of all colours and religions. We should be making sure that the arguments are made well. We have to be capable of debunking, mocking and, indeed, taking apart some of the things that are presented as being about religion. So often I am told by those in all of our religions that the holy books that are pointed to are rarely as prescriptive as claimed. I ask lawyers to look at the Public Order Act again. It is my submission that we will find the answer to those problems in its drafting. It has been working successfully; we just have to be more active in making it work for us.