It ended, as fusses often do, with an almost inaudible whimper. After articles in the red-tops, columns in the Sundays, fury on blogs, and the ever present threat of \u2018Muslim anger\u2019, the Crown Prosecution Service, in the end, declined to press charges against the editor and guest editor of Clare College, Cambridge freesheet Clareification, who had the temerity to have a pop at organised religion in 21st century Britain.\n<\/p>\n
\nLet\u2019s be clear on this: Clareification was, in many ways, crass. The \u2018Clareifornication\u2019 column provided a peek into the sex lives of Oxbridge undergrads that few of us wanted (and one can be assured that, for those who do want, there are suitable websites, possibly advertised in the classified sections of Tatler and Harpers and Queen).\n<\/p>\n
\nThe admittedly tongue-in-cheek analysis of the candidates for president of the Union of Clare Students peddled the kind of \u2018so post-modern it\u2019s pre-modern\u2019 bigoted humour that has served Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais so well.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd yes, there was some material that could be perceived as offensive to religion \u2013 the words \u2018I hate Islam\u2019 being a pretty accurate reflection. There was also a critique of the inconsistencies and inaccuracies of St Mark\u2019s gospel, which some Christians may have found offensive should they have bothered to wade through it. But frankly, whether the material was \u2018offensive\u2019 or not isn\u2019t even part of the argument. In a free society, ideas, no matter how dearly held, must be open to ridicule.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs Homer Simpson once said, there\u2019s a time and a place for everything \u2013 college. So why did this prime example of youthful high jinx\/idiocy make it all the way to the Crown Prosecution Service?\n<\/p>\n
\nThe issue seems to have gained ground when the Cambridge Evening News splashed big with accusations of \u2018vile racism\u2019 on Friday 9 February. The same report said college authorities had been \u2018bombarded\u2019 with complaints from \u2018enraged students\u2019. This came a week after the publication had originally appeared. The students involved had, at that point, already been told that they would be subject to a disciplinary hearing with a senior tutor at the university. By the time that hearing came to pass, it had transformed into a conference on damage limitation. But clearly the damage limitation didn\u2019t quite work. An early report said the college had made the police aware of the matter, but the police initially said that the case was \u2018matter for the university authorities to deal with.\u2019 As the media coverage grew, the police became involved.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe student who had edited the edition was moved from his rooms, initially, according to the university, to avoid door-stepping journalists. Later, he was moved from university property entirely, because of police concerns over his safety and that of other students.
\n
\nThis came after Cambridge Mosque issued a press release stating: \u2018The University\u2019s record of freedom of expression is a matter of record and of pride. However it is clear that incitement to religious and ethnic hatred is at all times immoral, and that its consequences for harmony between communities and nations can be grave.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nWhat followed was interesting. Rather than rally in uproar to the free speech barricades, the students at Clare seemed to close ranks, perhaps fearful of a class-based backlash against \u2018posh\u2019 Oxbridge students from the mid-market tabloids.\n<\/p>\n
\nTwo students, both the editor-in-chief and the guest editor, were questioned by police, and their files sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. Index on Censorship understands that the CPS did believe a crime had been committed under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, but did not press charges, as it would not have been \u2018in the public interest\u2019 to do so. Presumably the fear of courtroom demonstrations by Muslim groups outweighed the need to prosecute the students for having potentially incited, well, demonstrations by Muslim groups.\n<\/p>\n
\nFurther, one of the students involved claimed police told him that he had been wasting police time when they \u2018could have been investigating rapes\u2019, and that he should \u2018reflect\u2019 on the trouble he had caused. As the student put it, this seemed to demonstrate \u2018a warped understanding of blame and causality\u2019. When asked about this by, an investigating officer from Cambridgeshire police said he had \u2018nothing more to add from a police perspective.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Public Order Act seems to have been used as a proxy, shorthand incitement law. Rather than protect the students\u2019 right to free expression, the police took the option of reprimanding them under a catch-all charge.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred Act may be relatively toothless, but what it has done is to raise religious groups expectations that the law will be on their side in any free speech issue. Police reaction so far seems to have proved they are right.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It ended, as fusses often do, with an almost inaudible whimper. After articles in the red-tops, columns in the Sundays, fury on blogs, and the ever present threat of \u2018Muslim anger\u2019, the Crown Prosecution Service, in the end, declined to press charges against the editor and guest editor of Clare College, Cambridge freesheet Clareification, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}