Stirring Up Hatred

This book critically examines the development of the ‘stirring up hatred’ offences which are currently found within the UK’s Public Order Act 1986. Through a critical discourse analysis of key excerpts of parliamentary Hansard, the book constructs a detailed genealogy of the offences from the perspectives that shaped them. A novel application of theory on 'myth' is used to navigate the complex arguments and to trace ideas about identity and order across parliamentary debates, from fears of Fascism in the 1930s to condemnations of homophobia in the early 21st century. The story of the stirring up hatred offences told in this book therefore extends far beyond the traditional frame of a dilemma between regulating hate speech and safeguarding free speech: it is inextricably entwined with myths about law, race and national identity, and speaks to wider themes of coloniality, neoliberalism, white entitlement, British-Christian exceptionalism and the innocence of law. Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book challenges a wide range of assumptions about hate speech law and raises a series of considerations for developing forms of accountability that are less complicit in the harms that they are supposed to redress.

Jen Neller is Lecturer in Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, where she teaches Public Law and research methods. She is a co-author of the last two editions of Pearson’s Law of the European Union textbook and has published in Critical Discourse Studies and the International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. Jen obtained a PhD in law from Birkbeck University of London in 2020.