Just one week on from when UKIP councillor, Daryll Pitcher, spoke about the ‘supposed’ increase in the number of racially-related incidents around Brexit, the new Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has announced that hate crime policing will be reviewed because of the post-Brexit “hate crime surge”.
Cllr Pitcher voted against a motion to condemn racism, xenophobia and hate crimes and during his speech at full council last week – condemned by many in and out of the chamber – he said the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) had only been able to find nine reports of hate crime in the whole of London.
Checking the sources
After publishing our report on the debate, OnTheWight got in touch with Cllr Pitcher for details of his source. He said he’d found the information in an article on the Spiked Website, but that the original source was on the Institute of Race Relations Website. He also included a more comprehensive reply (embedded below).
OnTheWight took a look at the IRR article – which was an overview of racially-motivated harassment that took place in a two week period following the Brexit result – and discovered immediately that the list of reports was, as the author stated, “in no way exhaustive”.
Selective quoting
OnTheWight asked Cllr Pitcher why would have selectively quoted from the article – he mentioned only nine reports of hate crimes in London, when the article mentioned a further 64 incidents across the country (in its “non-exhaustive” list).
Pitcher: “I didn’t double check their claim”
He replied,
“As the Spiked report noted, and to be absolutely honest I didn’t double check their claim, only nine of those listed could be considered a violent act.”
However, this is not what Cllr Pitcher said in the chamber. He didn’t state the nine reports in the IRR article were ‘only’ violent acts.
As was pointed out in the comments on our report last week, an alternative source might have been the Guardian report, which stated “Police recorded a 42% rise in complaints of hate incidents – more than 3,000 – in the weeks before and after the EU referendum.”
Pitcher: “Important to have opposing views”
Cllr Pitcher also said,
“It is clear that your readers do not all agree with what I have to say, but I think it is important to have opposing views in one’s life every now and again.”
Cllr Pitcher’s comprehensive reply
Cllr Pitcher has provided an extended comment on the debate below. Click on full screen icon to see larger version.
Image: renneville under CC BY 2.0
