Double jeopardy

When the residents of Dale Farm ‘Travellers’ camp in Essex was experiencing eviction from the part of the land on which they had built illegally, a separate case arose in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire of a Gypsy family abducting homeless men with false promises, then imprisoning them and treating their victims like slaves in the work they forced to carry out and the conditions they had to endure.  I knew that a roused right-winger would rally to attack those who used moral arguments to defend (with words) the Dale Farm inhabitants by deploying a case that had no relation other than an ethnic connection.  And sure enough at least one of these tosspots crawled out of the woodwork after co-habiting with the death watch beetle.  To draw parallels and say that the actions of a small set of people are indicative of the whole mass of their compatriots is cheap, blinkered and obtuse.  To say it of an ethnic minority could be construed as racist.  It’s like a foreign person saying that the English are all football hooligans - a grievous slander.

This week a country club owner and a former master of the hunt were convicted of serious offences – the former was given a 28-day jail sentence, suspended for two years, after breaking a restraining order, using threatening and intimidating behaviour to his victim and making false statements to the court throughout the process, the latter was jailed for four years for raping a married woman.  Yet we don’t hear the rabid representatives of the right casting dire aspersions about how nefarious are all country club owners or all huntsmasters.  I wouldn’t be surprised if pleas were made for out of character were the actions of both men, even after conviction.  Yet double standards come easy when one’s judgement is polluted with narrow-minded ideology and snobbery.