Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray
It was in early 2022 that I first became aware of this apparently heinous crime. Someone on social media had, I recall, linked to a news item which reported that police were appealing for the help of the public in their hunt for a person, or persons, who had placed ‘illegal’ posters around the town of Largs in Ayrshire.
According to the investigating officer, the posters contained derogatory material which amounted to a ‘hate crime’.
I was curious. We were, after all, living in an age when, in some people’s eyes, causing any sort of offence constituted a crime, and police across Britain were rushing around and hunting down anyone guilty of ‘wrong-speak’. For example, formal police investigations had been launched into the display of stickers in Oxford that declared a woman to be an ‘adult human female’ and in Perthshire that stated it was ‘okay to be white’.
So what, I wondered, had been so controversial about the posters in Largs that persuaded the local constabulary to make this special appeal for information?
I resolved to find out.