Nothing good ever happens after midnight according to sports managers. This unwritten law for elite athletes was broken by the best women’s footballer in the country, Sam Kerr more than a year ago.
Kerr has pleaded not guilty to the charge of racially aggravated harassment of a police officer in Twickenham, southwest London, on January 30 last year, amid a dispute about a taxi fare. She was charged by summons six weeks ago.
We could wring our hands, furrow our brows and tut-tut her behaviour which clearly was not exemplary but what this matter reveals is that the UK’s laws which aggravate offence perceived or felt on the basis of ethnicity or race will always be problematic and divisive.
The offence which allegedly took place 14 months ago last year and has only bubbled to the surface after Ms Kerr received a summons by mail earlier this year speaks of a criminal justice system that is choked with unnecessary or problematic prosecutions. All of this occurs while the UK faces a spike in violent offending.
Football Australia is said to be incandescent with rage at their star but to be certain, Sam Kerr is not the current Australian captain of the Matildas. In the normal course of events, she would not be available for selection for the Matildas for at least eight months. Her on- and off-field responsibilities rest entirely with the Chelsea FC who have been publicly supportive of their striker.
Elsewhere in the court of public opinion, Kerr has been labelled a racist or cheered on by groups that normally decry racism. There have been calls for her to be sacked as captain. Former Socceroo, Craig Foster believes Kerr should be stood down and suspended. Foster argues this would provide Kerr with a valuable education on the vagaries of race and ethnicity.
It all seems a tempest in a pint glass for a night out on the booze that went a bit wrong.
During the Bodyline series 1932-33 third Test in Adelaide, England captain Douglas Jardine is said to have been called a bastard by an unnamed Australian cricketer in the slips cordon. Furious with the sobriquet, the imperious Jardine made his way to the Australian dressing room and knocked loudly.
The door was opened by the Australian vice-captain, Victor Richardson. Jardine demanded to know the identity of the sledging slipper. Richardson turned to the Australian team in the rooms and uttered the most famous of all cricket sledges. “Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”
The story (one version has then tour manager Pelham Warner knocking on the Australian dressing room door), is possibly apocryphal but it speaks of Australia’s rich colloquial language, where calling someone a bastard is less likely to be an insult associated with one’s parenthood and ranges from a rough expression of distaste to affection.
Jardine was a bastard. Many of his own teammates thought so, including the Eighth Nawab of Pataudi who refused to field in leg theory field placings in the second Test in Melbourne and got dropped for the rest of the series for his trouble.
Jardine was also most certainly a white bastard by way of ethnicity and it must be said, complexion. Jardine was Indian born to Scottish parents, educated at the Winchester School and the University of Oxford.
But apparently we can’t call him that now. Not in the UK anyway where race-based laws have the force to aggravate a simple public order offence to something far more serious. The offence allegedly occurred in the wee hours where Kerr is said to have had a chunder in a cab, argued with the cabbie over the fare and then engaged in some contretemps with a police officer. What might have been a light public order offence – drunk in public, offensive behaviour et cetera is now bubbling with racial tension.
Her defence claims she did not call the cop “a stupid white bastard” as alleged but a “stupid white cop”.
Does it matter under these silly laws? Not in black letter law terms. Anyone can call someone a bastard, even a copper and in the normal scheme of things there would be no action taken. Call them a white or black or brown or yellow or mint green bastard or cop and all of a sudden the law becomes a prosecutorial sledge hammer.
Kerr has been charged with 1(1)(b) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 where a public order offence under the Public Order Act 1986 is aggravated by a term of racial abuse where what she is alleged to have said to a police officer caused said walloper to feel harassed, alarmed or distressed. Obviously, this is not a question of race-based discrimination of someone denied employment or access to services based on their race or ethnicity. The police officer has suffered no actual loss or been restricted or restrained by the force of Kerr’s words.
Laws of this kind, perhaps created with good intentions, serve only to divide than unite. Here we have at best an alleged misdemeanour now rendered into a possible prison sentence (the maximum penalty ascribed is six months in jail) on the basis of words uttered and offence taken.
We might also conclude the police officer might have been a touch sensitive but that is looking in the wrong place, too. The police officer merely used available laws to charge Kerr. It’s the lawmakers that have created the problem.
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