John Terry and the army of twits

H.L. Mencken once contended that no one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. If the sage of Baltimore were still alive, it seems doubtful that a good look at Twitter would cause him to row back from this view, especially if he followed the chitchat around John Terry’s trial for a racially aggravated public order offence.

Given the fame of the defendant, and given the level of interest around the alleged crime of which he stands accused, it is not surprising that a lot of people feel inclined to comment on the case. But for anyone who prefers not to recognise Mencken’s very gloomy characterisation of the general public, the nature of many of the comments will perhaps come as an unwelcome surprise. This is because so many people feel able to state pretty strong views about the case without having first grasped even the most basic facts about it.

A lot of Twitter twits start out by labelling the case as being a clash between Terry and his alleged victim, QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. This is incorrect. This is not the case. Ferdinand has not brought a private prosecution. The tawdry affair being played out at Westminster Magistrates’ Court is R vs. Terry NOT Ferdinand vs. Terry. “R??” explodes an angry tweeter. “Who the fuck is R??”

R is short for Regina. AKA the Queen. You know. That dear old lady who has been our unelected head of state for the last sixty years. 

For the avoidance of further doubt, this is a CRIMINAL trial. John Terry is the defendant. Anton Ferdinand, as the alleged victim, is simply a WITNESS. The other party is the Crown Prosecution service, which is bringing the action against the defendant on behalf of the Crown. Terry is NOT being sued or otherwise prosecuted by Anton Ferdinand. That’s NOT how criminal law works. So the case should properly be referred to as “R vs. Terry” or “the Crown and Terry”.

Of course it is fanciful to suppose that very much public debate on this or any other issue will ever be based on firm possession of germane facts. We don’t have the right sort of education system to encourage it. We don’t have the right sort of print and broadcast media. Pick up most newspapers this morning. You’ll doubtless get the full scoop on the fluctuating waistline and thigh-firmness of some creosoted dimwit currently starring in a structured reality TV show. But you won’t learn much about the country you live in, much less the wider world. Who cares about a bunch of boring facts anyway? Empirically testable knowledge? Bollocks to that. Informed discussion of difficult issues? Bore off. Too clever by half, that’s your fucking problem. Facts? Evidence? I’ll fact you in a minute, you mouthy little twat. etc. etc. etc. 

So we will doubtless see more of this stuff:

Ryan Glynn from Liverpool believes that Anton Ferdinand is trying to get John Terry banned and that the QPR defender’s role in this affair is akin to waving an imaginary red card at the referee. Ryan has not checked his facts. If he had done so, he would know that the alleged offence was reported to the police not by Ferdinand but by a member of the public. This fact was in the public domain before the court proceedings began to unfold this week, and the testimony heard in the trial only serves to make this even clearer. 

Jamie Doyle, a Chelsea fan from Hastings, believes that Ferdinand is providing his witness testimony to the court not because he is obliged to do so and because he is under oath but because he is seeking fame. To have arrived at this view, Jamie can’t have any understanding of the differences between a criminal case brought by the CPS and a civil dispute between two individuals. A later tweet from Jamie indicates that he is a graduate. Twelve years in school, three years at university – and he doesn’t have any idea, even at a very basic level, of how the law works in his native country. If he is a representative case, then we do have to question the value for money offered by our education system when it comes to shaping the well-informed citizens of the future. Or perhaps we don’t want well-informed citizens…?

This lack of even a very basic understanding of how the law works seems to be widespread. Twitter timelines were full of this stuff yesterday. The witterings of Ryan and Jamie were just plucked at random from a vast morass of similar nonsense. 

But the dubious worth of some comments about the John Terry case do not only touch on ignorance about the interplay between the police, the CPS, victims, witnesses and the courts. Consider this offering from Joshua Keeligan of Leeds:

At least Joshua understands that the work of the CPS – prosecuting criminals – is paid for with public money. He, surely, gets the point that Ferdinand is not himself prosecuting John Terry. So, on this point at least, we can’t accuse Joshua of ignorance. But he seems to object to the idea of the prosecution of alleged criminals being funded from the public purse. How far does this extend? Should we not fund the prosecution of burglars? Muggers? Rapists? 

Or perhaps he means something else. Perhaps he means that public money should not be used to bring to justice specifically those accused of committing racially aggravated crimes. If this is his belief and if we choose to make the assumption that Joshua does not actually approve of racism, this raises a question that we could put to him: Why do you think that racism is less acceptable and less widespread in our society than it once was? Many would contend that the law has had a role to play – introducing sanctions both for discriminatory practices on the basis of race and for the racially aggravated element of some crimes. Perhaps Joshua believes we have arrived at an arbitrary point in time when “enough” has been done to discourage racism and that it’s time to roll back the various mechanisms that have combined to hold it somewhat in check. But given that Joshua has the wit to understand some very simple facts about the legal system, perhaps we should be optimistic about the chances of at least having an intelligent discussion with him about such questions. 

For others, though, the prospect of such an informed debate seems a more distant one. Take Charlie Harkness from Corbridge in Northumberland, for example:

Charlie believes that hitting a black man is a racist thing to do but shouting the words “fucking black cunt” to him is not. The odds on Charlie winning Mastermind at some point in his life became rather longer the moment he wrote that tweet.

The trial, as they say, continues. Let’s see how much more bullshit is tweeted about it.