Is anti-Semitism widespread in the UK?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast from the BBC, statistically proven to be the very best numbers programme around. Hello and welcome to More or Less, the programme which is to numeracy what the coffee bean is to cafe culture. In today's programme, who are the 1%? Has the House of Commons sold out to the private healthcare industry? And is there a serial killer on the loose in Manchester?
There were young men going missing and they were being found dead in canals. Some people think so.
But first, Owl Eared listeners cocked their heads at Woman's Hour last Friday as the journalist Angela Epstein made this claim during a discussion about anti-Semitism.
Yes, I accept that, you know, proportionally, maybe there are fewer attacks compared to other things that go on, but still 95% of hate crimes in this country are against Jewish people.
Can this be true? Asked a number of emails that winged their way into our inbox via more or less at bbc.co.uk. And Ruth Alexander's here. Hello, Ruth.
Hello.
You have been hot on the heels of this number.
I have.
95% of hate crimes in the country are against Jewish people.
No. This number's actually from the Mayor of London's office and they in turn got the number from the Metropolitan Police in the capital. So we should be clear right from the start, we're talking about London and we don't have that level of detail for the UK anyway.
Understood. So with apologies to the rest of the country, let's talk about London because that's where we have the numbers. Is it true then that 95% of hate crimes in London are against Jewish people?
No. According to the Metropolitan Police, there were nearly 13,000 hate crimes in London last year. 358 of them were anti-Semitic.
That's not 95%. Actually, that's not even 5%. So how could the number be so totally wrong?
Well, the first thing to understand is that this number refers only to faith-hate crimes and the number of faith-hate crimes in July following conflict in Gaza. In that month, and looking only at faith-hate crimes, 95% of them were anti-Semitic, the mayor's office said the police said. But neither of them can provide us with a breakdown of the number and we just don't think it can add up. Now, another couple of important points I've picked up along the way... Over the entire year, there were nearly twice as many Islamophobic hate crimes as anti-Semitic ones.
Was the claim that 95% of hate crimes target Jewish people in the UK accurate?
And when we looked at this story last summer, experts told us that spikes in anti-Semitic behaviour triggered by international events like the Gaza conflict tend to be temporary.
And I wonder what's actually meant by a hate crime.
Any crime, a burglary, an assault, criminal damage could be flagged as a hate crime if it appears to have some kind of hateful motivation. Now, the Community Security Trust tells me that typical anti-Semitic hate crimes are verbal or written abuse and threats to being shouted at in the street, nasty letters and messages on social media. Thankfully, cases of extreme violence are rare, but incidents of assault and property damage account for about a fifth of cases.
And what's the trend on hate crimes in general?
Well, they've all risen over the past year against a background of falling crime. So, for example, homophobic hate crimes are up more than a third over the past year to almost 1,500. It's hard to know how much of that is a real trend and how much is down to better reporting. But anti-Semitic hate crimes do seem to be up very sharply. They've more than doubled over the past year. But again, the Gaza conflict will be a big factor here.
And just to be clear, all those numbers, they're London numbers?
Yes.
They are. We don't have national figures, although I'm told by people who look into this in great detail that the national trend is similar, about a doubling, and there'll be a report out in a couple of weeks' time which will show that.
Now, that then might explain why some people are getting worried about what they see as a new trend towards anti-Semitism. And last summer, a grassroots movement arose in the UK called the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:28
2
Was the claim that 95% of hate crimes target Jewish people in the UK accurate?
2:28–5:32
3
How do Metropolitan Police and Mayor’s Office figures change the meaning of that 95% statistic?
5:32–9:46
4
What do the trends and definitions reveal about anti‑Semitic and other faith hate crimes in London?
9:46–18:45
5
How representative and reliable were the CAA and YouGov surveys about Jewish people’s experiences?
18:45–27:56