Attacking Emos and Goths in Manchester Is a Hate Crime Now

In 2007, Sophie Lancaster was kicked to death in a park in Lancashire. Sophie and her boyfriend Robert Maltby were set upon by five boys, arguably because Sophie dressed like a cybergoth and Robert looked a bit like a blonder, prettier Gerard Way. Lancashire Police's Detective Super Intendent said it was one of the most violent murders he'd ever seen and, during sentencing, the judge described the attack as "feral thuggery". Two of the attackers – all of whom were too young to have bought the litres of cider and Peach Schnapps they'd been drinking on the day of the attack – received life sentences. The other three got between four and six years each.

Much has been made of what motivated those five boys. Was it all the Peach Schnapps? Was it poor parenting (one of the boys is reported to have laughed about the incident with his mum while being interviewed by the police)? Was it that they were just evil cunts? Or was it because of how Sophie and Robert were dressed? In the 999 call from the scene, the caller can be heard saying, "We need an ambulance, this mosher's been banged because he's a mosher." And, at the end of the trial, the judge remarked that, "This was a hate crime against completely harmless people who were targeted because their appearance was different."

Last week, Greater Manchester Police announced that they will now be recording crimes against "alternative subcultures" as hate crimes. In doing so, they are now the first and only UK police force to recognise emos and goths as holding the same social status as racial minorities, religious groups, homosexuals, transgender people and the disabled. The decision – which was made after years of campaigning by Sophie's mother, Sylvia – won't necessarily mean that people who attack goths in Manchester will get longer sentences than if they attack, say, a guy wearing 501s, a pair of Air Max and a Hollister hoodie, but I guess it might help the local alternative community feel a little safer on their wanders around town.

I wanted to see what the people of Manchester thought about the new approach, so I went out and asked a few of them.

VICE: How do you feel about alternative subcultures being protected by their new hate crime status?
Bilal: Well, if somebody's intentionally gone and abused somebody else for how they look, then yeah, you could say that counts as a hate crime.

So would you say that being alternative shares some similarities with being religious? 
No, I don't think so. Religion is more than just a way of life that you decide you want to be a part of. Culture and religion shouldn't be classed as the same thing.

So do you think people who've committed a hate crime against an alternative person shouldn't be treated as harshly as someone who's committed a religious hate crime? 
No. If you're going to commit a hate crime, regardless of who it's on, it should be punished the same. You can't say that you should get one year for punching one person and two years in jail for punching another, you know? The crime is the same and the outcome is the same, so the punishment should be the same. It doesn't make sense to have two different punishments for the same crime, that leaves it open to manipulation.

You feel the status is open to being abused?
Yeah, definitely. Being punched one time could turn into, "I'm going to really do this guy over." You could twist it a little bit, say you're part of a subculture and report it as a hate crime, when really it had nothing to do with that. You're giving people the opportunity to use it to punish others more than they deserve to be punished.

Have you heard of Sophie Lancaster?
Adam: The goth girl?

Yeah. How do you feel about alternative subcultures – like the one Sophie belonged to – being protected by hate crime status?
Well, it makes sense because they're a group. If they're their own specific group, it should be counted as a hate crime, I think.

But then there's the argument that they weren't born alternative and could grow out out of it. Or that someone could be wearing a fancy dress goth outfit and get beaten up, and their aggressor could charged with a hate crime. Do you think crimes against them should be measured the same as hate crimes against homosexuals, for example?   
Yeah, I think you should treat them the same. Also, they might not grow out of it – you never know how long they'll be part of the group. Regardless of that, any hate crime should be prosecuted more harshly than a normal crime because it hurts the victim more than normal crime, in that they're a minority and are being attacked because of it.

Have you ever been the victim of a hate crime?
No. Unless I talk, people don't class me as gay, really. You see gangs of straight guys coming down to Canal Street to take the piss, but I wouldn't say that's a hate crime. Mind you, I've seen someone walk down here with a machete once. I don't know what that was for, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't for a hate crime. I have seen hate crime here, but I haven't been a victim myself.

I'm glad to hear it.

After speaking to Bilal and Adam, I moved on to the park surrounding the Urbis exhibition centre – the hub for Manchester's young emo/goth/whatever community and the kind of place where a BBC3 producer might shoot B-roll footage for a documentary about Download Festival.

There was what seemed like a needlessly large police presence for such a small area, and the first people I bumped into were two youth workers handing out cards that urged people to report any hate crimes they witness. So the new classifications are obviously catching on within Manchester's alternative community, which doesn't really come as too much of a shock, because – for whatever reason – people are generally pretty into new laws specifically designed to help protect them.

Rachel (right), youth worker.

Do you agree that alternative subcultures should be protected by a hate crime status?
Rachel: Yeah, I do. Being on Urbis and looking around me, I think it's necessary, but I'm quite wary that categorising people could end up with them being treated differently. It's just another way of segregating them.

So you feel the harsher sentences are justified?
Yeah, those kinds of attacks are happening more and more and should be recognised as a hate crime. People have been arrested on Urbis for that kind of thing and haven't been treated as harshly as they would have been if it had been a racial attack.

Are attacks like this something you see often?
Yeah, it's a problem here on Urbis as there are always so many members of the alternative community hanging out here. And they aren't random attacks that just happen to be on goths or emos, or whoever; they target them on purpose and know all the CCTV blind spots. It's quite calculated.

Dark.

Have you heard of Sophie Lancaster?
Wayne: Yeah, I saw it all in the news the other day.

Do you agree with classing crimes against alternative subcultures as hate crimes?
Yeah, it's been a long time coming. It's good that Manchester is the first community to do it and hopefully more will follow when they see what a good result it's going to produce.

Would you say that being a goth is the same as being gay or Muslim, or whatever?
In a way, yeah. I know a lot of people will say it's just a fashion statement – that it's a phase you go through – but you see people who listen to rock and metal and punk growing up and continuing to dress the way they do. So people don't necessarily grow out of it – it becomes their way of life, just like a gay person is gay, a transsexual person is transsexual and everything like that.

Have you ever been attacked for the way you dress?
Not really. Obviously on nights out I've had name-calling and things like that, but, I mean, you get used to it after a while.

Eve (left) and Frank.

Have you heard of Sophie Lancaster?
Eve: Yeah, I know her mum.

So can I take it that you agree with the changes to hate crime classification here in Manchester?
Eve: Definitely. A lot of people I know grew up in families who were part of the rock culture here, and we shouldn't have to walk down the street knowing that we could get beaten up at any moment. Three of the lads who killed Sophie went to my high school and they all got pretty bad sentences, but they deserved to get a lot longer for what they did to her.
Frank: At the end of the day, if you're committing a crime against someone because you don't like the way they look or what they believe in, it's a hate crime.

Do you think this new classification might alienate emos, goths and metallers from normal society?
Frank: There's a belief that, as a subculture, we're violent people just 'cos of the way we dress. But we're not. People who dress a bit more, say, chavvy or tracksuit-ish – they're a much more violent subculture.

Do you think the changes should work both ways? So if the guys in tracksuits got attacked that would count as a hate crime, too?
Eve: Yeah, of course they should; it's the same thing. I have nothing against people who dress differently, obviously, but if I did and me all my mates saw someone in trackie bottoms and we attacked them, it should be the same punishment for us as what they'd get for attacking us.

Have you even been attacked for looking like you do?
Eve: I've been jumped before, yeah. Frank's been jumped about 50 times.
Frank: Not 50 times – three times.

Would you say that they were hate crimes?
Frank: Yeah, definitely. In fact, they basically told me it was a hate crime – they said, "It's 'cos you're dressed like a dickhead."

Nicole (left) and a friend.

Do you agree that crimes against alternatives should now be classed as hate crimes?
Nicole: Yeah, they're the exact same thing as existing hate crimes.

But it's not like being gay or black, or whatever – you're not born a goth.
But you could say that people are born to like this stuff – it's the same thing. I'd imagine more random attacks happen because of appearance than anything else.

Have you ever been attacked?
Yeah, stuff like people throwing rocks, shouting "emo" or "mosher" at me, telling me to die, telling me to slit my wrists – all of that. I got a lot of it in school.

So do you think it's something that affects younger people more?
I think it's more frequent with young people but less serious. You get called a few things and have a few stones thrown at you when you're at school, but when you're older the type of abuse gets worse. If you're still hating on someone as an adult for the way they dress it's more serious, both because you should be mature enough to leave it alone and because you're more likely to do something violent as an adult.

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So, while support for the new hate crime classification seemed unanimous among the people I spoke to, you still have to wonder if, in reality, it will actually make too much of a long-term difference on Manchester's streets. Was the way Sophie Lancaster was dressed that day the sole factor in her murder? Or was it just because the five guys who attacked her and her boyfriend were abhorrent examples of humanity?

To me, implicitly blaming Sophie's fashion sense is flirting dangerously close to the, "Don't blame the rapist, blame the girl for wearing a miniskirt" argument put forward by misogynist morons and particularly backward members of the Republican party. It is a really shitty, 100 percent idiotic thing to suggest and essentially shifts the blame on to the victim instead of the attacker, which is nothing but reductive.

Still, I guess if the re-drawing of the hate crime law makes it safer to listen to depressing, angry music in a city where it rains all the time, then it's gone some way to improving people's lives.

Follow Chris and Thomas on Twitter: @CBethell_photo / @thomasmarkrea

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