The ‘New’ Labour government elected in 1997 has often been criticised for the raft of legislation it has introduced and for its criminal justice reforms in particular. It might therefore be unfashionable to argue that under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair the Labour government introduced a radical legislative programme against ‘hate crime’ that responded to, and was welcomed by, advocacy movements for historically victimised communities. In far less time than it took ‘hate crime’ laws to progress through state and federal legislatures in the US, between 1998 and 2003 provisions were enacted in the UK to provide harsher punishment for offenders whose offences were accompanied by manifest hostility towards their victims, on the basis of their ‘race’, religion, sexual orientation, or disability, compared with parallel offences without such accompanying hostility. To use the words of Derek McGhee from his book Intolerant Britain?, these provisions indicate an ‘institutional and organisational reflexivity’ that signifies a state which is becoming increasingly intolerant of intolerance (McGhee, 2005, pp 8–11).

At first sight, however, the punitive sanctions introduced by ‘hate crime’ laws might be viewed as being an exemplar of what David Garland has characterised as the decline of ‘penal welfarism’ and correctionalism in the US and the UK in the last three decades of the 20th century and the rise of punitive and expressive justice (Garland, 2001), whereby, according to Garland, there has been a replacement of the rehabilitative ideal fundamental to ‘penal welfarism’ by punitive measures that ‘express public anger and resentment’ about crime in both nations (Garland, 2001, p 9). ‘Hate crime’ laws might also be seen as being emblematic of what Ian Loader has similarly characterised as the fall (although not the complete defeat) of liberalism and the rise of ‘penal excess’ in the UK (Loader, 2007). But this chapter argues that some reflection on ‘New’ Labour's legislative initiatives against ‘hate crime’ suggests that they do not fit easily into such a depiction of penal policy.

The provision of equal concern and respect for all people, and respect for difference, principles that provide the motivating impetus for advocates of ‘hate crime’ laws, constitute a central plank of political liberalism. However, by criminalising ‘hate’, are illiberal means being used to achieve liberal ends?