U.K. Reports Big Rise in Hate Crime, Citing Brexit and Terrorist Attacks
Each time it goes up a notch." The hate crime figures were released on the same day
that the head of the country’s domestic spy service, MI5, warned that Britain was facing a surge in terrorist threats that were increasingly hard to detect and on a scale previously unseen.
In addition, provisional data collected around the time of terrorist attacks this year in London
and in Manchester, where the bombing outside the Ariana Grande concert left 22 dead, found that hate crimes soon followed the attacks.
17, 2017
LONDON — The referendum on British membership in the European Union
and several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing after a concert in Manchester, England, have helped drive hate crimes in Britain to record levels, official figures showed on Tuesday.
The Home Office said that 80,393 hate crimes were reported during the 12 months to March of this year, an increase of nearly 30 percent
and the largest year-to-year rise in the five years that data has been collected.
The figures were released on the same day that the head of the country’s domestic spy service, MI5, warned
that Britain was facing a surge in terrorist threats that were increasingly hard to detect and on a scale previously unseen.
Seven percent of hate crimes were based on a person’s disability and a further 2 percent were transgender-related hate crimes.