Is this a hate crime issue or a free speech issue?

[SolitarySolace]

Two teenage boys are arrested for alleged misogynistic chanting aimed at referee Rebecca Welch during Birmingham City's match against Sheffield Wednesday - www.dailymail.co.uk/.../...ting-Rebecca-Welch.html

Free speech issue

Hate crime issue

[NamerOfStars]

As usual, no explanation of what they actually SAID, which really says all you need to know about the authorities in question. And the very notion of "hate crime" is antithetical to free speech, or at least freedom of belief; it's probably the single strongest vector by which 1984-style ThoughtCrime will enter the Western zeitgeist.

Unfortunately, the UK doesn't have Constitutionally protected free speech. A quick note to the UK, and any other countries out there: we didn't trademark any of the parts of our Constitution. You're free to use them as well; hell, most of us would be flattered. Yeah, you'd get a small group of nutjobs decrying it as "cultural appropriation", but they don't represent most of us, and are only tolerated because of the aforementioned devotion to free speech.

[WindAtMyBack]

If it's on public property, it's potentially a free speech issue, but not necessarily. If it's on private property, they can make pretty much any rule they want for any reason they want. Should it be a hate crime? No. Maybe trespassing or some other crime.

Even on private property they have the right to make the rules. And I have the right to call it bullshit. So I exercise that right and call it bullshit.

[FreyaRed]

I'm not a lawyer and surely I have zero clue about British laws, but I think in UK there is no free speech law like in most countries with constitutional democracy.

[OlderAndWiser]

Is there really a right to free speech in the UK? I had not heard that.