Before his case has even come to trial, Chelsea defender John Terry has been sacked from his position as England captain for allegedly making a racist remark against QPR player Anton Ferdinand during a game last year. The Football Association informed him and England manager Fabio Capello of the decision in phone calls yesterday.

This whole incident is consistent with the 1999 report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, which recommended that the definition of a racist incident be extended to include “any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.” The Home Secretary of the day Jack Straw wanted this “simplified definition of a racist incident” adopted by the police, local government and other agencies, and he evidently got his way, because as the John Terry affair shows, in Britain today you don’t actually have to be a racist to lose your job and have your name dragged through the mud — it’s enough that someone else thinks you might be and is willing to report you to the authorities.

Never mind the motives of the informant or, in this case, the other (mainly black) footballers who allegedly put pressure on management to have Terry sacked — and one of whom might possibly benefit from it.

Mike McNally, writing in PJ Media, put it this way:

If Terry did indeed racially abuse Ferdinand, there’s no way for the prosecution to prove that his words were motivated by genuine racist malice, rather than an outburst in the heat of adrenalin-fuelled battle between men who tend to come from working-class backgrounds, and who tend not to be particularly sophisticated or articulate. And given that Terry plays alongside players of various hues and nationalities at Chelsea, and with several black players on the England team, it’s certainly questionable whether he harbors real hatred for fellow professionals on account of their skin color…

Terry is not being prosecuted because anyone seriously believes it will advance the cause of race relations. He’s being prosecuted because the self-flagellating, politically correct elites who dominate British politics, the criminal justice system and the media — and of course its flourishing race relations industry — demand it to fuel their delusions of self-righteousness and disdain for white working-class British people…

Putting him in the dock, and turning a crude insult into a hate crime, is another step down the road to the routine criminalization of free speech and free thought.