>Why incitement to racial hatred might be an issue in the UK?

"Let's go roam around and beat up some old people, clockwork orange style!"

any different from

"Let's go roam around and beat up some old black people, clockwork orange style!"

Both are conspiracy to commit a crime, both are likely to involve someone being injured to the point of near death, yet one is somehow worse and will lead to harsher sentencing because it's motivated by a different kind of hatred?

I am legitimately ignorant on this matter, could someone enlighten me?

Because the latter terrorizes the subgroup and gives social proof making it "more acceptable" to target that group for both crimes and less than crimes.

I live in an area that still has streets named after what they did to black people here (And I didn't realize it while I lived on that street what it was named for): Lynch

I think you need data to support this assertion. Following the Skokie march was there more violence against Jews in Chicagoland?

As far as terrorizing the subgroup, I guess that depends. As a Jew I don't feel terrorized by Neo-nazi mailing lists, despite many of them being public. Moreover, even if I felt uncomfortable, I don't believe that my feeling overrides their right to express themselves in methods which don't constitute harassment.

I find the British reaction to this tweet appaling, that they jailed the racist twit.

I however fully support the lengthening of sentences when a subgroup bias is determined to be likely.

While nothing easy popped up via a google search, here is another reason: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/hate_crimes_study...

Apparently, victims of bias based crimes have more trouble getting over the crimes as well (as they can't very well stop being that thing).

Demonizing an outgroup to turn them into acceptable targets is exactly what this law is to prevent (and there is something to prevent: see the British National Party).

While I'm sure such cases do exist it also happens that Lynch is a very common Irish surname.