Category Archives: crime

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots is dead

Note: Undoubtedly a gigantic political personality, but that is disastrous if the politics and understanding of what she was doing are missing. One of her favourite claims was that she had been “badly advised”. Just what you don’t want as PM. What is needed is someone who understands the consequences of what they are doing. RH

http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/margaret-thatcher-the-most-useful-of-idiots/

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots

Robert Henderson

With his mixture of vaulting intellectual ambition and howling mediocrity of mind, Lenin is the MaGonagal of philosophers. (Connoisseurs of intellectual incompetence and pretension should browse through Lenin’s ‘Materialism and Empririo-Criticism’ for an especial treat). Nonetheless, like Hitler, the man possessed a certain low animal cunning and a complete absence of moral restraint, which qualities permitted him to make a few acute psychological and sociological observations. Amongst these is the concept of the useful idiot.

For Lenin this was the role to be played primarily by simpleminded bourgeois dupes who unwittingly aided the movement towards the proletarian revolution, a revolution utterly antipathetic to the ideals and aspiration of the simpleminded bourgeois dupes. But the concept is of general political utility. The useful idiot is any person who acts in a way which unwittingly promotes political interests which are opposed to his own political ideals.

The best of all useful idiots are those in positions of the greatest political advantage, both because they have power and their propensity to be deluded by their egos into believing that they are utterly beyond manipulation or mistaken in their policies. They also display a serious want of understanding of the probable consequences of their actions.

It was this combination of circumstances and mentality which made Margaret Thatcher so potent a useful idiot in the liberal internationalist cause. As I wrote that last sentence, I saw rising up before me the opposing hordes of her admirers and haters, singularly united in a ghastly embrace of disbelief. Was she not the Iron Lady, the Hammer of the Left, the destroyer of union power, the slayer of the socialist dragon? Did she not speak of turning back the tide of immigrants? Was she not the rock from which the European Leviathan rebounded? Did she not ensure that Britain was respected in the world as she had not been since Suez? Was she not a mover and shaker in the nationalist cause?

In her own rhetorical world Mrs T was all of these things, a veritable Gloriana who enchanted some and banally persuaded many more, but in practical achievement she was none of them. This discrepancy between fact and fancy made her an extraordinarily potent tool for the soldiers of the ascendant ideology of the post-war period, the sordid bigotry that is liberal internationalism.

The hard truth is that she allowed the primary British political corruptions of the post war period – immigration, multiculturalism, “progressive” education, the social work circus, internationalism, the attachment to Europe – to not merely continue but grow vastly in scope during her period in power.

A harsh judgement? Well, at the end of her premiership what did Britain have to show for her vaunted patriotism, her wish to maintain Britain’s independence, her desire to drive back the state, her promise to end mass immigration? Precious little is the answer.

Her enthusiastic promotion of the Single European Act, which she ruthlessly drove through Parliament, allowed the Eurofederalists to greatly advance their cause under the guise of acting to produce a single market; her “triumph” in reducing our subsidy to Europe left us paying several billion a year to our European competitors whilst France paid next to nothing; our fishermen were sold down the river; farmers placed in the absurd position of not being allowed to produce even enough milk for British requirements; actual (as opposed to official) immigration increased; that monument to liberal bigotry, the Race Relations Act was untouched, the educational vandals were not only allowed to sabotage every serious attempt to overturn the progressive disaster, but were granted a great triumph in the ending of ‘O’ levels, a liberal bigot success amplified by the contemptible bleating of successive education secretaries that “rising examination success means rising standards”; foreign aid continued to be paid as an unforced Dangeld extracted from an unwilling electorate; major and strategically important industries either ceased to be serious competitors or ended in foreign hands; the armed forces were cut suicidally; the cost of the Welfare State and local government rose massively whilst the service provided both declined and Ulster was sold down the river with the Anglo Irish Agreement. Most generally damaging, she promoted internationalism through her fanatic pursuit of free trade.

At all points Britain was weakened as a nation. Such were the fruits of more than a decade of Thatcherism. Even those things which are most emblematic of her – privatisation, the sale of council houses and the subjection of the unions – have had effects which are contrary to those intended. Privatisation merely accelerated the loss of control which free trade engendered. We may as customers celebrate the liberation of British Telecom and BA, but is it such a wonderful thing to have no major car producer or shipbuilder? The trouble with the privatisation of major industries, which may be greatly reduced, go out of business or be taken over by foreign buyers, is that it ignores strategic and social welfare questions. Ditto free trade generally. Both assume that the world, or at least the parts which contain our major trading partners , will remain peaceful, stable and well disposed towards Britain for ever, an absurd assumption.

Margaret Thatcher also engaged in behaviour which led to a corruption of public life which undermined and continues to undermine her intended ends. Politicians should always think of what precedent they are setting when they act for bad precedents will be invariably seized upon by later governments. She consistently failed to address this concern. Take her attitude to privatisation and the unions. In the former case she displayed a contempt for ownership: in the latter she engaged in authoritarian actions which were simply inappropriate to a democracy. Such legally and politically cavalier behaviour has undoubtedly influenced Blair and New Labour, vide the contempt with which parliament is now treated, constitutional change wrought and incessant restrictions on liberty enacted.

There is a profound ethical question connected to privatisation which was never properly answered by Tories: what right does the state have to dispose by sale of assets which are held in trust on behalf of the general public and whose existence has been in large part guaranteed by taxpayer’s money? This is a question which should be as readily asked by a conservative as by a socialist for it touches upon a central point of democratic political morality, the custodianship of public property. The same ends – the diminution of the state and the freeing of the public from seemingly perpetual losses – could have been achieved by an equitable distribution of shares free of charge to the general public. This would have had, from a Thatcherite standpoint, the additional benefit of greatly increasing share ownership. By selling that which the government did not meaningfully own, she engaged in behaviour which if it had been engaged in by any private individual or company would have been described as fraud or theft.

The breaking of union power was overdone. As someone who is old enough to remember the Wilson, Heath and Callaghan years, I have no illusion of exactly how awful the unions were when they had real power. But her means of breaking their abusive ways, particularly during the miners’ strike, were simply inappropriate in a supposed democracy. Passing laws restricting picketing and making unions liable for material losses suffered when they broke the rules were one thing: the using of the police in an unambiguously authoritarian manner in circumstances of dubious legality such as the blanket prevention of free movement of miners, quite another.

The Falklands War displays another side of her weakness in matching actions to rhetoric. Admirable as the military action was, the terrible truth is that the war need never have been fought if the government had taken their intelligence reports seriously and retained a naval presence in the area. The lesson went unlearnt, for within a few years of the recovery of the Falklands, her government massively reduced defence expenditure.

But what of her clients, the Liberal Ascendency? Would they not be dismayed by much of what she did? Well, by the time Margaret Thatcher came to power liberals had really lost whatever interest they had ever had in state ownership or the genuine improvement of the worker’s lot. What they really cared about was promoting their internationalist vision and doctrine of spurious natural rights. They had new clients; the vast numbers of coloured immigrants and their children, women, homosexuals, the disabled. In short, all those who were dysfunctional, or could be made to feel dysfunctional, in terms of British society. They had new areas of power and distinction, social work, education, the civil service ,the mass media to which they added, after securing the ideological high ground, the ancient delights of politics.

Although the liberal left distrusted and hated Margaret Thatcher (and did not understand at the time how effective her commitment to free trade was in promoting internationalism), they nonetheless had the belief throughout her time in office that Britain’s involvement in the EU and the Liberal Ascendency’s control of education, the media, the civil service and bodies such as the Commission for Racial Equality would thwart those of her plans which were most dangerous and obnoxious to the liberal.

Margaret Thatcher greatly added to this wall of opposition by her choice of ministers. Think of her major cabinet appointments. She ensured that the Foreign Office remained in the hands of men (Howe and Hurd) who were both ardent Europhiles and willing tools of the FO Quisling culture, the Chancellorship was entrusted to first Howe and then Lawson who was also firmly committed to Europe. The Home Office sat in the laps of the social liberals Whitelaw, Hurd and Baker, Education was given to Baker and Clarke. Those appointments alone ensured that little would be done to attack the things which liberals held sacred, for they were men who broadly shared the liberal values and who were opposed to Thatcherite policies other than those on the economy, which of course was the one Thatcherite policy guaranteed to assist liberal internationalism. By the end, she was so weak that she was unable to prevent the effective sacking of a favourite cabinet minister, Nicholas Ridley, by the German Chancellor.

The constant cry of Margaret Thatcher after she left office is that she did not understand the consequences of her acts. Of course she does not put it in that way, but that is what it amounts to. She blames Brussels and the Foreign Office for the unwelcome consequences of the Single European Act. She readily admits that this minister or that in her government proved unreliable or treacherous, but does not conclude that her judgement in choosing them was at fault. She blames the Foreign Office for the Falklands War. But nowhere does she acknowledge her fault.

In her heart of hearts, has the second longest serving and most ideological prime minister in modern British history ever comprehended, however imperfectly, that she was a prime mover in the Liberal Internationalist cause? I doubt it, because self deception is at the heart of what makes a useful idiot.

Being arrested in England is no small matter anymore

Robert Henderson

There was a time when being arrested in England did not matter very much. Before digital technology came of age your fingerprints and mug shot might be taken, but if no charges were laid or, if you were brought to trial, a conviction was not obtained for the alleged offence which had caused your arrest, the chances of the ordinary law abiding person being inconvenienced in the future by the fact that those details were held by the police were small. There was no Police National Computer (PNC) until 1974 – which was a very rudimentary system in the beginning and for a long period of time afterwards laughably underpowered with what we have now – and the widespread use of personal computers was almost two decades after that. DNA identification did not come into play until the 1980s and was very cumbersome procedure for years afterwards. Before computers arrived police had to rely on their knowledge of the “usual suspects”, modus operandi and informers to hunt down the guilty. They would look at the records of those suggested by such avenues of inquiry, but had no ready way of searching large numbers of records on spec or of moving their search to the records of other police forces. On spec searches of criminal records for the entire country were out of the question.

Today not only are fingerprints and mug shots taken but DNA samples as well if some is arrested on suspicion of committing a recordable offence (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2000/1139/contents/made). Prior to the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2001/16/section/82) fingerprints and DNA samples would be destroyed if someone was not found guilty. After the 2001 Act samples could be taken without the permission of the suspect at the time of charge. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44) allowed samples to be taken on arrest for a recordable offence. Presently, all records are held indefinitely on the PNC, a database which holds records for the entire country and can be accessed by any police force in the country. Currently, the data is held indefinitely regardless of whether an arrested person is convicted, tried and found not guilty or released without charge. There is the Protection of Freedoms Bill which is still going through Parliament which places some restrictions on the holding of data of those not convicted of a crime, but even if these become law –and they could be amended before the Bill is passed – these still allow considerable opportunity for the storage of fingerprints, DNA and mug shots of the unconvicted, viz:

Protection of Freedoms Bill proposals

The following details relate to the Protection of Freedoms Bill, introduced on the 7 February 2011. As this has not yet been agreed by Parliament, these proposals are subject to change.

What if I am arrested for a minor offence, but not charged or convicted?

The provisions of the Protection of Freedoms Bill as introduced in Parliament provide that in the future these will not be retained at all.

What if I am arrested for, but not charged with a serious offence?

The provisions of the Protection Of Freedoms Bill as introduced in Parliament provide that the police will only be permitted to retain DNA and fingerprints in very tightly controlled circumstances. We will be establishing an independent commissioner to oversee DNA retention and they will make a decision whether retention is necessary, taking into account the age and vulnerability of victim of the alleged offence and their relation to the person arrested.

What if I am arrested for and charged with a serious offence, but not convicted?

The provisions of the Protection Of Freedoms Bill as introduced in Parliament provide that in these cases we propose to retain the DNA and fingerprints for three years, with the option of a single two-year extension by a court.

What if I am convicted of an offence?

The provisions of the Protection Of Freedoms Bill as introduced in Parliament provide that all adults convicted of any recordable offence will have their DNA and fingerprints retained indefinitely.

We are proposing a separate retention regime for those under 18 years of age who are convicted of an offence. Those convicted of a serious offence will have their DNA and fingerprints retained indefinitely. For those under 18 who are convicted of a minor offence their DNA will be retained for five years on a first conviction (plus the length of any custodial sentence) and then indefinitely following a second conviction. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/powers/dna-and-fingerprints/)

DNA is especially important, because unlike fingerprints it can be readily deposited by someone else at the scene of a crime or inadvertently picked up by someone committing a crime or by the victim of a crime. In principle this could also happen with fingerprints if someone deliberately or inadvertently picks up something with someone’s fingerprints on it and leaves it at the scene of a crime or a victim does so inadvertently. But the scope for framing someone in that fashion is much less than it would be for DNA because of the difficulty in both obtaining and retaining a clear print inadvertently or leaving something with a clear print on it which could be plausibly seen by the police as being left inadvertently.

Fingerprints obtained in the messy real world encountered by the police are generally a far from certain identifier because of their incompleteness . Even where a clear whole print is available, the identification is not absolutely watertight, not least because the scientific basis of the system has been questioned successfully enough to prevent fingerprint evidence being used in trials in the USA, viz: “U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak last week ruled that such evidence does not meet standards of scientific scrutiny established by the U.S. Supreme Court, and said fingerprint examiners cannot testify at trial that a suspect’s fingerprints “match” those found at a crime scene. “ (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91996&page=1#.UHVvghVZWSo).

It is worth adding that justice systems around the world accept different numbers of “points of similarity” in fingerprint evidence as indicative of a positive match. It is all very messy and unavoidably subjective to a significant degree.

DNA is a different matter, or at least is thought to be a different matter. DNA identification is based not on the subjective judgement of visible differences by humans, but the machine matching of strings of DNA code. This gives them an appearance of scientific rigour. However DNA may be degraded or mixed with someone else’s DNA which can make identification far from certain. Identification is also debatable with the controversial “low copy number” DNA testing which deals with minute samples of DNA (http://www.mccannfiles.com/id190.html) Moreover, there will always be false positives. The likelihood of those is strong when a database holds millions of individual DNA samples. The numbers would be small but for those involved the results would be traumatic even if no conviction results. The worst case would be a false conviction for a serious crime.

Apart from false positives, there are three ways an innocent man or woman could fall victim to an police investigation based on the DNA. The first is it could have been planted deliberately by someone. This could have been done to either harm the person whose DNA was planted or it might have been an attempt to mislead the police by someone committing a crime. In the latter case the person whose DNA was planted need not have been known to the person doing the planting. They simply pick up something like a cigarette butt or a used tissue which they have either seen someone leave or they simply find after the person has deposited the item and gone.

The second circumstance would be if someone is the victim of a crime and they inadvertently pick up something carrying DNA , for example a lost hair or blood left by someone. A truly disturbing and astonishing example of what can happen involved Mark Minick. Minick was arrested on suspicion of rape. He had a criminal record for robbery and his DNA matched that taken from a hair found on the victim. The problem was that Minick is white and small (5’6”) and the victim identified her attacker as black and large. Notwithstanding this, the CPS proceeded with the case which was only dropped at the first court hearing where the prosecution offered no evidence (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512980/DNA-farce-My-nightmare-white-man-charged-hunt-black-rapist.html#ixzz28ooimkcD). How did the victim have a hair of Minick’s? He was working as a porter at the hospital at which the girl was treated. Most probably she picked up the hair there. Minick’s case shows emphatically how powerful a grip DNA evidence has on the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS): they were both willing to ignore the fact that the victim had identified her attacker as large and black while Minick was small and white because they had a DNA match from a source which could have come innocently and inadvertently into the victim’s possession.

The third opportunity for gratuitous involvement in a police investigation would be the use of near DNA matches as a pointer to who might be involved in a crime. Suppose someone, most probably a near relative, has their DNA on the PNC. The police may investigate the close relatives of that person in connection with a crime, regardless of whether the relatives have a criminal record or there is any evidence that they might be guilty. (section 5 http://www.genewatch.org/uploads/f03c6d66a9b354535738483c1c3d49e4/NationalDNADatabase.pdf). Even if nothing happens beyond an investigation this is a considerable intrusion into their lives. Moreover, even if completely, innocent human nature being what it is, others who know of the police involvement may conclude there is no smoke without fire. Nor, as the Minick case showed, can there be any rational belief that the police and CPS will not allow DNA evidence to drive investigations and prosecutions where there is no other strong evidence of guilt.

The fact that even under the reforms proposed in the Protection of Freedoms Bill considerable numbers of people who have never been convicted of or even charged with a criminal offence will remain for years on the PNC means that tens of thousands of people at least will potentially become suspects in future investigations for anything up to five years despite having a clean bill of legal health. If the Protection of Freedom Act is not retrospective when it is passed , that is, it only applies to new arrests, then the numbers the innocent people involved could be millions. To penalise the innocent is unjust and immoral because it is based on the unethical idea that the greater good of the greater number is reason enough to mistreat individuals. If only the DNA and fingerprints of the convicted were held the risks of gratuitous police investigations of the innocent would be greatly reduced.

Nor is the injustice restricted to those with a clean criminal record. The DNA and Fingerprints of anyone convicted of a recordable crime will be held indefinitely. That means people who have committed minor offences such as common assault or driving without due care and attention without causing an accident (often only once in their lives) will be subject to the same risk of further gratuitous investigation based on false positives and so on as those with no convictions who remain on the PNC. This is disproportionate.

Here is a question which I have never seen publicly posed: why are fingerprints and DNA taken from every person arrested regardless of the suspected crime? It is easy to see that they might be useful in the case of criminals such as murderers, burglars and rapists, but what purpose does it serve for people such as fraudsters and those convicted of dangerous driving? It is very improbable that fingerprints or DNA records will be useful in solving future crimes by people who are convicted of fraud or driving offences if they commit similar offences. It is also a fact that most people, including career criminals, tend to commit the same type of crime if they commit more than one. There is a strong civil liberties case for saying fingerprints and DNA ( or any other future biometrics identifier) should only be taken where they are likely to help solve a crime or series of crimes. If that practice was followed it would also greatly reduce the likelihood of people being harassed unnecessarily by the police.

There is also a broader question of the keeping of data other than fingerprints and DNA, for example, notes of unsubstantiated complaints of crime or even reports of behaviour which might be considered suspicious. These can have profound effects on lives because Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks are now required by huge numbers of adults for the purpose of gaining employment or taking part in voluntary activities – the requirements have even been ludicrously extended to parents watching their children take part in school sports or Nativity plays (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210724/Parents-criminal-record-checks-banned-watching-kids-play-school-sport.html).

CRB checks are of two kinds :

•standard CRB check – for certain specified jobs, licences and entry into certain professions

•enhanced CRB check – for those carrying out certain activities or working in regulated activity with children or adults; applicants for gaming and lottery licences; and judicial appointments…

What you’ll find on a criminal record check

Standard CRB checks will contain details of all spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings from the Police National Computer (PNC).

The enhanced CRB check will include any information from the PNC and may also search:

•information held by local police forces

•lists of people barred from working with children and adults which are kept by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Startinganewjob/DG_195809)

Millions of innocent people could find themselves barred from employment or voluntary activities through no fault of their own. Not only that, where a CRB check is failed, unsubstantiated or simply wrong highly damaging information held by the police will be in the hands of people who know the person who has failed the check and knowledge of a failure to pass a check, even if the details of the failure are not known, will cast doubt over the integrity of the person who has failed the check.

Police records are just part of an ever expanding portfolio of state and private enterprise databases which can affect lives, frequently without the individual even knowing. But police records and the ever swelling reach of the CRB check are by far the most intrusive and controlling of the surveillance apparatus which exists at present in England. They need to be severely controlled.

As a bare minimum we should return to position that no person’s DNA and Fingerprints should be retained if they remain unconvicted and there should be no record kept of their arrests, charges or trials on the national database. The removal of all records of investigations from the national computer is necessary because otherwise innocent people may still be unreasonably investigated simply because they have been arrested, charged or tried but found innocent for a similar crime before.

More broadly, it is pernicious to have information which the police have received which may not even have led to an arrest or any, indeed, contact with the police being disclosed on CRB checks. They should reveal only convictions and arguably only convictions relevant to job for which the check is made. If someone has, for example, if someone has been convicted of driving without due care and attention when they were 17 and is applying for a teaching job when they are 35 the conviction is scarcely relevant. In fact, there is a good case for doing away with CRB checks, because there is no evidence they have reduced the type of offences they are meant to reduce, most particularly child abuse of one form or another. Their main effects have been to dissuade many people from engaging in voluntary work, increased costs for organisations (especially schools) and creating a general and unhealthy climate of suspicion in Britain.

These authoritarian policies will become ever harder to remove the longer they remain in place and technology improvements make the temptation to expand the surveillance through an ever expanding menu of biometrics irresistible to those with power. We need to act now.

Stephen Lawrence, Gary Dobson, David Norris and a political trial

Robert Henderson

The conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence is a savage and sinister travesty of justice. That is not because the defendants are necessarily innocent . What is profoundly worrying is the decision to prosecute regardless of the feeble quality of the new evidence, the placing in double jeopardy of Dobson (who had been formally acquitted in 1996 of the murder when a private prosecution was brought) , the general difficulties of a trial held 18 years after the event, the all too perniciously potent legacy of the Macpherson Report and the almost continuous media circus which has accompanied the Lawrence killing for nearly 19 years and repeatedly savaged the reputation of the defendants .

The impossibility of a fair trial

The question of whether Dobson and Norris could get a fair trial should have been tested before the case was heard. Despite assiduous attempts, I can find no media reports that either Dobson or Norris’ lawyers applied to have the trial struck down on those grounds. If no application was made by their lawyers ,the defendants would have every reason to feel cheated because if ever there was a case where a fair trial would have been impossible this is it.

To understand exactly how outlandishly contaminating the circumstances surrounding the defendants were it is necessary to know of the previous attempts at prosecution, the scandalous behaviour tolerated at the Macpherson Inquiry, especially the behaviour towards the suspects, and the virulent and extended hate campaign waged by the British media against Dobson and Norris (and other suspects).

The police originally had five white youths in the frame for the murder, Dobson and Norris plus Luke Knight and the brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt. The CPS refused to prosecute in 1994. The parents of Stephen Lawrence then initiated a private prosecution against the five suspects, but only Jamie Acourt, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight stood trial. The granting of a private prosecution is rare for any crime because the Attorney-General has to sanction such prosecutions; for a charge of murder it is unprecedented at least in modern times( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/first-private-prosecution-for-murder-3-held-1616684.html.)

The trial collapsed when the judge ruled that the identification evidence of Lawrence’s friend Duwayne Brooks, who had been with him on the night, was inadmissible (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-41.htm#41.3). That was scarcely surprising as Brooks originally told the police he could not positively identify any of the attackers then later changed his story and said he could and picked out Neil Acourt and Luke Knight. As by his own story, Brooks ran away as fast he could when the attack happened and the attack took place at night (around 10.30 pm on 22 April), it would seem improbable that he could have identified the attackers with any certainty. It is worth adding that (1) identification evidence is notoriously unreliable, especially where strangers are involved, and (2) the three independent witnesses to the attack were unable to identify any of the attackers. The attack was also over very quickly.

Despite the failure to mount a criminal prosecution by the CPS and the abject failure of the private prosecution, the British media continued their campaign against those suspected of the murder. In 1997 the Daily Mail ran a front page which accused the five suspects of murder and challenged them to sue for libel (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html). This was an act of outright cowardice by the Mail because they knew none of those they accused could afford to sue them. A libel case against a the Daily Mail would have probably have cost, at 2012 prices, £1m to fund because the Mail were determined to take it to court. But even if the case was won, the judge would probably not have awarded the plaintiff their costs in full or even at all and any award would certainly be far less than the plaintiff’s costs and probably derisory. If the case was lost the plaintiff would have to bear his own costs and those of the Mail which would mean at least £2 million at today’s values.

The one family amongst the accused which had some degree of affluence at the time of murder was that of David Norris, whose father Clifford was reputedly running the drug trade in South London. But Clifford Norris was jailed for nine years in 1994 and served seven years which reduced him to penury. In 2006 the Guardian found him living in a bedsit (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/aug/06/politics.lawrence).

But even if a libel suit had by some miracle been mounted, it is dubious if it would have succeeded because of the public demolition of the suspects’ characters over years. That would almost certainly have seriously biased any jury against them and it could have been argued that the plaintiff(s) had no reputation to lose. Even if a suit was successful, any damages would probably have been derisory on the same grounds of little reputation to lose. It is worth mentioning that the editor of the Mail, Paul Dacre, knew Stephen Lawrence’s father Neville, because Neville had done some plastering work for him.

In 1998, through a combination of the more or less perpetual media campaign and the religiously politically correct Blair Government, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry began presided over by a senior judge, Sir William Macpherson. This contained truly amazing scenes. In what was a quasi-judicial proceeding there was an atmosphere close to mob rule. Within the Inquiry frequent interruption occurred in the public galleries, especially when the police were giving evidence. At one point members of the Nation of Islam invaded the building and fought with the police (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/stephen_lawrence/282378.stm).

When the five suspects left the Inquiry after giving evidence they were met by a mob and were physically attacked by missiles and directly assaulted by members of the mob (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/123608.stm). Why they were expected to walk through a mob when they left the building is a mystery because the police must have realised the crowd was likely to attack. Nor did the police show any urgency to either protect the suspects or arrest their assailants.

The publication of the Macpherson Report in 1999 on the evidence given at the Inquiry ensured the Lawrence murder remained in the mainstream media throughout the eleven years leading up to the recent trial. In addition, Macpherson’s “anti-racist” recommendations, which included a dangerously broad definition of a racial incident as ” any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm), were adopted throughout public service and then by private and not-for-profit employers, especially the larger ones, many of which rely heavily on public contracts.

Politicians of all mainstream parties competed to be the most enthusiastic about this new quasi-Maoist “anti-racist” regimen under which to make any comment which could be construed as “racist”, however absurdly, would probably mean the end of a career of a politician or public servant. Unsurprisingly, public servants at all levels became eager to demonstrate how politically correct they were, both to advance their careers and to protect themselves.

Perhaps the single most sinister consequence of Macpherson was the institutionalising of “anti-racism” – extremely crude propaganda in practice – within the British state education system (http://www.schools-out.org.uk/teachingpack/stephenlawrence.htm), but the effect on the police and justice system runs it close.

Macpherson did not believe that racism did not have to be consciously motivated. He labelled the Metropolitan Police “institutionally racist” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-06.htm#6.6) , by which he meant, as far as he meant anything, unwitting racism arising from the general culture of a corporate body. The Metropolitan police at first rejected the tag of institutional racism but eventually caved in, after which the other police forces in Britain followed suit.

To attack police racism, whether deliberate or unintentional, Macpherson recommended that the police be directly placed under race laws: “47/11That the full force of the Race Relations legislation should apply to all police officers, and that Chief Officers of Police should be made vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of their officers relevant to that legislation.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm). This was enshrined in law in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34/contents)

The effect of Macpherson on the police was to render them, and especially the most senior officers, rigid with political correctness – the toxic fruits of which can be starkly seen in the police statement that the recent killing of the Indian student Anuj Bidve by a white attacker in Salford was a “hate crime” despite the fact that the police admitted there is no evidence for this (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/white-attackernon-white-victim-racist-motive-non-white-attackerwhite-victim-no-racist-motive/). This mentality has continued to drive the Stephen Lawrence case.

The publication of the Macpherson Report provided the mainstream media with a never ending stream of stories related to the Lawrence killing. He became the lead icon for “anti-racism”. No area of life escaped. Not only schools and the police but every workplace was directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of the Lawrence murder. Stephen’s mother Doreen ceaselessly campaigned for further investigations into the death . The ever expanding band of “anti-racist” interest groups were ready at the drop of a hat to use his death as a lever to get other perceived racist affronts into the public eye. The mainstream media, without exception dominated by enthusiastic “anti-racists” and “multiculturalists”, was always willing to run another Stephen Lawrence story and only too eager to seize on any claimed example of racism and give it an airing, frequently with reference to the Lawrence murder.

Because of the constant media’s constant return to the Lawrence story there was never any chance that it would fade in the public mind. Any trouble the five suspect got into, including criminal convictions, was given great prominence in the media. The period after 1993 was also the time when the Internet took off so that no mainstream story is ever really taken from the public fold. Details of Norris and Dobson’s criminal past may not have been allowed into evidence at their trial, but anyone googling their names would have soon discovered the material.

With all that history, is it conceivable that a jury could be empanelled which was not aware of the defendants’ past and was not influenced by the massive amount of adverse and often crudely abusive media coverage they would have inevitably experienced just in the normal course of living? To not be aware of the media’s representation of the Stephen Lawrence case and Dobson and Norris’ involvement in it, the jurors would not have read newspapers or listened or watched news bulletins or current affairs programmes over the past 18 years; not found such information when using the Internet; not attended “antiracist” courses in their workplace and not been at school (and probably university) after 1999 because of the institutionalisation of “antiracism” propaganda (with Stephen Lawrence at its centre) in British schools following the recommendation that this be done in the Macpherson Report (Recommendation 67 – http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm). .

Even if by some miracle twelve people could be found who were unaware of the Lawrence case and the reputation of Dobson and Norris, there would still be the hurdle to overcome of the intensely politically correct atmosphere that has been gradually created by the British elite over the past forty years. Whites in Britain have been conditioned to believe that it is dangerous not to play the multiculturalist game. To fail to accept the Lawrence case narrative presented to them and find Dobson and Norris not guilty would expose them to the dreaded charge of racism. At the same time non-whites have developed a tremendous sense of victimhood which leaves them unlikely to approach a trial such as this in disinterested fashion.

However the jury was comprised the jurors would have had good cause to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence. If the jury was all white they could, and almost certainly would have been, be portrayed, at best, as whites looking after their own. If the jury was racially mixed it would be very difficult for the white members to argue for a not guilty verdict if the non-white members were against it. Conversely, a non-white member on the jury who did not believe guilt had been proved would be nervous – for fear of being seen as an uncle Tom – about voting for not guilty, if such a vote would mean there was a unanimous verdict and consequently it would be known that they had voted that way.

(I have not been able to discover any details about the composition of the jury other than that it was comprised of 8 men and 4 women and people from the locality of the killing were excluded (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15735026). If anybody has details of the age, class, race and ethnicity of the jurors please let me know. )

If there is an equivalent case in terms of sustained adverse media coverage which has gone to trial I would glad to know of it.

The racist video

A video made secretly by the police of some of the suspects including, Dobson and Norris, during the original investigation into the murder shows Dobson and Norris (and the others) engaging in extremely crude racist talk. Here is an example:

Neil Acourt. Sequence 11. “I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up mate and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps….”

David Norris. Sequence 50. “If I was going to kill myself do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every paki, every copper, every mug that I know..

I’d go down to Catford and places like that I’m telling you now with two sub-machine guns and I’m telling you I’d take one of them, skin the black cunt alive mate, torture him, set him alight …. I’d blow their two legs and arms off and say go on you can swim home now …. (laughs).”

Gary Dobson. Sequence 27. “He said the fucking black bastard I am going to kill him. I cracked up laughing. I went what black geezer. He went the Wimpy one the fucking black nigger cunt, fucking black bastard. I went what the Paki……”

Luke Knight. Sequence 11. “…. it was Cameroon, a fucking nigger country… Fucking our presenters saying oh yeah we want Cameroon to win this, why the fuck should he want niggers to win it when they’re playing something fucking like Italy…..” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-07.htm#7.11)

It is astonishing that the video was allowed in evidence because there is a principle in English law that nothing can be introduced into evidence if it is not direct evidence of the crime and would be likely to serious bias jurors. The prime example of this is the long-standing refusal to allow evidence of previous convictions into evidence (this has been weakened as a principle too, but still obtains in most criminal cases). The video clearly falls into this category because there is no admission in the recording that the suspects had committed the crime.

It has been suggested that those involved suspected or even knew they were being bugged, and deliberately went over the top with their language to taunt the police. But there is no hard evidence that this is the case. Moreover, if the prosecution seriously believed that the recording was made when those recorded knew or suspected they were being recorded, that would have been another reason for excluding it from evidence because it did not represent Dobson and Norris’ normal behaviour. Because of the conditioning to the “antiracist” mindset outlined above, it is difficult to believe the playing of the recording to the jury followed by the evidence given by Dobson and Norris about the recording would not have had an adverse effect on the jury.

The fact that no admission of having killed Lawrence was made in the secret recording is a pointer to their innocence. To build on that instance there is a considerable amount of surveillance over the years which failed to catch any of the suspects making any admission of involvement in the murder:

“ Just weeks before the Macpherson report was published in February 1999, then Met Deputy Commissioner John Stevens asked one of his top detectives John Grieve, to launch a no-expense spared new probe.

Career detective Mr Stevens told Mr Grieve, a deputy assistant commissioner, he could recruit the best detectives in the force.

At its peak, 120 officers were working on Operation Athena Tower, which lasted four years.

Yard chiefs were in constant contact with the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, the only person who could authorise telephone intercepts on the suspects.

Yard Assistant Commissioner David Veness approved dozens of bugging operations on the gang’s cars, homes and workplaces, while a surveillance team was constantly on their trail.

A source said: ‘It was run like a big anti-terror operation. The team had every piece of kit you have ever heard of. It was pure James Bond.’

It was during this phase that a house was purchased in the same street as one of the murder suspects, and an undercover officer tasked with infiltrating the gang.

TV INTERVIEW AND A SPY HELICOPTER

Two months after the Grieve probe started, the five suspects agreed to be interviewed by Martin Bashir on ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald.

Programme makers were in close contact with the Met before the programme was recorded but for legal reasons, detectives ruled out suggesting the line of questioning.

Had they done so, defence lawyers could have argued they had used Bashir as ‘an agent of the police’ – scuppering the possibility of using it as evidence at any future trial.

Bedrooms and other pre-selected rooms in the secret house in Scotland where the interview was filmed had recording devices installed.

Scotland Yard even had a helicopter hover over the group as they played golf nearby, recording their comments, relayed by satellite from tiny microphones hidden in their golf trolleys. But the ‘bugged golf buggies’ did not provide any vital new leads – and neither did the TV show.

In May 2004, the CPS announced there was insufficient evidence to bring murder charges. One detective remarked at the time that the Yard’s best hope was if one of the suspects ‘became a vicar’ and gave a true account of what happened”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html – this Mail article is worth reading in its entirety).

The fact that, despite the immense surveillance efforts made over a long period, no admission was ever recorded or heard by undercover officers pretending to be their friend strongly points to their innocence. The temptation for young men, adolescents when the crime happened, to boast amongst themselves about the crime if they had committed it would have been very strong because that is the way of young men. Imagine keeping quiet about it for years on end even when you are drunk and amongst people you think are your friends. It would argue for an iron self-discipline that few could muster and would be vanishingly unlikely to be found in every one of a group of five or more.

The breaching of double jeopardy

The ancient English law principle of no double jeopardy – that there should be no more than one trial on the same offence or evidence after an acquittal has been gained – was diluted by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This provided for more than twenty offences to attract the possibility of a second trial on the same charge after being acquitted previously. Murder is one of the qualifying offences. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10). The breaching of double jeopardy was one of the Macpherson recommendations – no 28 – although he was making the suggestion only in relation to racist crimes. (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).

The removal of double jeopardy is dangerously wrong in itself, because of the opportunity it gives to the state to behave in an oppressive manner. To that ill is added that of de facto retrospection, for it is not only crimes committed after the 2003 Act which are caught by it but any crime committed before the Act was passed. Dobson was acquitted during the private prosecution and until the 2003 Act was passed could not have been retried. He is also a victim of retrospection.

There are supposedly strong safeguards against the abuse of power built into the 2003 Act. The court of Appeal has to quash the original acquittal and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has to give the go ahead for a new prosecution. There is also a seemingly stern test for the new evidence on which a fresh trial will be based. Section 78 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires that the new evidence must meet the following tests:

78 New and compelling evidence

(1)The requirements of this section are met if there is new and compelling evidence against the acquitted person in relation to the qualifying offence.

(2)Evidence is new if it was not adduced in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted (nor, if those were appeal proceedings, in earlier proceedings to which the appeal related).

(3)Evidence is compelling if—

(a)it is reliable,

(b)it is substantial, and

(c)in the context of the outstanding issues, it appears highly probative [Having the effect of proof, tending to prove, or actually proving] of the case against the acquitted person.

(4)The outstanding issues are the issues in dispute in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted and, if those were appeal proceedings, any other issues remaining in dispute from earlier proceedings to which the appeal related.

(5)For the purposes of this section, it is irrelevant whether any evidence would have been admissible in earlier proceedings against the acquitted person. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10).

The problem with such putative safeguards is that they allow a great deal of latitude in their interpretation and the decisions, whether or not to quash the original acquittal or mount a fresh prosecution, are made by members of the elite who are often associated with politicians. For example, the present DPP, Keir Starmer, is a member of the Labour Party (he was named after Keir Hardie) and was appointed by a Labour government. Consequently , there is also a “Who shall guard the guards” element to fret over. But I shall leave that question to the judgement of the reader. What I shall go into in some detail is the question of the “New and compelling evidence” on which the re-trial was based.

The new forensic evidence

This consists of a minute blood stain identified as Lawrence’s blood, two human hairs of 1mm and 2mm respectively (which could only be tested for maternal DNA because the hairs had no root) and a small amount of fibre identified as coming from Lawrence’s clothes which was found on clothing taken from the defendants’ homes after the murder. Technology was not advanced enough in 1993 to have extracted a complete DNA profile from the blood stain, but that is irrelevant because, according to media reports, the blood stain was not spotted in 1993. The stain was tiny but not invisible being 0.25mm by 0.5mm (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081758/Stephen-Lawrence-verdict-The-evidence-convicted-David-Norris-Gary-Dobson.html).

In the 1990s two separate forensic examinations were made of the clothes and other items gathered by the police in 1993 as possible evidence. The first was conducted by Adam Wain who was working with the police. The second by Dr Angela Gallop who acted for the Lawrence family in 1995 when the private prosecution was being prepared. Both found blood and textile fibres; both came to the same conclusions: that there was too little blood to test and the connection between Lawrence and any of the suspects’ clothing was thin, in Dr Gallop’s words “Even in combination these fibres provide only very weak evidence of any association between Lawrence’s and Dobson’s clothing.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm – this is section 25 of the Macpherson Report)

But there were fibres which had some similarity with the garments worn by Dobson and Lawrence:

“ 25.7 In summary, the conclusions of Mr Wain were really as follows: First, amongst the extraneous fibres removed from the bag from the right hand were two brown wool fibres that had the same microscopic and colour characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s cardigan. One of these had similar dye components as those from the cardigan. The other one was too small for dye testing.

Also he found that one grey cotton fibre from Stephen Lawrence’s jacket had the same microscopic characteristics as fibres from Mr Dobson’s jacket. That discovery was made in June 1994. Also a single white polyester fibre found in the bag from Stephen Lawrence’s right hand had the same microscopic characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s jacket. As that fibre was white no further relevant tests could be carried out.”

25.8 The report of Mr Wain continued as follows … “Evaluation conclusions … where fibres are found to match the component fibres of a garment, this does not mean that they necessarily came from that garment. They could have come from another garment of the same type or another source of similar fibres. Therefore, in my opinion, there is weak support for the assertion that the two brown wool fibres recovered from the bag that was covering Stephen Lawrence’s right hand came from an exhibit ASR/2, namely a cardigan recovered from Dobson’s home”, and that, “there is very weak support for the assertion that the single grey cotton and white polyester fibres that were recovered from Lawrence’s jacket and right hand bag came from item LA/5, namely a jacket found at Dobson’s home.” (Ibid)

The importance of these early findings on the fibres are twofold: (1) it shows that extensive searches for fibres and their extended testing was undertaken when the evidence was fresh and less likely to be contaminated (2) that similarity of fibre was weak evidence of where the fibre came from.

It is rather difficult to see how two highly experienced forensic scientists could have missed the fibres which were presented as evidence in the trial just concluded. More to the point, even if they did miss them, why are these putatively new fibres any more potent as evidence now than those found and tested in between 1993-1995? There would seem to be no ready answer to that because a fibre is just a fibre, a dye is just a dye. There has not been technological advance which will identify the particular garment from which a fibre has come.

Even if there was other evidence, forensic or otherwise, the new fibre evidence would add little to it simply because of its uncertainty. If there was a great deal of evidence which pointed to Dobson and Norris being involved with the killing it might add a small circumstantial something but that is all. But there was not a great mass of strong evidence in this trial. The two hairs found on Norris’ clothing could have been simple contamination as the evidence bags nestled together, unwitting transferred during other tests or even transferred by the officers initially collecting evidence who also visited the Lawrence home. It is worth adding that the clothes from which fibres were taken were not collected for several weeks after the murder and the police themselves thought it unlikely that any fibres from Lawrence would have been left on the clothes after that time(http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm) .

The only really important new evidence put forward was the microscopic blood sample on Dobson’s jacket collar (http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16141534) and the two hairs. The fibre and hair evidence really added nothing to this. The DNA evidence either stood or fell on its own merits. As there was no blood evidence against Norris (only inconclusive fibres and the two tiny hairs). He should have been acquitted because there was no meaningful evidence against him.

The blood evidence against Dobson presents more complex problems. The defence did not question the blood DNA analysis. Instead they attacked its veracity as evidence by claiming contamination. There were solid grounds for doing this. The blood stain was not seen by the two forensic scientists who had examined the jacket in the 1990s. The evidence had been stored for 18 years. The clothes were stored in paper evidence bags sealed only with sellotape – the original forensic scientist Adam Wain warned of the dangers of contamination as the bags and sellotape seals degraded (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/11/24/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-forensic-expert-had-concerns-about-contamination-of-evidence-old-bailey-hears-86908-23585745) Evidence bags containing Lawrence’s clothes and effects were stored with those containing the Dobson and Norris evidence. Detective Sergeant John Bevan and Detective Constable Linda Holden, two of the officers involved in the initial investigation, visited the Lawrence home as well as taking raids on the suspects homes (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8908314/Officers-may-have-contaminated-Stephen-Lawrence-evidence.html). An officer on the case DC Paul Steed deliberately sabotaged his records relating to the forensic evidence (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/09/stephen-lawrence-trial_n_1139000.html . A forensic worker Yvonne Turner mislabelled evidence in 1993, including the garments at issue in the Dobson/Norris trial (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/23/stephen-lawrence-trial-evidence-mislabelled) It is also true that contamination of forensic evidence is a not uncommon problem in many cases which heavily rely on it. (http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/01/can-we-really-rely-on-forensic-science/).

Having said all that there is the question of how the blood soaked into the Dobson jacket collar. Three other flakes of blood which tested as being that of Lawrence were found loose in the evidence bag, although again these had been missed in the earlier forensic examination. They could plausibly have been in the bag as the result of contamination by a simple mechanical transfer of material. Dobson’s defence rested on the fact that the blood on the collar could have been caused by the liquid with which the jacket was sprayed to test for saliva. This could have softened another scrap of dried blood which allowed the blood to soak into the collar.

The prosecution brought Rosalyn Hammond as an expert forensic witness to say this was “practically impossible” (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/12/08/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-contamination-not-to-blame-for-bloodstain-on-accused-s-jacket-says-expert-86908-23620646/). Prosecuting counsel in his final speech to the jury said the blood on the collar could not “realistically be caused by contamination”. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16271736). Note that neither the witness or the prosecutor say it was actually impossible. In fact, they used the sort of phrases that people use when they are trying to paper over the cracks in an argument. Nor is the spraying for saliva the only plausible way the blood could have got onto the collar. For example, someone opening the bag which had been contaminated with loose tiny flakes of blood could have had water or another liquid on their hands and without knowing it transferred both blood and liquid to the Dobson jacket. It is also rather curious that only a tiny amount of blood would have soaked into the Dobson jacket if it had been transferred during the attack or conceivably after the attack with blood from the knife or hands. The fact that the blood was on the collar makes it even less probable because staining elsewhere – the sleeve or front of jacket would have been more likely than the collar, especially if the blood was transferred in the attack. It should also be remembered that the blood stain and the three other loose flakes in the evidence bag were missed by both forensic investigations in the 1990s.

There are further strong circumstantial reasons to doubt the blood sample. Much was made in the Macpherson report of the failure to arrest any of the suspects for two weeks after the killing and the fact that on two occasions before any arrests were made Dobson and Jamie Acourt were seen leaving their homes carrying black plastic refuse sacks which might have contained items of clothing (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-18.htm). The Macpherson report concluded that this might have been clothes worn at the killing which were being disposed of to destroy any potential forensic evidence, a rather large assumption to say the least. But If that was indeed the case why would they have kept any of the clothes? Common sense would have told anyone who had been involved in the killing to get rid of everything. . In addition, it should be remembered that David Norris’ father Clifford was a heavyweight villain who reputedly ran the drugs trade in South London at that time. If he knew his son and others had been involved with the murder it is difficult to believe he would not have told his son to make sure all those involved got rid of any clothing or anything else they were carrying or wearing in case these provided forensic evidence.

Exactly how the Court of Appeal and the DPP concluded this was “New and compelling evidence” I am at a loss to understand. As for the jury, the judge warned them they had to accept the forensic evidence as being beyond reasonable doubt before moving to the question of whether Dobson and Norris were guilty. Whether the jury understood the full ramifications and complexity of the forensic evidence we shall never know, but it is difficult to see how they could have met the steep test of “beyond a reasonable doubt” on any rational basis.

The viciousness of the white liberal

Nothing I have written is meant to suggest that Dobson and Norris (or the other suspects) are admirable human beings. However, it is interesting to see the hypocrisy and viciousness of modern day liberals as they respond to this case.

If this had been black defendants from similar backgrounds to those of the five accused the mainstream media would have been full of broadcasts and articles saying their environment was responsible for their misbehaviour, how disadvantaged they were and so on. Nor has any meaningful allowance has been made by the mainstream media for the youth of Dobson (17) and Norris (16) at the time of the attack or the fact that Norris had a father who was a serious criminal. It should also be borne in mind that the suspects lived in an area of heavy non-white immigration, unlike the regulation issue white liberal who, curiously you may think for those putative worshippers of diversity, so often manage to arrange their affairs so that they live in very white worlds.

As they are white working class men, white liberals (and their black and Asian auxiliaries) feel free to casually vilify them in the crudest manner which demolishes any pretence they have to actually believing in the “liberal internationalist, be understanding, don’t blame anyone” credo they continuously promote.

That bastion of liberal sanctimony the Guardian greeted the convictions with the tabloid worthy headline Monsters in the dock (http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/06/1?newsfeed=true) while the Daily Telegraph from supposedly the other side of the political spectrum thought it relevant to comment on the physical appearance of the three members of the original five suspects not charged in this trial – The Acourt brothers and Luke Knight – and to sneer at the difficulties which the all but Jamie Acourt have experienced since the Lawrence murder (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8974918/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Jamie-Acourt-Neil-Acourt-and-Luke-Knight-profiles.html).

The vindictiveness of the liberal can be seen in their howling for longer sentences for Dobson and Norris – despite the fact that they were aged 17 and 16 at the time of the murder – and the willingness of those with power to pander to the public cries. The Attorney-General – a politician in the British government – has already agreed to review the sentences to see if they are “unduly lenient” because one or more “members of the public” have requested that he do so (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8994957/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Attorney-General-to-review-sentences.html)

It might be thought that the liberal dominated media would at least have been disturbed by the diluting of double jeopardy, but with a few honourable exceptions such as Peter Hitchens (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2083636/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-I-dont-believe-man-stand-trial-twice-crime.html#ixzz1irbOpuHd) there has been a ghastly silence.

The unpleasant truth (for liberals) is that modern liberals, far from being interested in truth and fairness and treating all human beings alike, are just like every other human being: they favour those they approve of and attack those they deem beyond the Pale. In fact, liberals today are more likely to behave viciously towards those of whom they disapprove than the general run of Britons because they are rigid ideologues and like all ideologues they carry their beliefs to any length of sinister absurdity.

Shades of the Barry George conviction

When Barry George was convicted of the murder of the television presenter Jill Dando in 2001 I wrote a pamphlet for the Libertarian Alliance entitled Barry George and the celebrity effect [http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/barry-george-and-the-celebrity-effect/ ]. In it I argued that the evidence was very weak and entirely circumstantial and the conviction palpably wrong. The prosecution case, like that in the Dobson/Norris trial, also rested on dubious forensic evidence.

I attributed the jury’s willingness to convict on such feeble evidence to Dando’s celebrity and the massive amount of irrelevant character assignation of George which occurred during the trial, character assassination which was then gleefully amplified by the media. Barry George was acquitted on appeal in 2008 when the weakness of the case against him was finally officially recognised.

Something similar seems to have happened in the case of Dobson and Norris. The police, the DPP, the Court of Appeal had obvious reason not to bring the case to trial or, in the case of the jury, to reach a verdict of guilty. Dobson should not have tried again because of the breach of double jeopardy and even under the new rules on second trials after an acquittal, neither Dobson nor Norris should have been retried because of the patent impossibility that they would get a fair trial because of all that had occurred in the previous 18 years. In addition, the new forensic evidence was seriously compromised by the very real risk of contamination. This should have caused the case to fail to meet the “new and compelling” criteria for a new trial. The jury should have come to a not guilty verdict because clearly the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard was not met because of the risk of contamination. The only plausible explanation for all of these things not happening is the creation by the media, politicians and interest groups of an atmosphere in which none of those involved in the process from gathering evidence to giving a verdict felt it possible to do anything other than allow the process of re-trial to proceed.

It is not necessary for those involved to have consciously made a decision not to do what circumstances and facts said they should do. All that it required is for those involved to have been in effect brainwashed by the coverage of the Lawrence case over 18 years and the ever increasing grip which “antiracist” propaganda has on Britain which makes many white Britons believe that in some curious way whites are always in the wrong when black complaints of abuse by whites are involved.

This was a political trial pure and simple. The desire for a conviction became part of the “anti-racist” crusade which the murder generated. No expense has been spared with an estimated £50 million having been spent on it (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged- killers-homes-cars-pubs.htm). At its height 120 officers were employed on the case full time (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html). Even today there are 25 officers doing the same and suggestions that they should be re-deployed to other duties is causing media uproar. The squad may well continue, viz.: ‘ Scotland Yard has denied reports that the team investigating the murder of Stephen Lawrence is being disbanded but it admitted the case is currently “dormant”’. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16435790)

Compare the Lawrence case with the investigation of the murder of a fifteen year old white boy Richard Everitt by Asians in 1994. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-deaths-of-richard-everitt-and-stephen-lawrence-compare-and-contrast/). One person was convicted of the murder and released after 11 years. Upwards of ten were in the gang which killed him who went looking for a white boy to attack. Unlike the Lawrence case there has been no sustained median campaign to bring the others to justice, no Public Inquiry like that of Macpherson, no ongoing massive police squad devoted to a continuing investigation, no outcry by the media at the release of the convicted killer after only 11 years. This was a murder which the British elite wished to sweep under the carpet as quickly as possible. The double standards of the British elite are howlingly obvious and disturbing. The British public can see what is happening and are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the “white, wrong; black, right” policies and mentality of those with power and influence in this country. That could be the ultimate legacy of the Stephen Lawrence circus: the straw which broke the grip of the “antiracist” multicultural propagandists on British life.

Stephen Lawrence’s murder was just that, a murder. It was as grave a crime as any other murder arising from the similar circumstances of a gang attack. No more, no less.

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 3

Robert Henderson

Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3^rd January. She will stand trial on two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court – Croydon Crown Court – on 17 February 2012.

The charge with “intent to cause fear “ arises because a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, claims Miss West hit her left shoulder with a closed fist. This charge comes under section 31A of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31). It carries a potential sentence on conviction on indictment of “ imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both”.

Anyone who has watched the video on YouTube will think the idea that she intended to cause fear when she was a white woman surrounded by hostile ethnic minorities laughable. ” The CPS are clearly playing the pc game by hitting her with the most severe charges possible. (The official line on what is a racially aggravated offence can be found at http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/racially_aggravated_offences/).

Miss West has yet to plead, but the fact that she has opted for a Crown Court trial (which will mean the case is heard before a jury) rather than a hearing in a magistrates court strongly suggests she will plead not guilty ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/03/woman-accused-tram-race-rant). This is because she risks a heavier sentence in the Crown Court and it would make little sense to opt for the case to be heard in the Crown Court if she does not intend to plead not guilty. There is of course the danger that she may be intimidated into pleading guilty by the promise of a lighter sentence.

Her bail conditions are that ” she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps at her home address and does not comment on the case. ” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16394046).

Bearing in mind that Miss West was remanded in custody against her will for “her own safety” , it does seem rather rum that the same court is insisting she stays in her own house when her address was read out in court.

The ban on travel on the local tram system could be pretty penal because she has two small children and the tram system may be the only means she has of taking them with her when she has to leave her house.

Her blanket gagging so she cannot comment on the case is remarkable. Engaging in any of the following can breach the sub judice rules and constitute contempt of court:

1. obtaining or publishing details of jury deliberations;

2. filming or recording within court buildings;

3. making payments to witnesses;

4. publishing information obtained from confidential court documents;

5. reporting on the defendant’s previous convictions;

6. mounting an organized campaign to influence proceedings;

7. reporting on court proceedings in breach of a court order or reporting restriction;

8. breaching an injunction obtained against another party;

9. anticipating the course of a trial or predicting the outcome; or

10. revealing the identity of child defendants, witnesses or victims or victims of sexual offences. (http://www.out-law.com/page-9742)

Only 4, 6, 7, 8 would seem to have any application in the context of banning her from commenting on the case. Number 9 might seem to have relevance, but by pleading one way or the other the outcome of a case is anticipated. It would be absurd if it applied to a defendant.

Nos 4,6, 7,8 could have been dealt with by banning those specific acts, although it is unlikely she would be in a position to do these things. For example, it is wildly improbable she could mount an organised campaign to influence proceedings. It is also true that cases can be discussed while a case is active in the context of a discussion of public affairs, for example, it would be acceptable to discuss Miss West’s case as part of an examination of how the justice system treats the treatment of black on white offences compared with white on black offences.

What does her general gagging tell us? Simple. The liberal elite are truly terrified that the politically correct house of cards they have built will be blown over if any of the vast resentment and anger at mass immigration and its consequences within the native British population is allowed into the public fold.

Referral of Piers Morgan’s perjury to the Leveson Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

22 12 2011

Dear Lord Leveson,

Piers Morgan indubitably lied to the Inquiry (20 December) when he claimed that he had never illicitly received information from the police. On 25 November I submitted a series of complaints backed by documentation to the Inquiry. These were definitely received by the Inquiry because an acknowledgement was sent to me.

My submission included a letter from Piers Morgan to the PCC in which he admitted that the Mirror had received information from the police illicitly. I include a copy of that letter below with the relevant passage highlighted. As Morgan refers to it in his letter to the PCC, I also send you a copy of the article I wrote in response to the Mirror story. This Morgan refused to publish.

Because Morgan gave his evidence to the Inquiry under oath, he added perjury to his original criminal offence of illicitly receiving information from the Metropolitan Police. I ask you to take action against Morgan for this perjury and to recall him for questioning about his receipt of illicit information from the Metropolitan Police, both in terms of that which he admitted to in his letter to the PCC and the extent of the practice generally during his editorship of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror.

In my submission I asked to give evidence in person. You have failed to answer that request to date. However, I see from the Inquiry website that you are seeking, amongst others things, the following for module 2 of the Inquiry:

“The Inquiry would be interested in the experiences of the victims of crime and the public more generally, who feel that they have been adversely affected (perhaps through a data leak or breach, or through the reporting of a case) by the current relationship between the press and the police, with examples where possible. The Inquiry would also be interested to receive submissions in relation to this issue on whether it is felt that the current investigation and complaint regime are adequate to properly address instances of this type”. http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Key-Questions-Module-2.pdf

The evidence which I have already given the Inquiry relating to Piers Morgan and the subsequent failure of Scotland Yard to meaningfully investigate the crime – the officer responsible Det Supt Jeff Cutis admitted to me that the “investigation” had been closed without anyone at the Mirror being questioned – indubitably falls into this category of information. This case has the great advantage for you of having objective and categoric proof of both the Mirror’s receipt of illicit information from the Metropolitan Police and the failure of the Metropolitan Police to meaningfully investigate my complaint about the illicit disclosure of information. The full details of these events were supplied in my submission of 25 November.

You are asking for applications for Core Participant status for Module 2 of the Inquiry to be made by 13 January. Please treat this email and my original submission of 25 November as an application for Core Participant Status.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email by return.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

For the text of Morgan’s letter to the PCC see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/piers-morgan-lied-to-the-leveson-inquiry/

For the Mirror story see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-failure-to-charge-piers-morgan-with-illicitly-receiving-information-from-the-police/

For my response to the Mirror story see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/moral-simpletons-target-innocent-man/

The right of self-defence in England

Robert Henderson

If there is such a thing as a natural right it is surely the right to self-defence, for any
organism will defend itself when attacked. To deny a man the right to defend
himself when attacked would be literally inhuman and , of course, in England we
have that right in law. We may defend ourselves even to the extent of killing
another if it is to save ourselves or another who is threatened. The problem is
that our law has become so hemmed about by conditions and restrictions, that most
people are both confused about what is permitted in practice and fearful of the
consequences of using force in their defence. This is scarcely surprising when cases
where burglars have been killed, such as that of Tony Martin, have resulted in the
victim of burglary going to prison (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/oct/30/tonymartin.ukcrime2),
while lesser cases which have resulted in non-fatal struggles all too
frequently seem to result in the person who was attacked being punished.

At the same time as this confusion over the law exists, the British state is growing ever more paranoid about the private citizen owning and carrying weapons. Guns are so
severely restricted that few people will go to the trouble of applying for a licence for anything other than a shotgun and there is a law against carrying a knife of any sort, even a pocket knife, with a blade of more than 3″ in a public place without good cause, for example, for the purposes of work.

The third piece in the jigsaw of our uncertainty is the increasing failure of the police to
provide protection to the private citizen, especially in country districts. This was the prime cause of Tony Martin’s action in illegally arming himself with a pump action shotgun to defend himself in his remote farmhouse. (Martin knew from past experience that he regularly was subject to intruders which the police could not or would not do anything to prevent.)

The failure of the police to adequately protect people breaches the implicit contract between the state and the individual in relation to personal safety: the individual
gives up his right to absolutely control his personal security on the understanding that they state will provide both physical security and meaningful redress for injuries which the individual may suffer from others. Small wonder that people take things into their own hands on occasion. The police failure to protect also makes the need for weapons more necessary to the individual for self-defence.

The right to self-defence in English law

The law on reasonable force as it is presently interpreted goes something like this: if you are attacked with a knife you may defend yourself with a knife: if you are attacked with bare fists you may defend yourself likewise. Do more in either instance and you will be in danger of being charged with an offence against the person, anything from common assault to murder. Pedantic proportionality is all. If you carry on assaulting your assailant after he is disabled, you will most likely face charges. If you have the opportunity to run away but do not, that may count against you in any assessment of whether you should be prosecuted. All this is demonstrably absurd. It assumes that people under attack can reasonably be expected to make judgements in the heat of the moment which in reality require calm consideration.

What is reasonable force?

Consider a few of the variables in assessing what is “reasonable force”. Women, the disabled, children and older men cannot reasonably be expected to defend themselves from a simple physical assault from a fit, strong assailant. Other things being equal, a small man cannot be expected to fight a large man; an older man a younger man, a fit man an unfit man. But, of course, other things are often not equal. Many men who are physically capable of fighting are absolutely hopeless at it. I have known a man of six and a half feet allow himself to be beaten by a man a foot smaller. Fighting is a matter of heart above all else. But it is also a matter of practice. Most men throwing a punch at someone’s face would be more likely to harm their fists than their opponent because they have
never been taught to punch correctly. (For those without any experience of fighting, I would recommend the knee in the groin or a good-old fashioned headbutt.) More importantly, those who are not used to fighting (and middleclass men generally fall into this category) are not psychologically prepared for a fight. This will mean one of two things: the person either capitulates utterly or goes into a berserk rage and keeps on damaging their opponent until the rage passes.

To these disparities of size, sex, age and mental and physical competence, we may add others. Someone who is assaulted does not know whether an assailant is going to restrict themselves to simple assault without a weapon. They may be armed for all the victim knows. Nor need this be obvious. To take a well-publicised case, that of Kenneth Noye who was convicted of murder in a road-rage incident http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/noye-admits-stabbing-on-the-m25-but-insists-that-he-killed-in-selfdefence-724180.html.

Noye carried a knife when he got out his car to confront his victim, but he only produced and used the knife when he began to get the worse of things as the two fought. (Noye
is also a good example of the effect of age on the ability to fight. He was 48 at the time of the murder. His victim was in his twenties. Noye was a career criminal with a reputation as hard man. Yet until he produced a knife, he got the worst of a fight he might reasonably have expected to win. Age had caught up with him). It is also true that even if an assailant does not have a weapon, the victim cannot know how far the assailant is likely to go. Will he restrict himself to punching? Or is the assailant the sort to put the boot in when
someone is on the floor? No one can know, Perhaps even the assailant does not know.

The obviously armed assailant presents a particular problem in judging what constitutes
proportionality of response. If someone comes at you with a knife, is it in order to use a gun? If the assailant has a club, may one use a knife? The law as it stands gives no clear guidance. It is all “every case has to be judged on its merits”.

Then there is the question of what happens should you disable your opponent. Suppose that a small man fells a much larger man with a lucky blow of, shall we say, a candlestick.
The smaller man is then left with the problem of what to do next. If he allows the more powerful man to recover, the smaller man will in all probability end up being badly hurt. The smaller man might be able to avoid that fate simply by running away (this is what the law would want you to do), yet he may be unable to reasonably do this even if he wishes to. That would be the case if the temporarily disabled man was a burglar and the smaller man’s wife and children were in the house where the fight took place. Let us further assume that there is no phone and the house is isolated as was the case with Tony Martin. In such circumstances, it could be argued with some force that it was reasonable to
deliberately disable the burglar by a further assault while he was unconscious to prevent the chance of violence from the burglar when he recovered consciousness.

Behind all these circumstantial problems stand the very human emotions of panic and rage. When one is attacked, the only desire is to ensure one’s safety. Adrenaline flows
and to say that any human being is in control of themselves in such circumstances is patent nonsense. The law does in practice take into account panic, but again it is all very hit-and-miss. Rage on the other hand is no excuse for what is judged a disproportionate assault.

The law as it presently stands effectively ignores human nature. It says that someone who is attacked must exercise truly marvellous self-control. In defending himself, the victim must not lose his temper and carry on attacking the attacker after the attacker has been disabled. This is utterly unrealistic. Someone in a blind rage or panic is manifestly not in control of their actions. There are good evolutionary reasons for that. When someone is responding to an attack, an uncontrolled response is the best way of responding to protect oneself. The evolutionary bottom line is: dead attacker equals safety.

What is a reasonable law of self-defence?

What then is a reasonable law of self-defence? The great bugbear at present is proportionality of response. In drafting a new law, I would start from the premise that an attacker forfeits his right to the protection of the law, that he literally takes his life into his hands. If the attacker is seriously wounded or even killed, that should be seen simply as a reasonable consequence of the attack. The test of “reasonable force” would become defunct. All that would have to investigated after an assault was whether there was evidence which suggested that the claimed attacker was in fact not the attacker. Provided such evidence did not exist, the person assaulted would have no case to answer. I would also remove from an attacker who suffers injury any opportunity to take civil action against his victim.

The great danger with such a law is that murder could take place under the guise of
self-defence. I would make two responses to that. Firstly, murder is very rare in Britain. It has been rare historically. The Canadian criminologist, Leyton Elliott who made a study of murder in Britain (Men of Blood) concluded that homicide in England was astonishingly rare and had been, relatively speaking, since the middle ages. In other words, there good sociological reasons to believe that few murders would take place under such an amended law. Approximately 800 homicides take place in England and Wales each year (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4273125/Murder-and-manslaughter-rate-increasing.html).

My second point is that a claim of self-defence would still have to conform to the facts of the death. It would be no use, for example, claiming that a fight had taken place at on the morning of May 3 if the forensic evidence clearly showed that the body had been dead before that time.

I would introduce one further criterion to determine whether self-defence was proved, namely was the threat offered by the assailant credible. For example, most people have encountered the mad old lady who suddenly for no apparent reason sets about people in the street with a newspaper or some other equally inoffensive instrument. Clearly such a person would not present a credible threat to anyone other than another old lady or a young child. It would be ridiculous for a fit, younger adult to be able to claim self-defence against such an assailant. If on the other hand that same old lady entered someone’s house uninvited in the middle of the night and was struck down and killed by the householder in the dark under the apprehension that she was a burglar, that would be self-defence.

A law on the lines I have suggested would not be perfect. There would still be problems about establishing who was the assailant and who the victim. But that problem already exists under the present law. What such a law would definitely do is prevent the prosecution of householders such as Tony Martin who surprise those within their homes.

My proposal would also accommodate perhaps the most contentious part of self-defence, namely pre-emptive action. An assault which results in physical action against someone is clear cut. But the law does not say that to commit assault physical violence has to be used. A person may believe themselves to be in imminent danger of being assaulted – someone may be making threatening statements or carrying a weapon or coming rapidly towards someone else. In such circumstances, the law gives the person who fears he or she is about to be assaulted the right to defend themselves before they are assaulted. However, a person who engaged in such behaviour as things presently stand would have the greatest difficulty in sustaining such a claim if reliable witnesses were not present at the time. And if such witnesses were present, a prosecution might well result on the grounds that the presence of witnesses made an assault unlikely or one that could have been resisted. It is
a ticklish problem to say the least. But one could use one of the main criteria for determining whether a physical assault had taken place to decide whether an assault was like to take place, namely the credibility of the witnesses.

In short, all my law would require someone to do would be to show that they had been assaulted by an assailant in circumstances where a credible threat existed. If that was proved, no prosecution would take place. There might be some rough justice in that, but less than there is at the moment. Moreover, what rough justice there was would most probably be at the expense of the wrongdoer rather than the law-abiding citizen.