Just when we might have been persuaded that Brexit really did mean Brexit – what do we learn? We learn that Home Secretary Amber Rudd has told the national security strategy committee that, inter alia, “Britain would try to remain in European security organisations and systems such as Europol – the EU’s law enforcement agency – and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) after Brexit”. (Daily Telegraph report 7th March 2016).
The general perception of the EAW, depending upon one’s own particular outlook, is that it is either an unqualified good or a necessary evil, but how many of us actually understand that what it does in practice is to allow the ‘powers that be’ in any one of the 28 EU Member states to order the arrest of any citizen, throughout the EU’s territories, without a shred of evidence that the poor unfortunate has actually committed an offence.
Until the passing of the Extradition Act 2003 (enacting the EAW) we British could justifiably claim to have been a free people simply because the English common law, with its roots in Magna Carta, protected us against coercion by the State – in other words we couldn’t have our liberty taken away without evidence that we had broken the law; without witnesses to testify to that effect; without being charged with a specific offence and without that charge being made in open court.
Since time immemorial British subjects have enjoyed protection against false accusation, arbitrary arrest and wrongful imprisonment by dint of the Presumption of Innocence; the right to Trial by Jury; the right to Silence; the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence; the withholding of previous convictions; Press reporting restrictions whilst matters are sub judice; protection against Double Jeopardy, (i.e. being charged again with an offence that one has previously been acquitted of); and, crowning this list of invaluable defences and protections against state-inspired coercion, the law of Habeas Corpus, once described by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as being “such an incredible part of Freedom”!
Notwithstanding that it truly is ‘such an incredible part of freedom’ the law of habeas corpus has, since 2003, been negated by the European Arrest Warrant (see the learned Opinion of Jonathan Fisher QC at this site: savebritishjustice)
In November 2014 the Government could, without in any way breaching the terms of the EU treaties, have withdrawn the UK from the iniquitous EAW regime but that was not the wish of the then Home Secretary, now Prime Minister, Theresa May – any more than it is today the wish of her successor in that office, Amber Rudd!
So there we have it! The two top people in our supposedly pro-Brexit Government both in favour of the state retaining the power to arrest its citizens without evidence!
Readers of this column will not need me to explain that ceding to the State the power to incarcerate its citizens without the necessity to even provide prima facie evidence of wrong-doing is nothing short of tyranny.
The supreme irony in all of this is that there can be absolutely no doubt that Theresa May, Amber Rudd and a huge swathe of other Parliamentarians agree with my argument – why else has our Government agreed to shell-out millions of taxpayers’ money in compensation to former detainees in Guantanamo Bay?
Answer: Because those people were deprived of their liberty without there ever being any evidence produced in a court of law that justified their detention and without any charge ever having been levied against them!
In a word, they were denied the very basic and fundamental principles of the ‘common law’ that we British had for so long taken for granted and which, we now learn, are most likely not going to be fully restored as part of Brexit!
The very least our Government should insist upon is that all requests for extradition are accompanied by prima facie evidence (of an offence having actually been committed) that can then be examined in a British court of law before extradition is either granted or refused.
Meanwhile, caveat emptor (buyer beware) – on an entirely different subject, do not for one minute assume that the Tories will regain the exclusive right of British fishermen to fish in exclusively British waters i.e. out to 200 miles or the median line. But that is a story for another day …
Photo by Tim Evanson
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10 Comments on “PERFIDIOUS TORIES!”
Alan, my motive in writing this piece was to provide our supporters with ammunition to be used against those who find it so difficult to believe that the Conservatives will fail to deliver a satisfactory Brexit. Please use it to persuade your contacts of the folly of continuing to support a Party that cares not a fig for individual freedom.
Or the self employed judging by Hammond’s. Debacle.
The true intent of the Tories is becoming apparent. May is and remains a “Remainer”. She could have shown otherwise by triggering Atricle 50 during her first week in office after Cameron failed to do it. Surely no-one with any common sense could have failed to realise that delay would open the door to dissent?
The Tories will create their own implosion. Soubry, Clarke et al will make their mischief to stupidly undermine their own party. UKIP has delivered on a plate to the Tories an once in a lifetime opportunity. They will through their indiscipline muck it up. They can’t even support their own Chancellor over the NICs issue.
Is that the siren call of every small party John? Position as though a large mainstream one and wait for the seats to fall in your lap? Just a few weeks we heard this tale about Labour seats. The real Tories. The real Labour. Hope you are the one paying the donations bill!
“Pointless asking the labour-lite supporters as they will never get anywhere.”
No, we won’t Alan, because Tories like you can’t bring yourself to give working people enough incentive to vote for us – No Socialism Here!
You’d rather have your b libertarianism than any chance of stopping immigration.
Tragic and very, very stupid.
TQ very much for this article, Mr Gill!
The whole lot of them are in the ‘managed decline’ business. UKIP is now stuck in the ‘radical-lite’ mode God help us!
Thank you for another cogent and compelling article. The governments stance on the EAW is shameful as is the provision for HMRC to raid bank accounts directly without the need for a court warrant (Osborne should be hounded for his anti-libertarian act). The erosion of traditional liberties, the increasingly intrusive and controlling state, is deeply worrying.