Reject the Government’s "Law and
Order" Bills!
The government was forced to withdraw its Bill to erode the
right to trial by jury after its defeat on January 20 in the House of Lords.
The proposed legislation, the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill, had been
introduced in the Lords. Government ministers said that the Bill would be
reintroduced in the next parliament, going first to the House of Commons, and
then the attempt would be made to force it through the Lords.
The Bill was one of the "law and order" measures
in the government’s legislative programme, which also includes the
Terrorism Bill. It had proposed to end the right of defendants to elect for
trial by jury in certain indictable offences which may be tried "either
way", i.e. summarily before a magistrate or by jury in a Crown Court. The
right of the accused to elect in this way dates back to the Criminal Justice
Act of 1855. The Bill proposed that the decision would in future be up to the
magistrate and that the consent of the defendant was not required, although the
Bill specified a right of appeal. The Bill had been condemned by a wide
spectrum of opinion, including civil liberties campaigners and legal experts.
It is clear, they had pointed out, that the Bill would create a two-tier system
of justice with the vulnerable unable to challenge the summary justice of a
magistrate’s court, and the magistrate able to take into account the
defendant’s "reputation".
The Bill was a central piece of Tony Blair’s
"modernising" agenda, in this case to "modernise the criminal
justice system". Small wonder then that its defeat was an occasion for his
tilting at the "forces of conservatism" that are supposedly at work
to wreck this agenda. According to Blair, these particular forces of
conservatism were an alliance of Tories, Liberal Democrats and leaders of
"lawyers’ trade unions". This hysterical outburst of Tony Blair
serves to further expose the nature of his "modernising" agenda and
the spuriousness of the term "forces of conservatism". The government
had gone to the unusual lengths of publishing a briefing on the Bill
beforehand, which sought to justify it, and point out the aim of deciding on
which system it is which best "punishes the guilty" and which
"speeds up justice". The point is, who is to decide who is guilty and
what is justice.
The issue is not so much that the government is attacking a
fair system of "British justice". The picture rather which emerges is
the whole trend and direction of this government’s policies and
legislation, which is to criminalise the whole of society, and particularly be
able to secure a higher rate of convictions, and to make political questions
into law and order ones. Once the "reputation" of the accused,
particularly of the youth, is brought into consideration, it is evident which
sections of society the government is targeting with such proposed legislation.
The defeat of the Bill with, at the same time, the
government’s insistence that it will introduce it also underlines the
necessity for a modern constitution which defines the fundamental law of the
land, the rights and duties of citizens, and is drafted by the people
themselves. The Bill once more exposes that laws can be passed by the fiat of
government.
All of the government’s "law and order"
Bills should be rejected and the struggle for political renewal must be stepped
up. It is necessary to look thoroughly into what the government is aiming to do
with its legislative programme and to target the undemocratic political process
and to work for a genuinely modern democratic political process and
institutions as a component part of the class struggle against the anti-social
offensive.
