06.03.1997

Democratic rights attacked

Yet another attack on our democratic rights was unveiled last week. Michael Howard, the home secretary, backed plans to abolish the right to a jury trial for some 24,000 defendants. The home office package also included proposals for 17-year olds to be tried in adult courts, for the Crown Prosecution Service to work more closely with the police and for the withdrawal of legal aid from those pleading guilty.

In justification, Howard told MPs that total savings to the criminal justice system flowing from the report could amount to £110 million, of which £70 million would relate to the proposal to limit jury trials. He also endeavoured to portray the ‘reform’ package as an attempt to ‘unblock’ the congestion in the increasingly busy courts.

The police have already welcomed the home office proposals - which should be ominous enough. Still smarting from the Bridgewater Three trauma, when their lies and brutality became public knowledge, the police no doubt hope that closer ties between them and the CPS will ensure that the next ‘Bridgewater Three’ will rot in jail forever, and that police crimes will remain covered up.

The further attacks on juvenile ‘criminals’ are crude attempts to play the populist, Daily Mail card - ‘Remove these little brats from the too lenient juvenile justice system’. This dovetails into the increasing moral panic about juvenile crime, with Jack Straw now busily pushing the idea that kids under 13 are fully capable of ‘evil’, and must therefore be punished accordingly.

It almost goes without comment that New Labour has welcomed the home office ‘reforms’, with the exception of the abolition of the right to jury trials. Good old Jack Straw, coming good at last and defending our ‘historic’ right to jury trial which goes all the way back (so we were told at school anyway) to the Magna Carta of 1215? No. Straw objects to this ‘reform too far’ on the grounds that in effect it will lead to lighter sentences, as magistrates’ sentencing powers are more limited than those of crown court judges.

Communists resolutely oppose this attack on our rights, which will escalate the authoritarian and anti-democratic powers of the bourgeois state and act as a red rag to further police violence and corruption. Additionally, it is quite often the case that the magistracy are even more reactionary and petty in terms of their social/class composition and general world outlook than the crown court judges - and certainly more than a jury of peers, which increasingly have a healthy mistrust of the police and courts.

Dislike, hatred and fear of the working class is built into the very fabric of the criminal justice system, from top to bottom. We must show them that the feeling is mutual.

Paul Greenaway