Shropshire Star

Letter: Tories in a mess over justice and the EU

The Conservatives have put themselves between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

Published

On 22nd May they will fight the European Parliament elections on the basis of 'vote for us because we will, if re-elected in the General Election next year, re-negotiate the European Union treaties with a view to recovering lost powers and then give you a say in these matters by holding an IN or OUT referendum' !

In the meantime, shamelessly, they are continuing to give away even more powers to the EU as evidenced by the fact that by the deadline of 31st May they intend telling the European Commission that the UK wishes to opt-in to no less than 35 EU police and criminal justice measures.

These measures, including the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant, will then, in the Government's own words, become "subject to the full jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the enforcement powers of the European Commission".

Never before in nearly a thousand years of history has this country ever ceded powers over its legal system to a foreign power. Indeed in defeating the Spanish Armada, the French at Trafalgar and Waterloo, the Kaiser in Flanders fields and Adolf Hitler across the board, we British have successfully resisted all attempts to impose continental law upon us.

Few realise what a tremendous difference there is between our own criminal justice system and that extant in the rest of the EU. Within the EU only the Republic of Ireland, Malta and, to a lesser extent, Cyprus, share our English common law traditions.

Crucially, criminal justice systems on the continent, based as they are upon the 'Code Napoleon', know no such thing as the law of Habeas Corpus. Trial by Jury is a virtually unknown concept and the presumption of innocence is not generally regarded as the starting point from which continental legal cases proceed.

Indeed, whereas in Britain the onus is, quite rightly, upon the prosecution to establish guilt, on the continent the onus is upon defendants to prove their innocence.

On top of all that, defendants in Britain and other common law countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy a whole raft of other defences and protections against false accusation, arbitrary arrest and wrongful imprisonment such as the right to silence, double jeopardy, the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence, the withholding of previous convictions and restrictions on Press reporting. These are all features which are simply not enjoyed by defendants in continental jurisdictions.

The similarities between jurisdictions in mainland Europe and our own are difficult to discern and yet the fools in Government at the time of the passing of the Extradition Act 2003, which incorporated the most unjust European Arrest Warrant, argued that there was an 'equivalence' between our respective criminal justice systems – an equivalence that definitely didn't exist then and most certainly doesn't exist now !

Needless to say, the Conservatives, who in Opposition in 2003 actually opposed the EAW, would rather you didn't know about these things. They would much prefer we didn't worry our little heads about them giving away that which previous generations fought and died to defend. In spite of all their protestations to the contrary this so-called Conservative-led coalition Government is selling us down the river like there's no tomorrow and, be warned, for those who oppose the direction of political travel, once Corpus Juris (the embryo EU criminal justice system) has been fully imposed upon us there will, for free spirits, effectively be no tomorrow because the one thing that totalitarian regimes the world over cannot tolerate is criticism or principled opposition.

In my lifetime I never thought that I would see a British government surrender, absolutely voluntarily because the EU treaties do not require us to do so and no treaty obligations would be broken if we declined to do so, aspects of every Briton's most precious birthright – the English common law which for centuries meant that we could truly call ourselves a free people. No way could we be coerced by our political masters but all that, my friends, is due to change unless this duplicitous Government can be persuaded to see the error of its ways.

Next year they will direct £1m of taxpayers' money to help celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and yet by the end of next month they will, unless wiser counsels prevail, have trashed the very fundamentals of Magna Carta which have been the foundation upon which our individual freedom has, for eight centuries, been established.

If all this seems improbable, spare a thought for those British citizens like Andrew Symeou who was incarcerated in a filthy Greek jail for 11 months without charge, or Jason McGoldrick and Mark Turner who were banged up in Budapest in indescribable conditions, also for months, before being released due to lack of evidence against them, or Chris Lees, a British estate agent, held in Spain for the best part of a year, again without charge – the list goes on and on.

Instead of continually having its tail twisted by its tormentors in Europe perhaps it's time the British lion roared back its defiance and put it plainly to its EU partners that if it's justice they're after then it's high time they incorporated the English law of Habeas Corpus into both the European Convention on Human Rights and its EU equivalent, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

That, at least, would be a step in the right direction.

Christopher Gill, Hon. President, The Freedom Association

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