I’ve long been in favour of a written constitution to protect England from the ravages of successive governments. I therefore support the thrust of the LibDem’s announcement today.
Liberal Democrats today make clear our view that a written constitution for the United Kingdom should not only include the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights but also an explicit guarantee of the independence of judges in Britain from political attack or interference.
But I find it difficult, despite my claim to be liberal, to support this:
in recent years David Blunkett, more recently John Reid, and worst of all the Prime Minister have attacked our judges for doing their job…
Despite Mr Hughes’ undoubted good intentions, it stinks to me of the Liberal Democrat propensity to favour criminals over victims.
When our government attacks judge’s decisions they are often wrong in the strictest sense to blame the judges. It is, in truth, the fault of our prescriptive centralised government that judges cannot give the sentence they would like for a particular crime.
But the fact that Blunket et al recognise that sentencing should be tougher is a hell of a lot more reassuring — for its naivete — than the Hughes position which is that the sentencing handed down by judges is appropriate and even, in some cases, overly harsh.
If you think I am applying stereotypes consider the LibDem position on voting from prison. While the vast majority of Britons believe that prison is more about punishment than about realistic rehabilitation (because it has been shown over many years that prison cannot rehabilitate) the LibDems believe that we should not restrict prisoner’s liberty. Give them the vote, they say.
A constitution, then, must be drawn up so extremely carefully as to be beyond partisanship.
Update: If the white bars on the left of the quotations on this post obscure the following paragraph, use Firefox.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
See, this is why, you will be overjoyed to hear, I could never be a Tory party member, however much an advocate for small governemnt and personal responsibility I may be.
You all play fast and loose with “human rights”. If there are such things as human rights at all, and I don’t think you would demur totally either, then they are indivisible and inalienable and none more so than when the state is one of the actors in any particular transaction.
When an individual injures another or his property, that is indeed a terrible thing, but when the state deals with the fall out as I am sure you would expect them to do, it has to do so according to those overriding principles of human rights.
To alter those rights according to public opinion is to say that one human being is inherently worth less than another - such was the case, for example, with section 28 and the reluctance of Tory governments to equalize the age of consent. It is but one step to say that Jews are worth less than gentiles and we have seen where that takes us over the past century.
I cannot possibly imagine what it must be like to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but to have the state perpetrate such a thing is far and away more heinous than one individual on another because it does so in all our names.
Personally I do support the right of prisoners to vote. It is the High Court of Parliament, and they have a right to representation there just as they do in a Magistrate or Crown Court. They do not lose most of their worldly interests and concerns by being incarcerated. Indeed often a whole load more are piled on them, sometime justifiably, sometimes not. One could easily argue that they need more representation and not less.
If you’re so worried, you couuld get your ex-pat friends to register themselves in greater numbers to even things out!
The conclusion you draw that prison is more about punishment than rehabilitation is a terrible indictment of our nation’s Christian heritage and its doctrine of forgiveness and expiation.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
I’m sorry, I don’t think this is about inalienable human rights.
No-one, absolutely no-one has the right to cause harm to someone else. Once they have been judged by their peers (not the state) to have committed a crime they are rightly deprived of their freedom.
I should expect the freedom to decide who sets the rules that they have flouted should obviously be one of the freedoms they lose.
Prison as a rehabilitative method has been shown to have failed. Rehabilitation requires a desire in the criminal to reform — that cannot be brought about through imprisonment. The reason prison works is because it separates those who are unwilling to live in a civil manner from the vast majority who can and do.
October 10th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Well - your whole argument is based on a false, if popularly politicised premise - that Lib Dems have a propensity to favour the criminal over the victim.
Perhaps a propensity to favour the individual over the state, fair enough. And, unfortunate though it may be, in criminal matters it is usually the accused whom the state has the power relationship with and so it must be and be seen to be absolutely fair to them in all our names. Note, fair to them, not prejudiced in their favour.
There but for the grace of God…
And I’d suggest that, barring a few individuals and philanthropic organisations, this country has never sought really to make prison a place of rehabilitation. Certainly not in peoples’ minds.
Prisoners have all sorts of rights they retain. In practice, as you state, the main thing they lose is their freedom of movement for the protection of others. I do not see how that one policy to allow some of them the vote fankly affects the victims one iota. It is apples and oranges.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:31 am
I guess my key point was that jury-trial is not state vs. accused with no controls. The involvement of those whose name punishment is done in (the jury) satisfies me that the removal of rights from those scum who would murder, rape etc. is not only justified but is something to celebrate.
If paedophiles, murderers and those evil people who would violate someone else in any number of other ways should be allowed sovereignty (by virtue of a vote) then I want no part of that country’s governance.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:09 am
Have you ever seen the inside of a Prison?
October 11th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Jury trial is the main back stop of people v state, which has come to mean elected government, it is not government who send people to prison but the people, society, whatever. No matter what laws government introduce as long as we have trial by jury and independence of juries we the people have the final say in not only sending people to prison but also the laws passed by our government.
Remove this safeguard against state power and we become nothing more than slaves to the state because it will change the power of the sate against the individual. Good old Tony Blair and his cabal of friends have been attacking the freedoms we have gained as individuals over the years and rolling back our rights since they were elected.
In the name of protection against terrorism and in the name of efficiency they are removing our rights to be free and not only free but our power to enforce our own freedoms against the state in our own courts.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Ken, Absolutely agree.
Tony, What was your point?
October 11th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Firstly, I don’t think there are such things as human ‘rights’. It jut seems so to some people and is wishful thinking. That’s why we elect supposedly benign governments - to allow us to continue with the things we wish to do. As for seeing the inside of a prison - yes I have but I didn’t stay long. It was a day visit. Talked to a murderer though. Heard he’d done it again some days later.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
I don’t think there are such things as human ‘rights’
Well there are, the basic rights are what man needs to survive. We have had to fight for those rights over the years as we have had to fight for state power against the individual to be controlled. Government is there to protect those rights, that is its most basic function, otherwise it would simply be a matter of the survival of the fittest. I am not talking about the right to education or the right social security payments or any of the other socialist style of “rights” just the basic rights the right to live the right to property etc.