Labour party losing the Justice Game
One of the single biggest disappointments of the last Labour government was their apparently unfathomable approach to the criminal justice system and a persistent disregard of civil liberties. Yesterday, the Home Secretary announced that the rules on ‘stop and search’ had changed after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was illegal. The first couple of minutes of Theresa May’s statement gives the picture.
Coincidentally, yesterday I came across the following passage in a Geoffrey Robertson QC book – his compelling and inspiring The Justice Game.
The jury-vetting episode [in the ABC trial] provided further evidence for the uncomfortable proposition that civil liberties are less secure in the hands of Labour politicians, nervously striving to prove their responsibility by bowing to pressure from the police and the security services, than of dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives who have no need to prove their law and order credentials.
The book was published in 1998, so was presumably largely written before New Labour gained power, and the ABC trial was at the time of the Callaghan administration in 1978. The Lib-Con coalition now look well set to seize the civil liberties agenda. Who’d have thought it? Well, Geoffrey Robertson may not be surprised and he knows a thing or two about human rights.
