Making sure you have had this to read. Long, but well worth it. XXXXXXXXXX A
I'S letter to:
07 Oct 2008
Dominic Grieve MP,
David Davis MP,
Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph.
Daniel Finkelstein, Daily Telegraph
cc Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty
The EU-Free Liberty
Fringe Meeting.
Dear Ms Daley, Mr. Davis, Mr. Grieve and Mr. Finkelstein,
I arrived late at the Liberty fringe meeting on Monday the 29th of
September due to a clash with another meeting, but I believe that all
four of you spoke for a total of an hour on the subject of freedom and
liberty without once mentioning the European Union. That you failed to
do so was not just absurd but utterly bizarre- as well as astonishingly
complacent. Where on earth do you think the threats to our liberties
are coming from? You surely cannot believe that they are all home
grown? Or were you under orders from Conservative Central Office not to
mention the EU?
At the meeting I repeatedly put my hand up to ask a question, but Ms.
Chakrabarti, knowing that I would make the same points about the EU’s
threat to our freedom that I had made at her meeting at the LibDem
Conference two weeks before, refused me that opportunity on the grounds
that the first questioner had asked about the EU.
I first started attending fringe meetings at all Party Conferences in
1998 to try to expose the EU’s 1997 plan Corpus Juris which they
described as "an embryo of a future EU criminal code" and I was one of
what Philip Johnston of the Telegraph described on November 30th 1998
as "a small number of concerned individuals" who had forced this issue
into the public domain. From the EU's point of view of "ever closer
union" and its objective of becoming a State in its own right, it is
entirely logical of course to want a single legal system for the whole
of the EU. Unfortunately for us, Ireland and Malta (the only three
member states having our system of common law with fundamental
principles developed over many centuries) the great majority of other
member states have Napoleonic, inquisitorial legal systems which
recognise few, if any, of our most important principles.
It was therefore no surprise in 1997 to find that Corpus Juris (ISBN no
2-7178-3344-7)* explicitly abolishes habeas corpus (by allowing
imprisonment without trial or any public hearing for up to 6 months,
renewable for 3 months at a time without stated limit) - article
20.3.g; abolishes jury trial (which does not exist anywhere on the
Continent in a form we would recognise) and lay magistrates, in favour
of professional judges - article 26.1. It brings back double jeopardy
by allowing the Prosecution to appeal against acquittal - article 27.2.
It also proposes a European Public Prosecutor who would be able to
order the British Public Prosecutor to do what the EU wants - article
18.5; and many other fundamentally unacceptable things too.
While Corpus Juris was explicitly rejected at the end of 1998, by the
then Home Office Minister Kate Hoey, who in reply to Parliamentary
Questions from two opposition MPs promised to veto it if it was ever
formally proposed, many elements of it have continued to be pushed
through, piecemeal, by our government over the past 10 years, disguised
as domestic measures. Why do you think the Government pushed for 90
days and now 42 days' (6 weeks') detention on no evidence, other than
as a stepping stone towards Corpus Juris’ 6 months plus 3 months at a
time without stated limit, so that in due course they can stand claim
that the differences are only of degree and not of kind and not really
so great as to matter?
Do you not realise that the EU sees terrorist threats and indeed the
current financial problems - as a "beneficial crisis" allowing them to
seize yet more control? Do you still not understand that the EU Arrest
Warrant, very much in the news with the arrest of Dr. Toben by British
police when passing through Heathrow, pushed through supposedly as an
urgent measure against terrorists, is now being used to extradite
people for what they think and say, even when they represent no crime
here? Do you not understand that the EUAW requires not even prima facie
evidence of an offence having been committed, not even a British
policeman but any “authorised person” to carry out the arrest? If you
did not realise at the meeting but surely must now, that extradition
under the EUAW can be carried out even in respect of trials in absentia
and that such trials, unknown in this country for centuries, have
recently been allowed in a small number of cases? Ms Chakrabarti was
quoted as being concerned over this and (rightly) attributing it to the
EU. Her statement (quoted in the Sunday Telegraph online edition of
21/09/08) said there should be a right of scrutiny by a local court,
but did not attack the main point that most EU countries allow, and
always have allowed, people to be tried and convicted in their absence,
something that our British system has never accepted. Nor that this is
just one of the radical differences that have always separated the
British idea of justice from that prevailing on the continent. She also
stated that “this is not pro-or anti EU, but just about what sort of EU
we want”. The problem with that statement is perhaps illustrated by a
famous cartoon showing a fish, caught within a net, saying to one
outside the net “Personally, I have always thought it better to
negotiate from within”. In other words, the sort of EU we get is what
the EU is utterly determined to impose upon us, and nothing whatever to
do with what we want. As should surely have become obvious over the
past 40 years of lies, weasel words and clicks of innumerable ratchets.
Why do you think that jury trial and lay magistrates are under threat,
if not for the same reason, to reduce to vanishing point the difference
between our legal system and theirs? Why has double jeopardy been
allowed, other than for the same reason? Why do you think the
Government tried to merge our 43 police forces into regional forces
which (surprise, surprise) happened largely to coincide with EU
regions? Why did that thoroughly evil man Blunkett seek political
control of the police on a national level - a critical breach of the
principle of separation of powers essential to prevent too much power
being concentrated into too few hands? For how long do you suppose
those regional police forces would remain answerable to our Parliament
rather than directly to EU politicians you surely realise that many
police forces on the Continent are, whether de facto or de jure, under
the direct control of politicians?
How long before our police become merely branch offices of the planned
European Police Force, bearing in mind too that only in the last few
days Europol were granted permission to question defendants in custody
in Britain? Are you aware that Europol officers have lifetime immunity
from prosecution for anything they do as part of their jobs something
that, as Vladimir Bukhovsky pointed out, not even the KGB have?
Do you really suppose that the evil - and I use the word advisedly -
Civil Contingencies Act was dreamed up independently by this Government
and not in behind the scenes discussions with the EU? Or did you notice
that only a few days ago the European Parliament approved plans to
allow seizure of assets prior to any charge or trial, and without any
evidence whatever, as long as the supposed offence involves 3 years
jail or more? Do you suppose that this cross-border version of the
Civil Contingencies Act is merely a coincidence?
Do you not understand, even days after newspaper pictures showed the
letters "EU" in tiny print forming the background of the cards, that
the ID card scheme, which you all rightly oppose, is a EU scheme? That
almost all other EU member states already have them and that in many it
is a criminal offence not to carry them at all times - even on the
beach or in the garden? Not long ago German friends visiting my
neighbour asked what British ID cards look like, and when told that we
do not have them, expressed surprise by saying, "But how does your
Government know where you are all the time without them?" They seemed
unable to understand that we do not necessarily want our Government to
know where we are all the time!
Have you not realised that the proposal for "pay as you drive" schemes
using satellite-based systems to record the positions of vehicles at
all times, is an EU scheme intended to use their Galileo system and to
generate income. And that despite years of denials - the primary
reason for Galileo is a military one - that no self-respecting World
Power can afford its military forces to rely on the American GPS system
which could be denied them at the flick of a switch if their activities
cause concern in Washington?
The second questioner at the meeting raised the question of the
arrogance of and political involvement of senior police officers. For
the record, I filed formal complaints against Ken Jones of Sussex and
Richard Brunstrom of North Wales, and both of ACPO, for conspiring with
the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke to lobby MPs in the immediate
run-up to the vote on 90 days detention, which as you know was lost by
Blair by one vote. I complained on the grounds that every policeman is
told when he signs up that he is not allowed to take part in political
activity, and that (as Sir Robert Peel stated when he formed the first
police force nearly 200 years ago, it is vitally important that the
police are seen to be independent of the Government rather than their
tools). My two complaints sample complaints as I could have made
similar ones against most Forces - were rejected by the Sussex and
North Wales Police Authorities on the grounds that those involved were
merely doing their jobs! Utter nonsense of course, and indicative of
how far our morality and understanding of fundamental principles have
sunk.
Are you not aware of the plans to make DVLA and even NHS data available
to every EU member state, so that several million officials, policemen
and others - not all as honest as ours, and probably even more prone to
lose or steal computers, discs and USB memory sticks than ours - will
then be able, to give only one example, to identify the owner of any
vehicle and where he lives?
Are you not aware that in France Investigating Magistrates control the
investigation of crimes, give orders to the police - and that then
they, or their career professional brethren, act as judges in those
prosecutions? And that if there is a jury, then professional judges go
with them into the jury room and too often tell them what their verdict
must be? And in any case what passes between the professional career
judges and the "lay assessors" in the jury room is covered by a secrecy
law, in strident contrast to our courts where the judge's summing up to
the jury must be delivered in public and must be impartial as to the
verdict?
It was nothing less than ludicrous for Mr. Grieve, in response to the
first questioner astonishingly, the first person to mention the EU at
the meeting - to claim that "jury trial is not under threat". Of course
it is as I interjected at the time - and has been at least since 1997
when Corpus Juris explicitly made that threat. Article 26.1 (stated at
its presentation to be “an embryo of a future EU criminal code” to be
extended to all kinds of crime) states in plain words that "The courts
must consist of professional judges... and not simple jurors or lay
magistrates." Intriguingly, when the Home Office, or perhaps the
Commons Library, quote that sentence, which I have taken verbatim from
the Corpus Juris book, they change the word “simple” to “simply” to
remove the contempt for the common man evident in the original and to
avoid highlighting the contrast with our own system where twelve
ordinary people are the final arbiters of guilt or innocence.
Mr. Grieve confirmed to me after the meeting that he is aware of Corpus
Juris but claimed that it will be stopped - even under the Lisbon
Treaty. He gave no indication of how that would be possible, since
Lisbon abolishes the pillar structure whereby criminal justice was
always a strictly national prerogative, and places any dispute as to
competence for it under the supreme adjudication of the ECJ. His reply
rather reminds me of Harold Wilson's infamous statement in the
Government's 1975 EEC referendum (for the record, I voted Yes for what
I thought was a free market and on the basis of this and similar
assurances): "There was a threat to employment in Britain from the
movement in the Common Market towards an Economic & Monetary Union.
This could have forced us to accept fixed exchange rates for the pound,
restricting industrial growth and putting jobs at risk. This threat has
been removed." He knew full well at the time that the plan for a single
currency by 1980 remained in place and Mr. Grieve, as you and others
should surely have realised by now, the point is that no EU plan is
ever shelved in the face of resistance (see also Lisbon and Ireland!)
but remains in place to be revived from time to time, or introduced
piece-meal as and when they can slip it through. Of course there is a
threat to jury trial, habeas corpus, lay magistrates and our safeguards
against double jeopardy and however many times you think you have
skirted around it, the threats remain until they become law. Indeed,
there is hardly any aspect of the EU as we now know it that has not
been flatly denied, then admitted, then slipped through and become law,
over the past 40 years or so, yet you still seem not to have learned
the lesson. Your statement was therefore utterly complacent and
miseleading.
One of the most recent - and terrifying - examples of the threat to
liberty posed by EU membership is the para-military European
Gendarmerie Force, already in existence and training for riot control
at Vicenza in Italy. Their web site, boasting of their formation and
shoulder badges of the EU flag surrounding flaming grenades symbolising
their military origins, was removed recently when they realised that
euro-realists had seen it, but the information, once published on the
Web, remains in the public domain. These heavily armed riot control
paramilitaries, drawn at present from 5 countries (France, Spain,
Italy, Portugal and Holland so far) are intended to restore order in
any member state "with the consent of that state". Bob Spink MP in the
Commons and Lord Pearson in the Lords asked recently for assurances
that this consent would never be given by our government, but these
assurances were refused.
Needless to say, the EU itself, in response to questions by eurosceptic
MEPs, have flatly denied any EU involvement - despite the EU badges,
the .eu Web address - and the explicit mention of the EU treaties in
the special Treaty of Velsen, on which the EGF is based!
About 10 years ago a vicar in Cambridge, concerned about what was
happening, wrote to his Bishop asking to whom his sworn loyalty to the
Crown now belonged. The Bishop sent the question to Buckingham Palace
who sent it to the EU, who replied that they were "content for
loyalties to remain as they have been, for the present." How long
before our police and armed forces are required - or told - that their
loyalty is now to the EU and not the British Crown? And what will our
freedoms be worth then, given Europol, the Rapid Reaction Force and the
European Gendarmerie Force?
At about the same time I wrote to Kate Hoey MP, then Minister for
Europe, saying that I understood what treason and sedition mean in the
British context, but could the same concepts apply in the context of
the EU? She replied that there was no such concept. Given that the
"citizenship" imposed upon us by Maastricht was ersatz and fake (as
only a State may have Citizens) she might well have been right - then.
But Lisbon gives the EU status as a legal entity, and the Citizenship
it imposes this time is supposedly real, imposing in turn both rights
and responsibilities largely unspecified - at the EU level. It
therefore cannot be long before campaigning to leave the EU, or against
it in other ways, will be seen as treason and/or sedition and as such
criminal offences. What price our freedoms then? Article 191 of the
Nice Treaty specifies that political parties need to be "recognised"
and hence not “recognised". Further, it makes clear that recognition
will require that the objectives of any such party seeking recognition
must be compatible with those of the EU - and that parties that are not
recognised will not receive the taxpayer funding given to others. What
price our political freedom then?
In 2001 I took an application over the right to silence in speed camera
law (S172 1988 RTA) to the ECHR but lost in June 2007 you may recall
the case, which gained a great deal of publicity because of the
photogenic 1938 Alvis involved and the logical consequence of winning,
that speed cameras would have to be switched off. My application was,
incidentally, supported and handled by Liberty. I am therefore familiar
with much of the ECHR and its origins in British and American law. The
European Charter of Fundamental Rights, an enforceable part of the
Lisbon Treaty, is similar in many respects, but contains in Article 52
this appalling statement: "...limitations (on the exercise of the
rights and freedoms recognised by this Charter) may be made (only) if
they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest
being pursued by the Union..." (Note the typically sly and devious way
that this sentence was worded to imply limitations on the limitations
of these liberties, when what it actually did was to allow
limitations.)
Anthony Coughlan, of the Irish National Platform (who was personally
responsible in the mid 1980s for forcing the Irish Government to hold
referendums on EU Treaties) commented as follows: "This clause is
extremely vague and could be subject to huge abuse in the future if
this Charter should come into force. Criticisms may be made of several
other specific articles in the Charter, when one considers the scope
for judicial public policy-making they would create once they come to
be interpreted by the judges of that "court with a mission", the ECJ.
But this Article 52 is the most sinister. Most of the rights set out in
the proposed Charter sound splendid at first sight - except that we
already possess them more effectively under our national Constitution
……..they are already fully in being, guaranteed by our national laws
and enforced by our own courts. What this Charter seeks to do is to
enable the European Union and its Supreme Court, the ECJ, to get hold
of our fundamental rights, as a key step in advancing its project of
creating an EU Superstate and a 'harmonised' legal system in which the
existing States of the EU are reduced to mere provinces, with their
national democracy and independence wholly eroded." What price our
liberties under Article 52 of the ECFR and the ECJ?
For all of these reasons and many more, it was utterly ridiculous for
all five people on the platform to discuss our liberty and freedom
without once mentioning by far the greatest threat to them at least
since 1940 or arguably long before, given what has already been
achieved by those who plan to impose a single European State upon us,
aided by what Cicero recognised more than two thousand years ago as
“the enemy within”. In many ways the threat is now all the greater for
being political rather than military, with hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of people in this country who, rightly or wrongly, see
their jobs and prospects as dependant on EU membership, and, for
example, with many University Departments and Chairs funded by the EU
to propagate the message. That the Conservative Party, even now, is
unable or unwilling to face facts and tell the truth, but prefers to
ignore the EU, and even threatens its own members and politicians who
speak up against it, is appalling and unacceptable. That the
Conservative Conference held no debate whatever on the EU, and instead
set out how it plans to govern this country when much the greater part
of that power has already been ceded to Brussels, is equally
unacceptable.
If there is any aspect of the above of which you were unaware, or on
which you need more information, I would be happy to copy relevant
documentation preferably by e-mail. I have invented or exaggerated
nothing - there is far too much real evidence for there to be any need
to do so.
Yours sincerely
xxxxxxxxxxxx if
I'S letter to:
07 Oct 2008
Dominic Grieve MP,
David Davis MP,
Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph.
Daniel Finkelstein, Daily Telegraph
cc Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty
The EU-Free Liberty
Fringe Meeting.
Dear Ms Daley, Mr. Davis, Mr. Grieve and Mr. Finkelstein,
I arrived late at the Liberty fringe meeting on Monday the 29th of
September due to a clash with another meeting, but I believe that all
four of you spoke for a total of an hour on the subject of freedom and
liberty without once mentioning the European Union. That you failed to
do so was not just absurd but utterly bizarre- as well as astonishingly
complacent. Where on earth do you think the threats to our liberties
are coming from? You surely cannot believe that they are all home
grown? Or were you under orders from Conservative Central Office not to
mention the EU?
At the meeting I repeatedly put my hand up to ask a question, but Ms.
Chakrabarti, knowing that I would make the same points about the EU’s
threat to our freedom that I had made at her meeting at the LibDem
Conference two weeks before, refused me that opportunity on the grounds
that the first questioner had asked about the EU.
I first started attending fringe meetings at all Party Conferences in
1998 to try to expose the EU’s 1997 plan Corpus Juris which they
described as "an embryo of a future EU criminal code" and I was one of
what Philip Johnston of the Telegraph described on November 30th 1998
as "a small number of concerned individuals" who had forced this issue
into the public domain. From the EU's point of view of "ever closer
union" and its objective of becoming a State in its own right, it is
entirely logical of course to want a single legal system for the whole
of the EU. Unfortunately for us, Ireland and Malta (the only three
member states having our system of common law with fundamental
principles developed over many centuries) the great majority of other
member states have Napoleonic, inquisitorial legal systems which
recognise few, if any, of our most important principles.
It was therefore no surprise in 1997 to find that Corpus Juris (ISBN no
2-7178-3344-7)* explicitly abolishes habeas corpus (by allowing
imprisonment without trial or any public hearing for up to 6 months,
renewable for 3 months at a time without stated limit) - article
20.3.g; abolishes jury trial (which does not exist anywhere on the
Continent in a form we would recognise) and lay magistrates, in favour
of professional judges - article 26.1. It brings back double jeopardy
by allowing the Prosecution to appeal against acquittal - article 27.2.
It also proposes a European Public Prosecutor who would be able to
order the British Public Prosecutor to do what the EU wants - article
18.5; and many other fundamentally unacceptable things too.
While Corpus Juris was explicitly rejected at the end of 1998, by the
then Home Office Minister Kate Hoey, who in reply to Parliamentary
Questions from two opposition MPs promised to veto it if it was ever
formally proposed, many elements of it have continued to be pushed
through, piecemeal, by our government over the past 10 years, disguised
as domestic measures. Why do you think the Government pushed for 90
days and now 42 days' (6 weeks') detention on no evidence, other than
as a stepping stone towards Corpus Juris’ 6 months plus 3 months at a
time without stated limit, so that in due course they can stand claim
that the differences are only of degree and not of kind and not really
so great as to matter?
Do you not realise that the EU sees terrorist threats and indeed the
current financial problems - as a "beneficial crisis" allowing them to
seize yet more control? Do you still not understand that the EU Arrest
Warrant, very much in the news with the arrest of Dr. Toben by British
police when passing through Heathrow, pushed through supposedly as an
urgent measure against terrorists, is now being used to extradite
people for what they think and say, even when they represent no crime
here? Do you not understand that the EUAW requires not even prima facie
evidence of an offence having been committed, not even a British
policeman but any “authorised person” to carry out the arrest? If you
did not realise at the meeting but surely must now, that extradition
under the EUAW can be carried out even in respect of trials in absentia
and that such trials, unknown in this country for centuries, have
recently been allowed in a small number of cases? Ms Chakrabarti was
quoted as being concerned over this and (rightly) attributing it to the
EU. Her statement (quoted in the Sunday Telegraph online edition of
21/09/08) said there should be a right of scrutiny by a local court,
but did not attack the main point that most EU countries allow, and
always have allowed, people to be tried and convicted in their absence,
something that our British system has never accepted. Nor that this is
just one of the radical differences that have always separated the
British idea of justice from that prevailing on the continent. She also
stated that “this is not pro-or anti EU, but just about what sort of EU
we want”. The problem with that statement is perhaps illustrated by a
famous cartoon showing a fish, caught within a net, saying to one
outside the net “Personally, I have always thought it better to
negotiate from within”. In other words, the sort of EU we get is what
the EU is utterly determined to impose upon us, and nothing whatever to
do with what we want. As should surely have become obvious over the
past 40 years of lies, weasel words and clicks of innumerable ratchets.
Why do you think that jury trial and lay magistrates are under threat,
if not for the same reason, to reduce to vanishing point the difference
between our legal system and theirs? Why has double jeopardy been
allowed, other than for the same reason? Why do you think the
Government tried to merge our 43 police forces into regional forces
which (surprise, surprise) happened largely to coincide with EU
regions? Why did that thoroughly evil man Blunkett seek political
control of the police on a national level - a critical breach of the
principle of separation of powers essential to prevent too much power
being concentrated into too few hands? For how long do you suppose
those regional police forces would remain answerable to our Parliament
rather than directly to EU politicians you surely realise that many
police forces on the Continent are, whether de facto or de jure, under
the direct control of politicians?
How long before our police become merely branch offices of the planned
European Police Force, bearing in mind too that only in the last few
days Europol were granted permission to question defendants in custody
in Britain? Are you aware that Europol officers have lifetime immunity
from prosecution for anything they do as part of their jobs something
that, as Vladimir Bukhovsky pointed out, not even the KGB have?
Do you really suppose that the evil - and I use the word advisedly -
Civil Contingencies Act was dreamed up independently by this Government
and not in behind the scenes discussions with the EU? Or did you notice
that only a few days ago the European Parliament approved plans to
allow seizure of assets prior to any charge or trial, and without any
evidence whatever, as long as the supposed offence involves 3 years
jail or more? Do you suppose that this cross-border version of the
Civil Contingencies Act is merely a coincidence?
Do you not understand, even days after newspaper pictures showed the
letters "EU" in tiny print forming the background of the cards, that
the ID card scheme, which you all rightly oppose, is a EU scheme? That
almost all other EU member states already have them and that in many it
is a criminal offence not to carry them at all times - even on the
beach or in the garden? Not long ago German friends visiting my
neighbour asked what British ID cards look like, and when told that we
do not have them, expressed surprise by saying, "But how does your
Government know where you are all the time without them?" They seemed
unable to understand that we do not necessarily want our Government to
know where we are all the time!
Have you not realised that the proposal for "pay as you drive" schemes
using satellite-based systems to record the positions of vehicles at
all times, is an EU scheme intended to use their Galileo system and to
generate income. And that despite years of denials - the primary
reason for Galileo is a military one - that no self-respecting World
Power can afford its military forces to rely on the American GPS system
which could be denied them at the flick of a switch if their activities
cause concern in Washington?
The second questioner at the meeting raised the question of the
arrogance of and political involvement of senior police officers. For
the record, I filed formal complaints against Ken Jones of Sussex and
Richard Brunstrom of North Wales, and both of ACPO, for conspiring with
the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke to lobby MPs in the immediate
run-up to the vote on 90 days detention, which as you know was lost by
Blair by one vote. I complained on the grounds that every policeman is
told when he signs up that he is not allowed to take part in political
activity, and that (as Sir Robert Peel stated when he formed the first
police force nearly 200 years ago, it is vitally important that the
police are seen to be independent of the Government rather than their
tools). My two complaints sample complaints as I could have made
similar ones against most Forces - were rejected by the Sussex and
North Wales Police Authorities on the grounds that those involved were
merely doing their jobs! Utter nonsense of course, and indicative of
how far our morality and understanding of fundamental principles have
sunk.
Are you not aware of the plans to make DVLA and even NHS data available
to every EU member state, so that several million officials, policemen
and others - not all as honest as ours, and probably even more prone to
lose or steal computers, discs and USB memory sticks than ours - will
then be able, to give only one example, to identify the owner of any
vehicle and where he lives?
Are you not aware that in France Investigating Magistrates control the
investigation of crimes, give orders to the police - and that then
they, or their career professional brethren, act as judges in those
prosecutions? And that if there is a jury, then professional judges go
with them into the jury room and too often tell them what their verdict
must be? And in any case what passes between the professional career
judges and the "lay assessors" in the jury room is covered by a secrecy
law, in strident contrast to our courts where the judge's summing up to
the jury must be delivered in public and must be impartial as to the
verdict?
It was nothing less than ludicrous for Mr. Grieve, in response to the
first questioner astonishingly, the first person to mention the EU at
the meeting - to claim that "jury trial is not under threat". Of course
it is as I interjected at the time - and has been at least since 1997
when Corpus Juris explicitly made that threat. Article 26.1 (stated at
its presentation to be “an embryo of a future EU criminal code” to be
extended to all kinds of crime) states in plain words that "The courts
must consist of professional judges... and not simple jurors or lay
magistrates." Intriguingly, when the Home Office, or perhaps the
Commons Library, quote that sentence, which I have taken verbatim from
the Corpus Juris book, they change the word “simple” to “simply” to
remove the contempt for the common man evident in the original and to
avoid highlighting the contrast with our own system where twelve
ordinary people are the final arbiters of guilt or innocence.
Mr. Grieve confirmed to me after the meeting that he is aware of Corpus
Juris but claimed that it will be stopped - even under the Lisbon
Treaty. He gave no indication of how that would be possible, since
Lisbon abolishes the pillar structure whereby criminal justice was
always a strictly national prerogative, and places any dispute as to
competence for it under the supreme adjudication of the ECJ. His reply
rather reminds me of Harold Wilson's infamous statement in the
Government's 1975 EEC referendum (for the record, I voted Yes for what
I thought was a free market and on the basis of this and similar
assurances): "There was a threat to employment in Britain from the
movement in the Common Market towards an Economic & Monetary Union.
This could have forced us to accept fixed exchange rates for the pound,
restricting industrial growth and putting jobs at risk. This threat has
been removed." He knew full well at the time that the plan for a single
currency by 1980 remained in place and Mr. Grieve, as you and others
should surely have realised by now, the point is that no EU plan is
ever shelved in the face of resistance (see also Lisbon and Ireland!)
but remains in place to be revived from time to time, or introduced
piece-meal as and when they can slip it through. Of course there is a
threat to jury trial, habeas corpus, lay magistrates and our safeguards
against double jeopardy and however many times you think you have
skirted around it, the threats remain until they become law. Indeed,
there is hardly any aspect of the EU as we now know it that has not
been flatly denied, then admitted, then slipped through and become law,
over the past 40 years or so, yet you still seem not to have learned
the lesson. Your statement was therefore utterly complacent and
miseleading.
One of the most recent - and terrifying - examples of the threat to
liberty posed by EU membership is the para-military European
Gendarmerie Force, already in existence and training for riot control
at Vicenza in Italy. Their web site, boasting of their formation and
shoulder badges of the EU flag surrounding flaming grenades symbolising
their military origins, was removed recently when they realised that
euro-realists had seen it, but the information, once published on the
Web, remains in the public domain. These heavily armed riot control
paramilitaries, drawn at present from 5 countries (France, Spain,
Italy, Portugal and Holland so far) are intended to restore order in
any member state "with the consent of that state". Bob Spink MP in the
Commons and Lord Pearson in the Lords asked recently for assurances
that this consent would never be given by our government, but these
assurances were refused.
Needless to say, the EU itself, in response to questions by eurosceptic
MEPs, have flatly denied any EU involvement - despite the EU badges,
the .eu Web address - and the explicit mention of the EU treaties in
the special Treaty of Velsen, on which the EGF is based!
About 10 years ago a vicar in Cambridge, concerned about what was
happening, wrote to his Bishop asking to whom his sworn loyalty to the
Crown now belonged. The Bishop sent the question to Buckingham Palace
who sent it to the EU, who replied that they were "content for
loyalties to remain as they have been, for the present." How long
before our police and armed forces are required - or told - that their
loyalty is now to the EU and not the British Crown? And what will our
freedoms be worth then, given Europol, the Rapid Reaction Force and the
European Gendarmerie Force?
At about the same time I wrote to Kate Hoey MP, then Minister for
Europe, saying that I understood what treason and sedition mean in the
British context, but could the same concepts apply in the context of
the EU? She replied that there was no such concept. Given that the
"citizenship" imposed upon us by Maastricht was ersatz and fake (as
only a State may have Citizens) she might well have been right - then.
But Lisbon gives the EU status as a legal entity, and the Citizenship
it imposes this time is supposedly real, imposing in turn both rights
and responsibilities largely unspecified - at the EU level. It
therefore cannot be long before campaigning to leave the EU, or against
it in other ways, will be seen as treason and/or sedition and as such
criminal offences. What price our freedoms then? Article 191 of the
Nice Treaty specifies that political parties need to be "recognised"
and hence not “recognised". Further, it makes clear that recognition
will require that the objectives of any such party seeking recognition
must be compatible with those of the EU - and that parties that are not
recognised will not receive the taxpayer funding given to others. What
price our political freedom then?
In 2001 I took an application over the right to silence in speed camera
law (S172 1988 RTA) to the ECHR but lost in June 2007 you may recall
the case, which gained a great deal of publicity because of the
photogenic 1938 Alvis involved and the logical consequence of winning,
that speed cameras would have to be switched off. My application was,
incidentally, supported and handled by Liberty. I am therefore familiar
with much of the ECHR and its origins in British and American law. The
European Charter of Fundamental Rights, an enforceable part of the
Lisbon Treaty, is similar in many respects, but contains in Article 52
this appalling statement: "...limitations (on the exercise of the
rights and freedoms recognised by this Charter) may be made (only) if
they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest
being pursued by the Union..." (Note the typically sly and devious way
that this sentence was worded to imply limitations on the limitations
of these liberties, when what it actually did was to allow
limitations.)
Anthony Coughlan, of the Irish National Platform (who was personally
responsible in the mid 1980s for forcing the Irish Government to hold
referendums on EU Treaties) commented as follows: "This clause is
extremely vague and could be subject to huge abuse in the future if
this Charter should come into force. Criticisms may be made of several
other specific articles in the Charter, when one considers the scope
for judicial public policy-making they would create once they come to
be interpreted by the judges of that "court with a mission", the ECJ.
But this Article 52 is the most sinister. Most of the rights set out in
the proposed Charter sound splendid at first sight - except that we
already possess them more effectively under our national Constitution
……..they are already fully in being, guaranteed by our national laws
and enforced by our own courts. What this Charter seeks to do is to
enable the European Union and its Supreme Court, the ECJ, to get hold
of our fundamental rights, as a key step in advancing its project of
creating an EU Superstate and a 'harmonised' legal system in which the
existing States of the EU are reduced to mere provinces, with their
national democracy and independence wholly eroded." What price our
liberties under Article 52 of the ECFR and the ECJ?
For all of these reasons and many more, it was utterly ridiculous for
all five people on the platform to discuss our liberty and freedom
without once mentioning by far the greatest threat to them at least
since 1940 or arguably long before, given what has already been
achieved by those who plan to impose a single European State upon us,
aided by what Cicero recognised more than two thousand years ago as
“the enemy within”. In many ways the threat is now all the greater for
being political rather than military, with hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of people in this country who, rightly or wrongly, see
their jobs and prospects as dependant on EU membership, and, for
example, with many University Departments and Chairs funded by the EU
to propagate the message. That the Conservative Party, even now, is
unable or unwilling to face facts and tell the truth, but prefers to
ignore the EU, and even threatens its own members and politicians who
speak up against it, is appalling and unacceptable. That the
Conservative Conference held no debate whatever on the EU, and instead
set out how it plans to govern this country when much the greater part
of that power has already been ceded to Brussels, is equally
unacceptable.
If there is any aspect of the above of which you were unaware, or on
which you need more information, I would be happy to copy relevant
documentation preferably by e-mail. I have invented or exaggerated
nothing - there is far too much real evidence for there to be any need
to do so.
Yours sincerely
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