Eine Stimme der Vernunft in der Kakophonie des Wahnsinns

[Hollowpoint]

The Mail on Sunday (England)

Page: 52

August 3, 2003

Byline: Peter Hitchens

You and your wife are alone in your house late at night. You

are woken by footsteps and banging downstairs. What do you do?

If you have any sense at all, you will do nothing and hope the

intruder goes away quickly. If he bursts into your bedroom, you

would be wise to submit to him and not to look at him too

carefully in case he gets the idea that you might be able to

identify him later.

You know that if you ring the police they will probably take

too long and may not come at all. And if you resist the thief,

attack or injure him, you are likely to find yourself in a

shared cell watching trash TV and eating prison slop with

plastic cutlery as you do your time.

You are even more likely to be sued shamelessly and

successfully in the courts by the man who has robbed you. If you

kill him, which at least means he cannot sue you or intimidate

you or come back for more, then the law will probably treat you

as a murderer, making no legal distinction between you and

Harold Shipman.

In the unlikely event that the thief is caught and

prosecuted, he and his friends will be free to terrorise you

into withdrawing your evidence, and the jury that hears the case

into acquitting him, since a feeble police force rarely, if

ever, acts to stop such things and often does not bother to

patrol court buildings any more.

If by any chance he is convicted, he will swiftly be

released under one of 'tough' David Blunkett's many schemes for

letting prisoners out as rapidly as possible. He might even come

back to steal whatever he left behind the first time.

Countless citizens, especially women living alone, now sleep

with some sort of weapon or blunt instrument by their beds in

case they are disturbed by thieves in the night.

Others, especially those living in the countryside where the

police have vanished, look thoughtfully at their legal firearms

and wonder if they dare use them, even as a deterrent.

This is the disgusting, pitiful state of the law of England

in 2003. Unless it is changed, it is only a matter of time

before the prosperous suburbs of Britain are laid waste and

plundered by armies of thieves, rightly confident that nobody

can or will stop them and that they will not be punished. It is

only the surviving illusion, on both sides, that we still live

in a policed and law-governed country that stops this happening

today.

Tony Martin, a strange and muttering loner, has won the

sympathy of millions not because he is a good example or because

he behaved well when he shot a burglar dead. His popularity is

the result of frustration and rage among the law-abiding who

feel that they could easily have acted as Martin did. They

probably won't because they are more worldly and have more

sense.

On the one occasion I spoke to Martin, shortly before his

trial, I told him he was very likely to be convicted. He was

astonished. He still thought he lived in an older England of

stout-hearted juries and robust judges where his action would be

excused if not applauded.

That country died some time in the past ten years. As

recently as 1993, Judge Daniel Rodwell awarded Malcolm Hammond

L300 for shooting two armed robbers who raided his home, saying:

'He showed great gallantry in tackling these dangerous men and

protecting his pregnant wife from further harm.' But the shadows

of political correctness were already deepening, though few

realised it at the time.

Six months later Mr Hammond was brought back to the same

court and fined more than L2,000 because the pistol he had used

was illegally held.

Mr Hammond always denied this and said he had wrestled the

gun from one of his assailants.

Once upon a time, nobody would have cared all that much, but

in John Major's semi-Socialist Britain it was slowly becoming

clear that the law was now neutral between 'offender' and

'victim'.

By the time Martin came to court it was even worse. The

system wanted to make it clear that it disapproved much more of

Martin for killing a burglar than it did of the fact that he was

burgled in the first place. Huge pressure was placed on Martin

to recant and show remorse for his action. He was kept in prison

far longer because he wouldn't.

No parallel effort was made to make burglar Brendan Fearon

do the same, though he was almost as responsible for the death

of Fred Barras as was Martin. In fact, the prison system

couldn't spit him out fast enough and despite Mr Blunkett's

bluster and demands for explanations the Home Secretary knew

perfectly well that this was the case.

Until recently, Englishmen were allowed to defend their

homes and to keep weapons, just as many Americans still do.

Partly because the US is still much more rural than we are,

and proper policing is impossible, the old English idea that a

burglar loses his rights when he breaks into someone's home is

still very much in force. That is why 'hot' burglary, where the

homeowner is in his house, is so much rarer there than here.

In Britain now we have the worst of both worlds police who

can't or won't protect us, and no right to protect ourselves.

How did this happen?

Some think it was the abolition of the old Common Law rules

by the Criminal Law Act in 1967. But actually this wasn't so. In

the hands of old-fashioned judges and juries, the 1967 defence

of 'reasonable force' would excuse almost any action.

What changed as in all the other great pillars of British

life were the people and the ideas that drove them.

The police chiefs stopped being old military men and were

replaced by social science graduates.

Guardian-reading Crown Prosecutors supplanted

battle-hardened police prosecution officers.

Respectable, middle-aged property-owning jurors in

three-piece suits disappeared to make way for slumped,

unemployed teenagers in shell suits.

The judges stopped being gnarled, disillusioned veterans of

the criminal courts and made way for Sixties idealists who think

criminals need help.

The law became a favourite profession for people whose views

were so wildly Leftwing that they could never win an election,

but who wanted political power anyway.

It was a clever move. At least until the Blair victory in

1997, elite liberal lawyers and judges, radical Home Office

civil servants progressive' prison governors and Left-wing

police chiefs were the most powerful radicals in the country.

Piece by piece, they took control of the law so that it

defied common sense and instead served their crackpot,

guilt-driven ideas of social justice.

Martin had to be punished severely because he had tried to

impose the old conservative law, which has now been abolished.

Anyone who was thinking of doing the same thing had to be warned

that on this, at least, the law would come down hard.

There was something very symbolic about the way Martin, once

convicted, was then seen being led away handcuffed to a female

guard, about as politically correct a message as you could send.

Was it perhaps deliberate?

And it was only when he claimed to have been sexually abused

as a child, the standard liberal excuse for all kinds of

misdeeds, that his conviction was reduced from murder to

manslaughter.

Interestingly, police officers who shoot suspects rashly or

by mistake tend to get let off. It wasn't because he had killed

someone that Martin was being punished, but because he had

challenged the new liberal monopoly of force.

All that would be bad enough.

But what makes it unbearable, and what brought it to boiling

point for Martin, is that the police have vanished at the same

time.

As police have been withdrawn from foot patrol, police

houses and stations in the countryside have been shut down in

great numbers.

The combination of weak law and absent constables has hit

isolated country dwellers first.

They know that if they call for help, none will come in

time, whereas the rest of us just suspect that this is so. Rural

people and those who rob them have realised as the rest of the

country is just beginning to do that we are now halfway back to

the Dark Ages.

The ridiculous temporary police station now sitting next to

Martin's farm does nothing to overcome this since it will sooner

or later have to be dismantled, and then where will Martin be?

And it is because Martin is a rather batty and

quick-tempered eccentric that he has been the first property

holder to discover the real nature of the new law. A more

normal, reasonable person would have submitted, or moved away,

or simply got rid of any valuable property so he had nothing to

steal.

Many of us already adapt and change our lives in this

defeatist way. Lots of police forces will give you a printed

label to say that there is nothing valuable in your car, for

instance.

But as we make these little surrenders, we know in our

hearts that we are running away from a foe we really ought to

confront, and leaving our children a legacy of lawlessness and

chaos.

It may be wise to give in, but it is also shameful. And that

is why so many of us are pleased when we see someone fighting

back, however foolish it may be for him to do so.

GRUß

[Till]

Erst nachdem er darauf plädiert hatte, als Kind mal sexuell mißbraucht worden zu sein, wurde aus Mord Totschlag ...

Glaubt nur ja nicht, wir wären vor sowas sicher! Diese Weltanschauung ist auch hier noch auf dem Vormarsch.

[karaya]

Glaubt nur ja nicht, wir wären vor sowas sicher! Diese Weltanschauung ist auch hier noch auf dem Vormarsch.

Nö, ist sie wohl nicht. Seit etwa 1990 werden die verhängten Strafen kontinuierlich härter, was sich statistisch belegen läßt.

Sagen wir mal, diese Weltanschaung liefert heftige Rückzugsgefechte. Allerdings geht die von der Sozialromantik der späten 60er und frühen 70er geprägte Generation langsam in Pension.

[Festus]

Schwerer Koffer

Durch einen Zufall konnte einer der beiden mutmaßlichen Kofferbomber verhaftet werden. Die zweite Reihe hatte mehr Glück und konnte im Libanon untertauchen. Auch der letzte Allesversteher müsste nach den gescheiterten Bombenanschlägen verstanden haben, dass wir für die irren Eiferer der Feind sind wie jedes andere Land.

Wir bezahlen einen hohen Preis für diesen von unserer Seite nicht erklärten Krieg. Wir rufen inzwischen nach mehr Maßnahmen für die innere Sicherheit. Allzu bereitwillig befürworten wir die Installation weiterer Bahnhofskameras, die Sammlung persönlicher Daten und die Überwachung unserer Kommunikationswege. Mit jeder dieser Maßnahmen verlieren wir aber ein Stück unserer Freiheit.

Unangetastet bleiben lediglich die Rechte derjenigen, die keine Skrupel hatten, eine Massenmord zu planen. Wir werden einen neuen Großprozeß abwickeln und penibel darauf achten, dass niemand den Angeklagten während des Gebetes stört und ihm auch sonst kein Zipfelchen seiner Rechte vorenthalten wird.

Dabei werden Hundertschaften von Sicherheitskräften den Gerichtssaal schützen müssen. Und unter Umständen kommen die Richter irgendwann zu einer überraschenden Entscheidung und verurteilen den angeklagten zu mehr als ein paar Monaten Psychotherapie.

Sollte diese juristische Mammutprojekt tatsächlich eines Tages verwirklicht worden sein, werden wir mit dem nächsten Problem zu kämpfen haben. Erinnert sei an die Geiselnahme bei den olympischen Spielen von München. Wie lange wird es dauern, bis die hirnlosen Vettern des verhinderten Kofferbombers irgendwo eine Entführung oder ein Attentat inszenieren, um die Ratte freizupressen? Wieviele Opfer werden uns unsere juristischen Prinzipien dan wert sein?

Wir blicken voller Verachtung auf die Länder herab, in denen es die Todesstrafe noch gibt. Vielleicht sind wir es, die in diesem Punkt eine falsche Meinung haben.

Schönes Wochenende wünscht thomy

Quelle: blitzpunkt-der Anzeiger Stollberg/ Chemnitzer Land vom 26.08.2006