Over the long years in which I have watched our so-called politicians and public servants get virtually everything wrong, I have come to one, inescapable conclusion: which is, put fairly simply; they didn’t like the way things were done in the past, so they quietly and stealthily altered Society. Allow me, if you would, to expand my thinking.
Over centuries, the British public have seen many ideals placed upon them. In the times when Kings and Queens ruled by ‘Divine Right’, their wishes, their desires were paramount. I would give you but two examples; King Henry the 8th, Henry realised early on that he probably didn’t know everything, so he placed his trust in advisers; and because his advisers themselves were either firm in belief or corruptible, the advice they gave their King was always biassed. His marriage proved barren after daughter Mary, but he deposed Cardinal Wolsey when he failed to get his desired marriage annulment; so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
He elevated Thomas More as his advisor, but Thomas More remained firm in his opposition to the Boleyn marriage, so he was cast out, and after a trial which was little more than a farce; Thomas More was executed, and Anne was married, but she was deemed to be unfaithful after only producing a daughter, and she too was executed. Because Henry was always broke, he cast around, but realised that wealth beyond imagination was just around the corner, so he founded the Church of England, dissolved the Monasteries, pillaged the Catholic Church’s properties and wealth; with any who opposed him summarily executed. He was the ultimate absolute Ruler.
As to the second example, a weak King Charles 1st rule, in which he tried to balance the English Church against the desires of his Catholic Spanish Queen, with the general cognisance of a greedy Parliament. His machinations, all to gain more cash, came up against the iron mind of Oliver Cromwell, who formed the opposition to the profligate Monarchy with a stern Puritanism. The Puritan Army’s victories ended with Charles’ execution; but Parliament’s profligacy gave way to Cromwell’s dissolution of Parliament, and Cromwell’s elevation to be Lord Protector. Cromwell’s rule, stern and harsh, was fair to all, and it was under the Lord Protector’s regime that modern Britain was born. The Monarchy returned, but its powers were steadily limited, but it was another century before Parliament began, slowly, to reform itself, with ‘rotten boroughs’ and disenfranchised citizenry slowly but surely becoming extinct; and the Rule of Law, where the prosecution and the Courts had to prove a person’s guilt before imprisonment or punishment became acceptable behaviour.
And that, certainly in the decades of my youth, was how Great Britain advanced. We had come through the Napoleonic Wars, in which we fought against a tyrannical dictator, and we beat him; once at sea, with Nelson’s decisive victories at the Nile and again at Trafalgar; and then on land, where the austere genius of Wellington stood firm at the Lines of Torres Vedras against the invading French armies, before emerging as the victor when he slowly advanced northwards, defeating the French, and advancing northwards until Napoleon was defeated, and exiled. But the Usurper escaped from his Elba prison, and it took Wellington’s British lines at Waterloo, along with General Blucher’s cavalry, to beat Napoleon once more.
Parliament had ended slavery, and freed slaves, and fought the French again, and the Law which Parliament still held to, was that no innocent man could be presumed to be guilty, and jailed or executed, without a fair trial with a judgement by a jury of his peers.
We fought two World Wars, one against a Germany and its Kaiser who determined that they should decide who ruled in Europe: and the Second World War against Adolf Hitler, a maniac who wielded the power of the most well-armed and trained military in Europe, and who also successfully hid the Genocide of six million Jews.
But somewhere around the 1960’s a ‘Liberal Clique’ gained access to behind-the-scenes Power, and the slow, steady, remorseless reversal of all we once held dear was begun. It may sound fanciful, but a perversion, a pattern of behaviour which was repulsive to most normal British people, became the subject of a campaign to repeal both the illegality of that perversion, namely homosexuality, and to free those who had been imprisoned by this supposedly ‘unjust’ regime; was the start of this slow, steady march to upend most of what most British people held dearly. The liberals and the Left had begun their silent attacks upon the very core of what made Great Britain a place where a man, his wife and family could strive to better themselves without hindrance from the State.
The second attack on our legal system was caused because of the hype over the death by stabbing of a young black drug dealer named Stephen Lawrence, with a direct attack on the centuries old tradition of ‘Double Jeopardy’. For centuries, if a man was brought to trial for a serious crime, and the jury returned a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’, that prisoner was freed, and he could never be tried again for that offence. But the backers, politicians, sleazy lawyers and influential parties made much fuss about so-called ‘new evidence’ that the weak and near useless Labour Government decided to implement a review of the Double Jeopardy rule, mainly because the murder was deemed to be a racist attack upon an “innocent young man’. So, to strong applause from many newspapers, most of whom should have known far better, the ‘Double Jeopardy’ rules were dispensed with, and five hundred years of historic precedence was thrown out like used dishwater; and the accused were found guilty after that same ‘new evidence’ was miraculously found after years being stored away. The ‘saintly mother’ of the dead drug dealer was gifted half a million pounds of public money because of ‘police mismanagement’ and she now sits in the House of Lords.
But the third broad attack upon our whole justice system was brought about through the invention of ‘Hate Crimes’. Broadly put, a Hate Crime is supposed to have been committed if one person says or writes or publishes something derogatory about another; and that second person is then supposed to be ‘grievously offended’. A hate crime is defined as a criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or anybody else, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone’s:
- race
- religion
- sexual orientation
- transgender identity
- Disability.
Now we already have Law of either Libel or Slander, in which the accused can be found not guilty if he or she can prove that what they said, wrote or published was true.
But here’s the kicker, and this is the basis of my dislike for this mess. The accused person has to prove his innocence of that Hate Crime. Which is exactly 1800 away from eight centuries of legal precedence. The whole British Judicial body and practice rested firmly upon the statement: “The accused is innocent, until the Prosecution proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he or she is guilty. Now we have a whole new body of So-called Law which states exactly the opposite!
I think, by now, that the reader must realise that I have proven my thesis, and we here in Great Britain have to undo a great deal before we get back to an honest Judicial system.
I thank you for your time, and hope to see you again.
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