Michael Meacher MP

There are two groups in Britain who are above the law – the bankers and the police.   Members of both groups have, in very different ways, done immense damage to the economic and social fabric of this country in recent years, and not one has been held to account.   Leading bankers in all the main banks have acted with almost unbelievable folly and recklessness which has now cost taxpayers over $650bn, a sum that will rise by 2014 to £1.4 trillion (equal to Britain’s whole GDP), yet not one banker has been prosecuted, imprisoned, demoted, sacked or permanently (or even temporarily) barred from any involvement in the financial sector they virtually destroyed.   Now the Tomlinson affair shows that the police are equally immune from public accountability, and can even kill citizens with impunity.   For this is not an isolated episode, but comes on top of a long list of similar incidents. (more…)

Ken Clarke’s attack on the Michael Howard/New Labour bang ‘em up culture is welcome.   With currently 85,000 prisoners behind bars, by far the highest rate of detention of any country in Europe, he is right to demand alternatives.   Prison does take violent men out of circulation so as to protect the public for a time, but it is not a deterrent (i.e. not a punishment sufficient to prevent a large majority from re-criminalising after release) and it fails drastically in rehabilitation – the main effect of prison experience is to intensify criminality.

It’s obvious that prison is not a suitable repository for most prisoners.   Half of the men and three-quarters of the women have no qualifications.   Two-thirds are innumerate and half are illiterate.   Two-thirds were unemployed and one-third homeless when they were detained.   Three-quarters are either mentally ill or mentally unstable (compared with 5% in the wider population).   Over half suffered from alcohol excess or drug abuse.   And economically the system is counter-productive: it costs over £40,000 per prison place per year (over £3.2bn), while the cost of re-offending (which 60% even of short-term offenders do) is put at £11bn a year.   So what should be done? (more…)

The outrage over Venables having re-offended with allegedly a serious sexual offence has very unhelpfully distracted from the need for fundamental prison reform and a much more determined drive for rehabilitation as the underlying goal of the prison system.   This requires a systematic change in direction away from current policy: (more…)

An international corruption scandal is fast brewing with potentially explosive significance for the reputation of the US. The lawyers representing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, have just published on-line the documents which they would have used for his appeal, had not Megrahi withdrawn his appeal last month after a deal was struck to release him on compassionate grounds since he has terminal prostate cancer. What the legal documents reveal is that the key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, and his brother had been secretly given rewards of $3 million in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US Government. Gauci had given the crucial evidence at the trial declaring that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly contained the Lockerbie bomb. No other evidence connected Megrahi to the bomb. Now for the first time these latest documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told the Scottish police that they wanted to offer Tony Gauci “unlimited money” and $10,000 straightaway. The US Justice Department was also asked to pay a further £1 million to Gauci’s brother who did not give evidence, but halped to identify the clothing and to “maintain the resolve of his brother”. The implications of these revelations are sensational.

(more…)

The banks are protected, the airline industry is protected, and now the Phoenix Four are getting away with it. What does justice mean in Britain today? How can it be that the 4 local businessmen and the former MG Rover chief executive screwed £42m for themselves out of a company they bought for just £10 and then left it 5 years later with £1bn debts and 6,500 jobs lost, and yet not be prosecuted? How could they wipe clean incriminating computer discs, cook up a tax avoidance scheme to rake off £60m for themselves, use MG Rover’s losses to eliminate another company’s tax liabilities and thus make another £10m for themselves, pay £1.6m to a translator with whom one of the four was having an affair, support the failing car dealership of another of the four with loans not commercially justified, and yet still not be brought to court? To rub salt into the wound, the Phoenix four stand to collect a further £11.6m windfall, bringing their total gains to over £53m, from their involvement in MGR Capital, a car finance joint venture with an HBOS subsidiary now part of Lloyds TSB. How could they so comprehensively put their own interests – they expected to make £75m for themselves – before those of MG Rover and its workers, and get away with it?

(more…)

As so often with declarations of international morality, there is a good deal of cant thrown in about the Scottish decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, a former criminal defence lawyer, made a brave and principled decision explicitly not on political or diplomatic grounds, but in accordance with what he clearly argued were the interests of justice. But that was too much for the US Attorney General who responded: “There is simply no justification for releasing this convicted terrorist whose actions took the lives of 270 individuals, including 189 Americans”. What punishment then, one might ask, has America exacted against the US commander of the warship which without provocation in the Persian Gulf in 1988 fired on and destroyed an Iranian civil airliner killing 290 innocent Iranian and other passengers not long before the Lockerbie bombing? Were those innocent lives lost any less precious than the American ones? If the US captain had been captured (admittedly a pretty inconceivable event) and been convicted – not of terrorism, but of gross irresponsibility leading to mass killing – wouldn’t the US Government have approved of his release if he had just 3 months to live from terminal cancer?

(more…)

Alan Johnson’s statement yesterday, that there was nothing legally he could now do to prevent the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US to stand trial for hacking into the Pentagon’s computers, is a feeble response to an unfolding personal tragedy. In fact there are at least two things he could do. He could insist that on compassionate grounds, based on the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrone, extradition would constitute a cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore McKinnon would be brought to trial in the UK. He could also insist that in the light of this case, and also of the previous case of the National Westminster 3, it was clear that the 2003 Extradition Act which underpinned these cases was one-sided and prejudicial to Britain’s interests and therefore would be renegotiated to ensure equal and balanced rights and obligations applying to both the US and UK alike. The fact however that the Government has tamely chosen to let matters take their course and not intervene shames this country. It also exposes a dark corner in the relations between the US and the UK which urgently requires reform.

(more…)

Nobody will condone the methods used by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists convicted on Christmas Eve for their attacks on the animal research laboratory Huntingdon Life Sciences and associated companies and individuals. But that should not blind us to the fact that they have a point which deserves much more public attention than it has received so far. We treat animals badly and inflict unnecessary cruelty on them. We may be the dominant species on this planet, but that doesn’t mean we are entitled to brutalise and subject to our pleasure other animal species which also have neural systems, cranial capacity and a desire for life. Yet we do, constantly. We should change our ways in several important respects.

(more…)