LORD PALMERSTON knew the meaning of justice. In 1847 a Gibraltarian merchant, Don Pacifico, had his business wiped out by an Athens mob and was denied compensation by the Greek Government. As a British citizen, he appealed to London. Palmerston rose to the occasion. He ordered the British Fleet to Piraeus and told it to bombard the city if Pacifico’s claims were not met. “A British subject in whatever land he may be,” said the great man, “shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.” The Greeks succumbed.
Pacifico would get short shrift from David Blunkett. The Home Secretary would call him a whining dago and tell the Greeks to hang him from the nearest tree. As for the British Fleet, it is too busy bombarding Iraqis. And as for compensation, that would be for bleeding-heart liberals. Is that OK, Daily Mail? Does that sound good? Blunkett’s the name, with two ts.
It goes without saying that a skinhead football supporter getting drunk in an Algarve pub at 3.30am does not arouse natural sympathy. The firefighter Garry Mann was arrested not when rioting but by plain clothes police on his way to his hotel in the early hours of the morning. He was returning from a pub half a mile from trouble, a pub where, he says, he had spent the entire evening. He was then allegedly beaten up. At his trial two days later he was not given the charges against him in English until 30 minutes before he was sentenced. He had no time to prepare a defence or to prove his alibi, which if true must have been convincing.
He could not call witnesses and was denied access to CCTV footage of his claimed presence in the pub, footage that was wiped the next day. His trial was clearly a travesty.
That travesty was mitigated by what now appears to have been the real sentence, which was not the two-year jail term described in the British press. According to lawyers at Fair Trials Abroad, the Portuguese document handed to Mann as he boarded his plane said that he was being deported under the “fast-track” procedure, and banned from returning for a year. Only if he flouted that ban would a two-year prison sentence apply. The Council of Europe rules on cross-border handling of prisoners are clear. Movement requires prisoners to be convicts in jail, not people with suspended sentences. Mann’s punishment was a suspended prison sentence and deportation.
I cannot see that the Uxbridge magistrate who on Saturday, and to the rage of the nation, freed Mann had any option. The Portuguese had not imprisoned him. No British court had tried or sentenced him. No extradition request had been made by either side. Mann was being allowed to appeal the conviction without returning to Portugal. For all I know he may be a serial football hooligan. No such claim was proved in court. Aged 46, with a family, a job, no previous conviction and an appeal pending, Mann seemed entitled to the benefit of legal doubt before his life was ruined by a prison sentence.
The Home Secretary offered him none. A fanatical advocate of “executive justice”, Mr Blunkett rushed to a radio studio to demand that Mann get behind bars. He was “working hard” to that end “because I haven’t given up on the idea that we are going to nail this individual”. Nail him to what, I wonder? To a prison door or a cross? Mann’s appeal or subsequent trial in Britain is hopelessly prejudiced. The Home Secretary and architect of the procedure under which he was, possibly wrongly, convicted has declared him guilty as sin.
Mann is the victim of a government policy aimed at clearing Portugal of hooligans in advance of England’s progress to victory in the European Championship. Tony Blair knows the political value of sport. After showering the England rugby team (plus reserves) with honours for winning a trophy, and giving none to no less valiant Welsh losers, he hopes to borrow similar glory from football. The one spoiler would be the performance of drink-sodden supporters. They are Britain’s most odious export but one bolstered by the Government’s indulgence of the drink lobby, most recently with liberalised opening hours. To counter the menace to Euro 2004, makeshift laws were duly introduced with the co-operation of the Portuguese. They were chiefly aimed at the overnight deportation of hooligans.
Prison is a different matter. In Britain a two-year sentence would require a hearing before a Crown Court and the option of a jury. The worst offence that Mann appears to have committed is a conspiracy to cause an affray. Aggression against a bar stool may be offensive but hardly an imprisonable offence. Aggression against a bar stool likely to embarrass ministers is clearly more serious. But even then a hefty fine and deportation would normally suffice. The sentence theoretically imposed on Mann was exemplary and political, as is Mr Blunkett’s desperation to see it enforced. It appears that was not the court’s intention.
Mr Blunkett’s tabloid reaction is all too familiar. His jerks of the knee in response to news stories embody the spin motif of the Blair Government. In his case the jerks are invariably in a right-wing direction. He has packed British jails as never before in history. Last year Mr Blunkett tested the concept of humane punishment to breaking with his “life means life and no parole” speech. In demanding mandatory maximum sentences for “heinous crimes” he rolled his tongue lovingly round the headline categories, “sexual, sadistic, premeditated, serial, terrorist”. Only if committed by the IRA are such crimes excusable to the present Cabinet.
The Home Secretary is a longstanding enemy of lawyers and judges, especially law lords. Like his forerunner, Michael Howard, he believes that home secretaries should fix punishments, under the guise of “Parliament”. When a judge sentenced some stone-throwing Bradford youths to four-year jail sentences two years ago, he dismissed their defendants as“bleeding heart liberals”, the totemic phrase of the American far Right.
Mr Blunkett is the judicial equivalent of a football hooligan. He rants in public and craves attention. His echo-chamber is a front-page splash and a radio soundbite. He cares not what damage he does to the reputation of his party or his cause. To him political power emanates from the right of any spectrum. As Lord Hattersley has put it: “The Labour Party once reflected the best prejudices of the British working class; now it reflects the worst.” In his thuggish response to thuggish behaviour, Mr Blunkett embodies that worst.
Mr Blair made great play in his first term of seeing British standards of justice transported round the globe. If his “ethical dimension” to foreign policy was mostly rhetoric, it was virtuous rhetoric. If his crusade to impose Western values on Muslims has turned to bloody chaos that, I am sure, was not his intention. I have no doubt of Mr Blair’s sincerity. He does sincerity well.
Leaders are judged by deeds not intentions. Palmerston sent gunboats to enforce respect for British justice. He would not have tolerated, as has Mr Blair lamely, the two-year incarceration without trial of British citizens in Guantanamo Bay. He would not have appeased the Greeks’ imprisonment of British plane-spotters. He would have expected British citizens in Portugal to receive a fair trial before imprisonment.
Garry Mann might not invite sympathy, which is why his case is a good test of justice. The British Government has failed it. Mr Blunkett did not inquire into his treatment. He wanted someone, anyone, publicly destroyed to forestall the risk of Britain being disqualified from a football competition. He wants exemplary, not judicial, punishment. The result is anti-Palmerstonian. Whether a British citizen is in Albufeira or Guantanamo he can expect no protection from “the watchful eye and the strong arm of England”. He can expect neglect and condemnation.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
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