AND ANOTHER THING
Tony Blair gives a new lease of life to the old jibe, Terfide Albion'
PAUL JOHNSON
Through inexperience, Tony Blair has made a balls-up of the Pinochet case, and his inability to think fast on his feet in this important but not earth-shattering affair gives me an uneasy feeling that, when a real international crisis explodes out of a clear sky, he may not be able to handle it. I said to him, 'You know that Chile is our best friend in Latin America, as Pinochet proved during the Falklands war. He came here as a sick man and guest and you betrayed the most elementary principles of hospitality. How could you do it?' He said, `I was told that, unless I allowed the case to proceed I would be in breach of the Extra- dition Treaty.' I said that if one lawyer told him that, he should have consulted another, and got a different answer.
His proper course was to cover himself by getting the opinions, separately, of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice and the Attorney-General, each of whom would have produced a different interpre- tation of the law. That would have left him free to take a political decision. But before flying Pinochet home he should have taken the precaution, as a US president would have done, of consulting his predecessors in office, Ted Heath, Jim Callaghan, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. All, I am pretty sure, would have urged him to put national interests before any other consid- eration. Then he should have seen the Queen, and told her what he intended to do, and received her encouragement. Final- ly, having sent the General home, he should have gone to the Commons, explained exactly what he had done and why, and appealed to MPs for their back- ing. He would, I am quite sure, have been given an overwhelming vote of support from all parties.
The moral of the case, I said to Blair, is underlined by Churchill's maxim in govern- ment: 'Lawyers should be on tap but not on top.' Blair had never heard this saying before, but I could see he took it in and I hope he will apply it in future. As it is, the damage has been done in this case, and the lawyers are absolutely on top — whether or not Jack Straw decides to exercise his dis- cretion in the General's favour. There is nothing lawyers like more than a highly publicised case involving complex interna- tional jurisdiction, in which they can have a lovely, self-important time disagreeing with and reversing each other, while their learned brethren in droves collect huge fees ultimately funded by the taxpayers. Lawyers in Britain, Chile, Spain, France and other countries have already, I calculate, put up over £50 million on the clock of this glori- ous global taxi-ride, and there is much, much more to come.
The episode has attracted world-wide attention and will promote a spate of politi- cal extradition campaigns. If a head of state can be held legally responsible for any crimes, real or imaginary, committed dur- ing his or her term of office — and the point will apply a fortiori to a head of gov- ernment — there is nothing to stop such dignitaries being arrested all over the world, in or out of power. A citizen of the Irish Republic, for instance, could take out an extradition warrant for the Queen, accusing her of responsibility for the 'mur- der' of the 'Gibraltar Three', present it to a compliant Irish-American New York judge, and have it served on her the next time she is in the city. One can imagine infinite vari- ations on this theme.
There is another aspect to this case, which has been completely ignored so far in Britain, but which was forcibly put to me by many people when I was in Argenti- na last week. One reason why the Spanish colonies in America revolted against Spain in the early 19th century was their exasper- ation at the way in which Madrid insisted that all important cases be referred back to Spanish courts for judgment, the impli- cation being that courts in the viceroyal- ties of South and Central America lacked `maturity'. (Those living in the 13 British colonies of North America had a similar grievance.) Even after independence, Spain tried to assert legal jurisdiction, and the issue has never been forgotten in countries like Chile, Argentina and Mexi- co. It has now been brutally revived by Balthasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who is asserting his right to second-guess the courts in Chile and, by implication, in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and other countries where infringements of civil rights of non-nationals is a political issue. The South Americans see this as a piece of Spanish neo-colonialism, made more odious by an assumption of cultural and moral superiority.
By submitting to the Spanish warrant, first Tony Blair, now the House of Lords have aided Spanish legal imperialism in a spirit of solidarity with another member of the old colonialist club. It is pointed out, and resented, that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council here still has ultimate legal authority over citizens in the West Indies and other former colonies in the Americas.
The Latin Americans further assert that most nations break the extradition treaty whenever they find it politically desirable. The French broke it a fortnight ago when they refused to send back the treacherous MI6 runaway, the Italians and Germans are breaking it over a Turkish terrorist leader wanted for the murder of 26,000 people, and the United States constantly breaks it in cases involving wanted IRA killers. The Argentines I talked to see Britain's sub- servience to the treaty in this case as hypocrisy, arising out of a desire to show themselves 'good Europeans'. One said to me, 'I hate Pinochet because he helped you in the war over the Malvinas, and saved the lives of hundreds of British soldiers and sailors. Maybe you could not have won the war without him. So why do you betray your friend? What is it the French call you — Pellicle Albion?'
Those laughing hardest are the propa- ganda experts of the old Soviet empire which is enjoying a posthumous triumph. The only efficient thing the Soviet Union ever produced was its agitprop machine. It worked harder, in the 1970s and 1980s, on demonising Pinochet than on any other enemy, except possibly Trotsky, and it suc- ceeded. The Soviets hated him with rea- son, for he was instrumental in frustrating their bid to take over Chile, which would have been followed by coups in other Latin American countries during a period when the United States was paralysed by Water- gate and its aftermath. Instead, Pinochet, over 17 years, liberalised the Chilean econ- omy, gave it a 10 per cent annual growth rate, which has been broadly maintained, and enabled the ordinary people of Chile to attain the highest living standards in Latin America. Chile's example has been successfully followed in Argentina and Peru, and other countries are now embrac- ing the free-market 'pattern. It is good news for the peasants and workers but bad news for the left-wing, middle-class intel- lectuals. Hence their anxiety to subject Pinochet to a show trial before a modern Torquemada.
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