AND ANOTHER THING
Pinochet is Labour's political prisoner and Straw is his gaoler
PAUL JOHNSON
General Pinochet is Britain's political prisoner. There is nothing judicious or judi- cial about his incarceration, so strict that this fervent Catholic was not even allowed to attend Mass in the local church on Christmas Day. A high proportion of the total resources of Special Branch has been deployed to prevent 'rescue attempts', one reason why terrorist organisations now find London such a safe haven. The case, pur- sued with relentless partisanship by the government's legal understrappers and a Home Secretary who has been a dedicated political opponent of the General since stu- dent days, has exposed glaring weaknesses in our legal system. The demand for his arrest was unlawful by English standards because it came from a magistrate who holds his job for political reasons and is an open supporter of the Left. It was contrary to natural justice and this should have been recognised in the response of our legal authorities. The original arrest warrant was defective. When this was discovered the General should have been released; instead a new warrant was stealthily substituted.
I wrote at the time that the case would cost taxpayers more than £100 million before it was through, and that only the lawyers would benefit. This has proved to be a distressingly accurate guess. The lawyers, while pocketing the cash, cut sorry figures. The highest court in the land has covered itself in ridicule, thanks to the antics of Lord 'Leg-Over Lennie' Hoff- mann, who failed to declare his interest, thus necessitating a second trial, the com- plex findings of which to most people were incomprehensible. Lennie has not been sacked and has not had the decency to resign, but continues to administer justice in the now discredited court.
The Pinochet case persuades me that Habeas Corpus no longer works and that the statute needs redrafting in the light of the Labour government's contempt for it. Nothing quite so contrary to our basic principles of justice has occurred since the arrest without trial of pro-Nazi sympathis- ers under the notorious wartime 18-B reg- ulation. Winston Churchill was opposed to these arrests, carried out at the insistence of another Labour Home Secretary, Her- bert Morrison. But at least it could then be argued that Britain was fighting a world war and that those put behind bars might reasonably be suspected of favouring all enemies. By contrast, Pinochet has been a fervent Anglophile all his life, and during the Falklands war, at considerable risk to himself, rendered signal services to the British cause, saving the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of British soldiers.
The arrest and continued detention of this frail old man in his eighties have dealt the image of Britain as a country which upholds the highest standards of fair play, and which stands by its friends, an immense blow. It is hard to conceive of anything more contrary to our national interests. I put this to the Prime Minister when Pinochet was first arrested. He replied that he could do nothing as it was an entirely legal matter. He knew this was untrue, and I can only conclude that it was lack of courage to stand up to his left-wing colleagues — a weakness since confirmed over and over again — which prevented him from doing the right thing. He chose to embody perfide Albion rather than ruat caelum, fiat justitia!
I trust that when a Tory government is returned, which looks increasingly likely the way things are going, it will conduct an inquiry into the murky circumstances in which Pinochet was arrested here as a guest of the government and while travelling under diplomatic immunity. In particular we ought to know the exact role of the gov- ernment's legal officers and the Home Sec- retary in setting the trap. Tony Blair tells me he knows nothing about it but then he always says that. The most sinister part, I believe, was played by Jack Straw. He behaved not unlike Leg-Over Lennie, for while posing as an objective official, in his quasi-judicial position as Home Secretary, he concealed his previous connections with the anti-Pinochet forces in Chile, until the truth was dragged out of him by the media. His ruling against Pinochet was clearly biased. Indeed, I suspect Straw is a ven- omous enemy of the General, determined to see him gaoled for the rest of his life. That is what his actions throughout would suggest.
I shall remain uneasy so long as Straw occupies an office which has such a close bearing on our civil liberties. His face says it all: ugly but conceited; dim and unimagi- native but not without low cunning; obsti- nate and bigoted and protected by a cara- pace of impenetrable self-righteousness acquired over a lifetime spent in low-grade partisan politics. He has had a lawyer's training — enough to add another archae- ological layer to his self-esteem — and a brief spell in the media. Otherwise he has been in full-time Labour politics all his life, from the moment he became an offi- cial of the National Union of Students.
What a tunnel existence! Devoid of com- mon humanity, immune from the need to earn a living in the ordinary commerce of life, a career of bellowing slogans and chanting party mantras, jostling in commit- tees, lobby-intriguing, soft-soaping and squaring accounts, flattery given and returned, hate lovingly nurtured and ejacu- lated in acts of revenge; then, after the long years of envious waiting, the welcome spoils of office, the chauffeur-driven cars, the reassuring plain-clothes policemen at the elbow, the deliciously conspicuous red boxes and obsequious secretaries; above all, the delight in bossing people about the lust for sheer power, however petty, at last gratified. Needless to say, given his record, Straw is no good at administration, as the mess he has made of the passport business shows — and this is the mere tip of the iceberg of his incompetence. But no matter, he is there, giving orders, the scrawny, insignificant, rabbity little man at last exercising dominion — and the Gener- al under arrest is the living symbol of Straw's gratification.
Whether the Prime Minister is wise to take the coward's way out remains to be seen. After all, depending on who is doing the judging, his record is not unlike Pinochet's. He carried through the Kosovo campaign, as the prime mover — Clinton and the other Nato heads of government being his often reluctant followers — with considerable ruthlessness. I happen to believe he was absolutely right in his policy, as I believe Pinochet was absolutely right to send packing the international terrorist Left in Chile. But others may, indeed do, think differently. A lot of people — I met some the other day — see Blair as a mass murderer. Pinochet is not accused of killing half as many people as were the victims of the Blair-led air attacks on Serbia. As with Pinochet, there will be plenty willing to tes- tify on oath against Blair, and who knows how the case will go if it ever comes to court? Blair should be careful where he travels from now on, especially in suppos- edly friendly countries.
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