'Fair trial' myth is exposed

Scan page 5

Any readers who clung on to a lingering faith in the ""fairness'" of British "justice' and of jury trials should have received a further rude awakening last week with the revelation of computerised jury vetting in a major Old Bailey trial.

The Guardian caused a sensation when on Thursday it unveiled some of the details which the police keep in their computer banks and which were uncovered in the vetting process.

This exercise of press freedom was instantly denounced presided over the notorious Gay News blasphemy case.

Objecting not to the policestate measures involved in the vetting procedure but to the fact that these had been publicised, the Judge not only referred the issue of the Guardian to the Director of Public Prosecutions but also declared that a new jury panel would be subjected to similar "vetting".

Prosecuting counsel Michael Worsley announced that such vetting had been common practice for a number, of years.

«There has never until recently been any disquiet about it among leading members of the Bar and Bench". ..

One recent case in which jury vetting was exposed was last year's ABC Official Secrets Act trial, n which the "security" vetting was carried out in such a way as to allow an ex-SAS officer in as foreman of the jury!

This fact was obligingly suppressed by most journalists covering the trial-despite open persistent statements of brazen bias by the SAS man-until Christopher Hitchens released it Judge King-Hamilton on the Russel. Harty TV chat TV chat show, and the show trial was halted.

The current trial is even more openly politically motivated than the 'ABC' case.

The six defendants are anarchists.

They. have been hela, without trial and for long periods in solitary confinement, for six months in Brixton jail.

No specific charges have yet been put to them, though there is talk of allegations of conspiracy to rob and possessing firearms.

At a series of appearances before Lambeth Magistrates they were time and again refused bail on the unsubstantiated word of police officers who have presented not a shred of evidence against them.

Persons Unknown'

Their supporters, campaigning on the issues of democratic rights attacked in these proceedings, have dubbed the six defendants the "Persons Unknown"

There is little doubt that the vigorous repression meted out to these anarchists and the methods of vetting and collating information displayed in this case are a part of the Tories' which any militant, your i drive to 'law and order' socialist is a potential future victim.

The Guardian revealed that the police files contain such information as to whether a potential juror lives in a squat, and whether he or she has ever made complaints to thé police or been the victim of a crime.

No doubt there are even more detailed dossiers available on known trade union activists and socialists.

Bedrock

It is essential that the case of the Persons Unkown is taken up by Labour Parties and trade unions.

But such growing policestate surveillance will not be halted by liberal protest and the limp bleating of the capitalist press.

: The power of the statedefended by both Tory and Labour, leaders-is the bedrock of capitalist rule. The democratic rights of the working class will only be guaranteed with the destruction of the capitalist state machinery and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

*Persons Unknown booklet reviewed in next week's Socialist Press.