Freedom's flame flickers as British legal system faces European harmonization
by Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Chairman of the Campaign for an Independent Britain
On 13th April, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to accept the recommendation of its Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs Committee that European Laws on some serious offences should be harmonised. The most sinister element of the recommendation was the phrase which suggested that it "....it might serve as an example for future developments in the matter of law and policing".
This proposal, dubbed "Corpus Juris" when it was first discussed in the British press in December, is nothing less than the first step towards dismantling our centuries old legal system and replacing it with the European inquisitorial system. In other words, the end of trial by jury in Britain. When concerns about the implications of this latest harmonization were raised last year, the Euro-federalists used their first tactic - name calling. EU-realists were scare-mongering and then came their second tactic - to tell us this frightening prospect was not on the agenda, it was only up for discussion.
Now of course we find that what was only for discussion has become a harsh reality and that our Home Secretary, Jack Straw, has already drawn up a plan to extend the powers of courts in other European Union states, to allow them to arrest people, seize property, search premises or undertake surveillance operations in Britain. It would also remove the right of appeal against extradition. This appalling plan opens up the prospect of possessions and property in this country being seized by bailiffs operating for foreign courts, extraditions without trial and the British police being made to enforce the penalties of a foreign court imposed on a Briton returning from abroad, even if his or her offence is not a crime in Britain.
Incredibly, the Home Office has defended this plan on the basis that it will make it easier to bring fugitives back to trial in this country and that it would help to enforce compensation claims against time-share companies in Spain! The Governments smokescreen of half-truths and misleading statements must not be allowed to hide the fact that we face losing our traditional right to trial by jury, to defend ourselves before 12 fellow citizens. It is to be taken away in another wave of humiliating EU-compliance. What has our nation been reduced to, if it will not even defend its own legal system, and when the European Commission offices in Storeys Gate are becoming the real of seat of power in Britain rather than our own elected Houses of Parliament, just a short distance across the Square?
We have chased the European dream, which has become the worst kind of nightmare, for more than 30 years. Instead of joining a Common Market, as we were originally promised, we have taken part, willingly or unwillingly, depending on which political party is in power, in the construction of giant single European state. A state which is dedicated to the destruction of the nation states of Europe and to the removal of electoral power from the peoples of those nations. The flame of freedom in Britain and in Europe as a whole, is flickering and faltering.
It is time to put our nation first, to turn away from the undemocratic, protectionist and corrupt European Union. Instead, we should devote our energies toward further development of our country's highly successful world-wide interests. Britain should continue to be a global trading nation and not allow itself to become a peripheral province of an economically backward single European state.
Source: Campaign for an Independent Britain