OVER 3,000 solicitors, barristers, probation staff and a number of the many people they represent rallied last Friday in a half-day strike opposite parliament, before marching to the Ministry of Justice condemning savage cuts in the legal aid system.
The rally chair, criminal solicitor Greg Foxsmith said of the measures: ‘We should consider a charge of conspiring to destroy the justice system.’
Solicitor Paul Harris told the rally: ‘This is not about cuts, this is about the rights of ordinary people.
‘Legal aid was introduced in 1949 so that all people regardless of wealth would have equal access to courts and justice.’
He added: ‘This is about a reduction of state accountability … The restrictions now being proposed for bringing judicial review will constrain the ability to challenge unlawful state action.’
He stressed: ‘This is what has happened so far and this is why we have to take action.’
Chair of the Criminal Bar Association Nigel Lithman told the rally: ‘The criminal justice system has taken centuries to build; it’s taken this government a blink of an eye to destroy it.
‘People are being deprived of legal aid.
‘The government is introducing a system of law for the rich and a law for the poor.’
He added: ‘Solicitors will be forced to close their doors and defendants will end up having to defend themselves. It’s a farce and a tragedy.
‘For centuries we have done some of the most serious work in society.’
One of the speakers was Paddy Hill one of the Birmingham Six who was wrongly jailed along with others for 16 years and more for the Birmingham bombings, in what was a state frame-up.
He declared: ‘The Ministry of Justice should be called the ministry of injustice.
‘If I was in prison today, I would rot in prison.
‘They don’t care about us, they care about themselves.
‘We need to all come out together and get rid of this lot. Until we do nothing will change.
‘They are going to give more power to the prosecution and police. There will be more miscarriages of justice.’
This is the nub of the issue. The Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, were wrongfully jailed, when there was a legal aid system in place, but they were eventually got out, due to the legal aid system.
We have seen the state execution of Jean Charles de Menezes, and the killing by the state of people like Harry Stanley, and Ian Tomlinson, with not a single police officer charged with murder.
This was done under the legal aid system. Just think what it will be like for the poor and the oppressed if legal aid is effectively abolished, and trade unionists can no longer get access to legal representation at industrial tribunals.
It will be back to the absolute rule of the boss class.
Once again, it took 16 years for Paddy Hill to be freed. This was thanks to the legal aid system.
Not a single policeman who tortured him ruthlessly has ever been charged.
Hill told the Guardian recently some of the methods that his interrogators used.
‘They jammed a pistol in my mouth and smashed it around, breaking my teeth so badly it was agony to even have a sip of water until I finally saw a dentist, two weeks later. They told me they knew I was innocent but that they didn’t care: they had been told to get a conviction and that if I didn’t admit to the bombing, they would shoot me in the mouth. They slowly counted to three, then pulled the trigger. They did that three times. Each time, I thought I was going to die,’ says Hill.
They are getting rid of legal aid so that the Paddy Hills and the countless victims of the bourgeois dictatorship will never be able to get out!
The trade unions must take up the issue of legal aid and also the abolition of free access to industrial tribunals. The only way to resolve the issue is by the trade unions calling a general strike to bring down the reactionary government of Cameron and replace it with a workers government and socialism.
Its first job will be to smash and destroy the ruling class apparatus of state repression. Humanity will be free at last!