[Marxism] Danny Morrison on Hutton

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

This article by Danny Morrison about Hutton in today's Guardian really
hits the nail on the head:

Danny Morrison
Tuesday February 3, 2004
The Guardian

Lord Hutton and I were once very close. I sat about 10 feet from him in
the witness box while he quizzed me on charges of conspiracy to murder,
IRA membership and kidnapping. He eventually sentenced me to eight years
in jail on the testimony of a police informer I had never met. Although
in the Belfast high court Hutton occasionally acquitted republicans and
dismissed the appeals of soldiers, nationalists generally considered him
a hanging judge and the guardian angel of soldiers and police officers.

I was amused at the response of sections of the media and British public
to last week's report when he exonerated the prime minister, his defence
secretary and his press officer from the BBC's allegations that the
government "sexed up" a pre-war dossier on Iraqi WMD - and damned the
BBC. Incredibly, many who followed the Hutton inquiry and observed the
contradictions, the lies and the evasiveness of government
representatives, expected this damning evidence to be taken into account.

Do they know anything about how the establishment works? Have they never
heard of Ireland's six counties and how our poor, conscience-stricken
judiciary coped with all the quandaries they faced?

At stake in Britain were the office of the prime minister (as distinct
from Blair) and the judgment, integrity and morale of the British
military authorities, now deep in a quagmire in Iraq.

Lord Denning, master of the rolls, the third-highest law lord in
Britain, sat on the privy council with ministers of the government. To
him the rights of Irish people, in particular, were subservient to the
fabric of the British policing and judicial system. Denning summed this
up best in his 1980 judgment when he ruled against an appeal by the
Birmingham Six, whose case was that they had been beaten and made false
confessions. He said: "If the six men win, it will mean that the police
were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats
... That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would
say, 'It cannot be right that these actions should go any further'."
There is an old caution that one shouldn't confuse lawyers with the
clients they defend. However, judges almost certainly can be judged from
their judgments.

Hutton first made the news in 1973 when, representing the Ministry of
Defence at the inquests into those killed on Bloody Sunday, he
castigated the coroner, Major Hubert O'Neill. O'Neill had suggested that
the Paras had no justification for shooting the people. Hutton told him:
"It is not for you or the jury to express such wide-ranging views,
particularly when a most eminent judge has spent 20 days hearing
evidence and come to a very different conclusion."

Those 20 days were a reference to the seven-week-long inquiry by Lord
Chief Justice Widgery into the 13 deaths in Derry that resulted in a
historic miscarriage of justice, currently being re-examined by Lord
Saville. Thirty years later, when it came to the inquiry into the death
of one former weapons inspector, Hutton would take seven months to
absolve once again those who opened fire (in Iraq) without justification.

In 1978, he was part of the team defending Britain at the Strasbourg
court against Irish government allegations that internees in 1971 were
tortured. In 1981, he presided at the trial of a British soldier who
ploughed at high speed into a group of people in Derry, killing two
youths. Hutton advised the jury "to consider whether you think that
perhaps unconsciously some of the witnesses ... had a tendency somewhat
to strengthen their evidence against the army". He suggested that the
driving, while reckless, might not have been unreasonable given the
rioting and attempts to apprehend the rioters. The soldier was acquitted.

He agreed with supergrass trials, and in 1984 sentenced 10 men to some
of the longest sentences ever imposed, a total of 1001 years, on the
word of a paid informer, Robert Quigley, who was granted immunity from
prosecution.

In 1986, he acquitted an RUC reservist, Nigel Hegarty, who was charged
with unlawfully killing John Downes at a rally. When the RUC opened fire
with plastic bullets on civilians at a sit-down protest, Downes picked
up a small stick and was running towards two officers when Hegarty
killed him from about three yards. Despite Hegarty offering no evidence,
Hutton speculated that he had acted "probably almost instinctively" and
that, given "the stress of the moment and the obvious determination of
the deceased", Hegarty's response was not unreasonable.

In the trial of two Royal Marines charged with murdering Fergal Caraher
in a shooting incident at Cullyhanna in 1990, he said he could not rely
on the accounts given by the civilian witnesses for the prosecution or
on those given by the accused and a fellow soldier, so he acquitted the
soldiers even though he believed they might have been lying.

And he was involved in the Brian Nelson affair. Just a week before
Nelson's trial, which almost certainly would have exposed British
collusion with loyalist death squads, Hutton and the trial judge, Basil
Kelly, met the then prime minister, John Major. Nelson was offered a
deal to plead guilty to sample charges, which he did. He served just a
few years.

In an episode of the BBC's Yes, Prime Minister, the PM, Jim Hacker, is
furious when someone leaks to the press that he has manipulated his
solicitor general to suppress a political memoir, not on security
grounds but because it contained a chapter about him, The Two Faces of
Jim Hacker. He wants the culprit found and convicted. His cabinet
secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, rushes to set up a leak inquiry. Hacker
stops him and suggests they lean on the judge to guarantee success.

The wise Sir Humphrey suggests that it is better to find a judge that
doesn't need to be leaned on.

· Danny Morrison is a former publicity director for Sinn Féin and author
of All the Dead Voices: A Memoir

danny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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