Maurice was with us in spirit when we met as the Association of McKenzie Friends. Coming home, I had a letter from him. He expects to be in jail for a long time, because "the system" can't afford to let him win his machine gun case. It would be too expensive to compensate him...
Thanks to recent comments by very eminent friends, I'd like to summarise my current understanding on behalf of victims as follows:
- we can't use our own case to change "the system" which, in short, is "the State"
- it's not about justice, fairness or other noble ideals, it's about "presenting our case" and the issues we have with ourselves in the process of doing so
- to change the system requires very different tactics and strategies than any of us can carry out on our own.
Over the years, Maurice has learned to put his complaints together more succinctly. His latest list is here. The sad thing is that HMP Governors don't seem to manage to ensure that wise rules called PSOs (Prison Service Orders) are carried out. The page that speaks about Litigants in Person should give Maurice what he asks for... But our letters don't seem to make a difference, let alone his own requests...
Many will remember the remarkable Suzon Forscey-Moore who has left a few key documents with us. One of them is an 8-page Affidavit she wrote on behalf of a "Lloyds name" and demonstrates her excellent research. The quotable quotes from her historic critique of the Welsh and English justice system are:
- Point 42: In the context of the Birmingham Six: "It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned".
- 43: "It is better that thousands of people are wrongly made destitute than the integrity of Lloyd's (and the government which should have deterred Lloyd's fraud) be impugned".
- 44: In the context of Lord Denning: Finding fault with the system was beyond him. Individuals for whom the system works, will see no need to analyse it. It is the victims on whom that difficult burden falls.
Maurice is one of the many "Victims turned Starfighters" who don't know enough about procedures and remedies and think that common sense prevails. He also still hopes, like many others, that the right judges and the right politicians will sort things out.
Thanks to my analysis of anglo-saxon capitalism, as it evolved contrary to the Bank of England Act 1694, I have become much more cynical. Suzon writes:
- Point 28: "Money decides legal matters" and quotes the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, in The Times (Point 79):
- "the adversarial
system for settling civil legal disputes was in reality 'profitable
monopoly of lawyers' and called for the Government
to take steps to reform the law."
- And in point 80 the Director of the Serious Fraud Office: "There remains a gap between the incidence of fraud and the number of investigations, let alone prosecutions...I am not suggesting that the justice gap can be closed--merely narrowed.”
However, bankers have lawyers in their pockets, both are "self-regulated" and the creation of 'money from thin air' is beyond anybody's scrutiny. What's dishonest about our money system is equally beyond scrutiny. In fact, the public interest doesn't seem to be at the heart of those in positions where they could make a difference, while their minds don't understand what "money" is.
Our only hope thus seems to be publicity online. For the mainstream media are playing along the powers that money buys. In the spirit of Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832):
"Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial.
In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing. Only in proportion as publicity has place can any of the checks, applicable to judicial injustice, operate. Where there is no publicity there is no justice."
Suzon's critique covers the following points:
- Immunity: Lloyd's, judges and barristers
- Failure to Prosecute for Corruption
- Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice
- Violation of Article VII of the Bill of Rights
- The Fiction of an Impartial and Independent Judiciary
- No Separation of Powers
- The Privy Council... A Secret Government
- An Accommodating Press
- Threat of Order to Pay the Other Side's Costs
- Attitudes towards European Law
- Secret Government Vetting of Jurors
- Ex-parte Communications
- No Requirement to Report of Investigate Perjury
- Transcripts Modified to Prejudice Appeals
- Destruction of Evidence
- Grand Juries Abolished
- Plea Bargaining Unknown
- Empirical Evidence.
The bold items are direct experiences by Victims of White Collar Crimes, also recorded on Room 14 - a Foundation for Change and on Enforcement of Bank of England Act 1694.