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Unpublished Article
by FB
The Old Bailey
conviction of Peter Hain
Francis Bennion
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Published only
on this website
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Doc.
No. 2002.008 |
Peter Hain is wily,
ambitious and intelligent. He means to get to the
top in our country, and is well on the way to succeeding.
He seeks, out of overweening ambition, to rule the
British - yet is unfit to do so. The British need
to wake up to this. Hain is gathering influential
supporters. The noted political commentator Anthony
Howard said: ‘I grow increasingly impressed
by Peter Hain, Minister of State for Europe . .
.Hain has matured remarkably well’.
Howard went on to mention that Hain, following his
leadership of illegal direct action interference
with 1970s sporting tours against South African
teams, had faced a trumped-up charge of bank robbery,
and was ‘triumphantly acquitted, becoming
something of a national celebrity’. Howard
failed to remind his readers that in the meantime
Hain had been convicted at the Old Bailey, after
a ten-day trial, of criminal conspiracy in relation
to his direct action campaigns against South African
teams touring Britain.
Hain’s direct
action campaigns were conducted in Britain on the
pretext that minority rights were threatened. In
an enlightened democracy such as Britain, where
justice and tolerance flourish, there can be few
genuine instances of the oppression of a minority.
Disagreement must never be mistaken for oppression;
for disagreement is a distinguishing feature of
free human societies. Where in a democracy the majority
does seek to oppress a minority the latter are morally,
if not legally, entitled to resist. However to be
in conflict with the established order is not necessarily
to be an agent of enlightenment. I am not oppressed
because I say I am oppressed; nor even because I
think I am oppressed. In a democracy, a minority
is not entitled to use illegal force where no force
is used against it. To use such force in the promotion
of a private opinion related to affairs in a distant
country is tyrannous. The fact that the opinion
is altruistic compounds the tyranny by making it
plausible to the unthinking.
The illegality of
direct action marks it as undemocratic; for the
rule of law is the hallmark of democracy. As José Marti
said, the dagger plunged in the name of Freedom
is plunged into the breast of Freedom. Ballots,
said Abraham Lincoln, are the rightful and peaceful
successors to bullets. Where ballots flourish, there
can be no place for bullets. The armalite does not
belong alongside the ballot-box: they are in different
worlds. Freedom under democratic law is inviolate.
Unlawful force deployed to advance an opinion is
to be rejected. The place to advance an opinion
is the assembly.
My own prime direct action target was in fact this
very Peter Hain, a South African immigrant to Britain
who showed little respect for the historic mores of
the home country that so kindly welcomed him. In
the early 1970s I prosecuted Mr Hain for organising
unlawful direct action in Britain as part of his
campaign against apartheid in South Africa. I was
personally opposed to the South African system of
racial segregation. Indeed I am perhaps the only
person to have addressed Boer or Afrikaner audiences
at public meetings in South Africa and been cheered
after telling them of my opposition to their philosophy.
Nevertheless I was sympathetic to what faced the
whites after the Communist Nelson Mandela achieved
power.
Your report
(26 January 1990) that ‘Comrade’ Nelson
Mandela insists on retaining links with Communists
and nationalising the key sectors of the South African
economy was an eye-opener to those of us who have
long supported majority rule. How can we expect
the whites to relinquish power when that is the
alternative staring them in the face?
Of the official ending
of apartheid with the ascent to power of the black
African Nelson Mandela, the acutest comment I know
is this: ‘In ten years’ time life for
all races in South Africa will be worse than under
apartheid’. That
prophecy has been amply borne out by events.
The story of my private
prosecution of Peter Hain is too complex to be unravelled
here.The
best thing I can do is reproduce my widely-circulated
leaflet Why I am prosecuting Peter Hain. What follows
is the full text of this.
The Facts
In the March 1970 issue
of Challenge, the Young Communist magazine,
Peter Hain wrote-
The campaign
against the all-white South African Rugby team provided
us with a perfect springboard upon which to mount
a sustained and militant campaign to stop the cricket
tour this summer . . . Local groups and activists
have been mobilised throughout the country in preparation
for the ‘Seventy Tour’. In addition,
it cannot be over-emphasised that we have stopped
over half the tour - this in itself is a pretty
staggering achievement . . . an important part of
our build-up strategy will be to mobilise the trade
union movement in support of the campaign. This
will be an area where we shall need the active support
of young workers and particularly Young Communists
. . . In the final analysis, though, this campaign
will be won on the strength of our commitment to
direct action. STST’s basic organising tactic
has always been to stop the games. We have not been
prepared to continue with the tactics of patient
petitioning and polite protesting . . .
On 22 May 1970 Mr Hain’s ‘Stop
the Seventy Tour’ Campaign achieved the other
half of its stated object, and the remainder of
the proposed tour of South African cricketers was
called off completely. The cost to the MCC and cricket
counties has been authoritatively estimated at £140,000.
In cancelling the tour the Cricket Council were
obeying a formal request by the British Government.
The Council deplored ‘the activities of those
who, by intimidation of individual cricketers and
threats of violent disruption have inflamed the
whole issue’. The grounds for the Government’s
request were stated by the Home Secretary, Mr. Callaghan,
as being the possible impact of the tour on race
relations, its divisive effect on the British people,
and the diversion of police resources. Mr Hain’s
campaign having done its work, these factors had
reached the danger mark.
The invitation to the
South African cricketers was lawfully extended by
the MCC four years ago. Arrangements were made for
them to play twenty-eight matches in a stay of four
months. Many thousands of people would have attended
these matches; millions would have watched them
on television. All these activities were entirely
and undoubtedly within the law of this land. They
were prevented from taking place by the unlawful
activities of Mr Hain and his associates.
How do I stand
on Apartheid?
How I stand on Apartheid is totally irrelevant,
because Apartheid itself is totally irrelevant to
the issue on which my prosecution of Peter Hain
is based. In fact (to be irrelevant for a moment)
I am opposed to Apartheid, and all other racialist
doctrines. I have worked with coloured people in
many countries and have a lot of friends among them.
Some years ago, when (on secondment from Whitehall)
I was working in West Africa, I met a man who was
my intellectual superior in every way. He was a
classical scholar, the first black African to be
elected a Fellow of All Souls that pinnacle of English
intellectual achievement. He was a walking demonstration
of the folly of judging people by the colour of
their skin. But not all demonstrations are equally
agreeable.
Am I opposed to
demonstrations?
Britain has taught the world what liberty means.
We are the most tolerant nation on earth, and this
is reflected in our laws and constitution. In many
leading cases in our courts the right to demonstrate
has been established. So too has the right to hold
public meetings in the street, to organise processions,
to use loudspeaker vans, to distribute broadsheets,
to put up posters. Any methods of persuasion are
lawful, and rightly so, provided they do not go beyond persuasion,
provided they do not defame the innocent or inflame
the gullible. So it follows that I am not against
demonstrations - not even when they are carried
out by youngsters with long hair and exotic dress.
Am I against the
young?
A stupid question.
One might as well be against life itself. Most of
our young people are admirable, and where they are
not there is usually some good reason for it. The
idealism of the young, and their hatred of injustice,
oppression and prejudice is a most valuable quality
in our society. Young people sacrifice comfort,
leisure, money - even, in rare cases, liberty and
life itself to further causes they believe to be
right. They constantly remind those who are older
of the need to re-examine settled institutions,
to assert principles and to defy tyrannies. They
see with clear eyes, take nothing for granted, and
demand proof of all our ingrained assumptions. This
is healthy. From their elders in return the young
need discipline, and instruction in the old, abiding
values.
Am I a ‘Monday
Club reactionary’?
I am not a member of
the Monday Club or any similar group. Some might
think me reactionary, but this is because I fervently
believe that a new doctrine is not necessarily right
just because writers in the liberal press feel in
their bones, and altogether agree, that it is right.
This generation suffers from a peculiar form of
arrogance, which is that the truth is what liberal
intellectuals feel intuitively in 1970 is true.
The fact that sincere, intelligent people believed
in the recent past that quite different things were
true is dismissed or not even thought of. The eternal
verities are not to be discarded so easily. Courage,
unselfishness, sympathy, tolerance, truth and justice
remain what they always were - the basis of civilised
society.
Should the Tour
have gone on?
I was disappointed
when the tour was cancelled because I agree with
the Cricket Council’s view that cricket is
a wonderful improver of racial harmony and the South
Africans would have benefited from playing multi-racial
teams here. All cricketers know (and I am proud
to be a cricketer myself, even though one of the
rabbits) that this a game which really does build
the qualities that make character - courage, judgment
and the ability to mix. A man’s real nature
shows pretty quickly on the cricket field, and cricketers
are accustomed not to care about a player’s
social class or the colour of his skin. It’s
his skill as a cricketer and his qualities as a
man that count every time - and that’s why
cricket is important in improving race relations,
and why the coloured cricketers in England are bewildered
and unhappy at the recent intimidation they have
suffered. But this is something else that’s
irrelevant, because my case against Peter Hain does
not depend on whether or not it was right, in the
circumstances of May, 1970, to cancel the tour.
What is my case?
My case will be presented
to the court, and I mustn’t anticipate that
here. But I can say why I decided to bring it. There’s
only one point, and it’s quite simple. Agitators
must not be allowed, however good or bad their cause
may be, to stop the lawful activities of others.
I don’t care whether it is Peter Hain stopping
lawful cricket matches (and all the other innocent
activities associated with a sporting tour), or
a handful of extremists shouting down the Foreign
Secretary in the Oxford Union, or a gang of students
occupying the administrative buildings at Southampton
University, or - most heinous of all perhaps - Welsh
language militants bringing the work of the High
Court itself to a standstill. It is quite irrelevant
what the reason is. No cause can justify the lawless
disruption of a lawful activity. Freedom under the
law is the proud boast of the British Constitution.
The law, and nothing else, must determine what activities
are forbidden.
What is the answer?
Our young people must
be taught the meaning and importance of the Rule
of Law. If it is thought to be wrong to invite South
African cricketers to play in Britain, the answer
is to persuade Parliament to pass a law making it
illegal to do so. We are a democracy. We elect our
representatives by an elaborately fair process.
It is for them to decide whether to outlaw a particular
activity - after full consideration and debate.
Unless and until they do so it is a dangerous impertinence
for the Hains of this world to take the law into
their own hands. What a nerve they have - what colossal
cheek! Someone must, for the sake of us all, take
the initiative in checking the spread of such presumption.
That is why I am prosecuting Peter Hain.
The above is the text
of my 1970 leaflet, given in full. The precise explanation
given in it did not save me from misreporting. Before
going on to deal with that I should expand a little
on something I said in the leaflet, namely that
a new doctrine is not necessarily right just because
current liberals think it is, and that it may be
a mistake to dismiss a quite opposite thing that
sincere, intelligent people recently believed in.
The ensuing quarter century, with the rise of so-called
political correctness, has convinced me of the truth
of this. I am not alone. For example Martin Amis
criticised Andrew Motion’s biography of Philip
Larkin as a policeman-in-the-head kind of book in
which Larkin is dutifully rapped over the knuckles ‘every
time he oversteps current bien-pensant feeling
about all the sensitive topics’.
After a ten-day trial
at the Old Bailey the prosecution against Peter
Hain, brought in the name of my voluntary organisation Freedom
Under Law, was successful in securing a conviction
on one count. On the others the jury disagreed.
Hain’s supporters naturally sought to whitewash
his activities. Naturally I riposted.
Lord Avebury’s
statement (Letters, 31 August 1975) that the Hain
campaign was not illegal is untrue. Having been
actively involved in Mr Hain’s defence to
my prosecution, Lord Avebury must know that Mr Hain’s ‘acquittal’ on
which he relies, was a technical one. The jury did
not acquit Mr Hain. On three of the four counts
they could not agree and had to be discharged. On
the fourth they convicted. If the prosecution had
been a public one, Mr Hain would, as a matter of
course, have been retried. Having already spent £40,000
on the prosecution, I could not afford this and
so he escaped. Lord Avebury wants his statement
that ‘Mr Hain dealt a mighty blow against
apartheid’ to pass into folklore. In fact
what Mr Hain (and his supporters) dealt a mighty
blow against was the rule of law and the idea that
grievances should be dealt with by orderly democratic
procedures rather than mob violence.
On 24 July 1964 the
African Resistance Movement told the Johannesburg
Railway Police that a bomb had been planted in Johannesburg
Railway Station. This bomb later exploded, injuring
23 people. John Frederick Harris, a school teacher,
was charged with the offence, convicted and hanged.
At his cremation the young Peter Hain, whose family
had been friendly with Harris, stood up and recited
a passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 3: ‘A
time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break
down and a time to build up . . .’ Hain
obviously sympathised with Harris. He thought terrorism
could be justified by the motives of the terrorist.
In other words, he held the flawed philosophy that
the end justifies the means. This philosophy he
put into practice in stopping South African sporting
tours. His conviction of criminal conspiracy shows
the law disagreed.
In the passage mentioned
above Anthony Howard says that next time there is
a vacancy in the office of Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs the Prime Minister of our country
is likely to appoint Peter Hain to that high office. What
would that terrible betrayal say to the World about
the British Government’s sincerity in the
fight against terrorism? It must not happen.
8 January 2002.
------------------------------
The
Times, 8 January 2002.
The
Independent, 29 January 1990.
Philip
Skelsey, in a competition for ‘what everyone
thinks but nobody says’: The Spectator,
6/23 December 1995.
It
is told in Derek Humphry, The Cricket Conspiracy (National
Council for Civil Liberties, 1975).
The
leaflet is dated 27 May 1970.
The
Times, 8 March 1996.
Sunday
Times, 22 September 1975.
The
incident is reported in Gordon Winter, Inside Boss (Penguin
Books, 1981) at page 100.
Times 2, 8 January 2002.
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Also
see my blog FBBB94 'The truth about Peter Hain'
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