2.5.2. The Old Bailey Conviction
of Peter Hain 1972
2.5.2.2. Why FB prosecuted Peter
Hain
2002.008 'The Old Bailey conviction
of Peter Hain' (unpublished)
The Old Bailey conviction of
Peter Hain
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’1.
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? 2
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’.3
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.4
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.
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’.6
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.7
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 . . .’8
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.8
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.
------------------------------
1The Times, 8 January 2002.
2The Independent, 29 January 1990. 3 Philip
Skelsey, in a competition for ‘what everyone thinks but
nobody says’: The Spectator, 6/23 December 1995. 4 It is
told in Derek Humphry, The Cricket Conspiracy (National Council
for Civil Liberties, 1975). 5 The leaflet
is dated 27 May 1970. 6The
Times, 8 March 1996. 7Sunday
Times, 22 September 1975. 8 The incident
is reported in Gordon Winter, Inside Boss (Penguin Books, 1981)
at page 100. Times 2, 8 January 2002.
