Britain's ruling rich, their Spanish counterparts, and the U.S. rulers who supported Pinochet's regime are the greatest violators of human rights in the world. They have no moral right to sit in judgment, let alone try and punish Pinochet for his crimes; that task belongs solely to the working people of Chile. The decision puts London and Washington, disguised as champions of human rights, in a better position to win acceptance for the slaughter of thousands of workers and farmers in Iraq and advance their military aim of overturning the worker's state of Yugoslavia and reimposing capitalist rule there.
Trade unionists will note that one of the liberal judges who voted for this decision is the same Lord Nicholls who participated in the legal assault on the National Union of Miners during the 1984-85 miners strike.
Irish freedom fighters, among whom the slogan "British justice - no justice!" is rightly popular, will recognize the hypocrisy of London's efforts to pose as the defender of the families of thousands "disappeared" under Pinochet. They know the brutality meted out by the British state against the Irish, including frame-ups, torture, and cold-blooded murder.
Fighters for Black rights will see the duplicity of a judicial system which allows racist cops to act with impunity - harassing and killing Blacks and enabling the racist gang who murdered Stephen Lawrence to escape justice.
Whatever the exact outcome of this affair, after the months of legal wrangling and the tactical debates in ruling circles, this so-called "landmark" ruling opens the road to greater interference in the affairs of oppressed nations. Already Laurent Kabila, the current president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been targeted for prosecution by "human rights" groups in France in the wake of the Pinochet arrest.
The liberal forces pushing the prosecution of Pinochet explain that the November 25 ruling builds on the "principles" established by the Nuremberg trials of the defeated Nazi German leaders at the end of the Second World War. But as the Militant explained in October 1942, under the headline "Yes, Punish the War Criminals" the British imperialists fought the war not to destroy fascism but "to preserve their empire." The U.S. rulers fought it to extend theirs. The 1946 Nuremberg Trials were a fake. The victorious war criminals put the defeated war criminals in the dock so that the "democratic" imperialists could cover up their crimes, their responsibility for the slaughter.
Once a loyal servant of the "Godfathers" in Washington and their British allies, as Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro put it, Pinochet can now be thrown on the scrap heap to help the imperialists advance their war aims.
But it is the imperialist "Godfathers" who should go on trial. The growing struggles of working people today - such as the victorious electricians and striking catering workers in London and the striking miners in Illinois - will bring that prospect closer.