LONDON — The Labour government in the U.K. is looking to restrict the fundamental right of an accused person to be tried by a jury of their peers. This right is deeply in the interests of all working people. The government is also proposing to remove the automatic right of appeal.
Justice Secretary David Lammy reported the proposals to Parliament Dec. 2, seeking to cut in half the number of jury trials in England and Wales and replace them with court cases of just one judge.
The proposals limit the right to jury trials to crimes that would carry sentences of more than three years on conviction, and for many fraud cases. The new setup would also allow Magistrates’ courts, a lower tier in the judicial system, to take up some of the cases.
Lammy claims there is “no right” to be tried by a jury and has attempted to justify the attack by pointing to the backlog of 80,000 cases in the judicial system. He says that victims of crime are being “denied justice,” and that courts would operate 20% faster with the changes.
He says 60% of rape cases fail to make it to trial, with victims pulling out because of the long delays. In fact “the vast majority of rapes reported are abandoned long before a charge is brought, due to factors such as policing delays,” the Sunday Times pointed out.
If adopted, the proposals would also undermine freedom of speech. People facing prosecution under reactionary “hate-crime” laws would now be denied the right to trial by jury.
This could make a big difference. Last year Lucy Connolly, a child care worker in Northampton, and Jamie Michael, an ex-soldier in Wales, were prosecuted for “inciting racial hatred” following comments they made after the brutal murders of three young girls in Southport by Axel Rudakubana, a British boy of Rwandan descent. Under pressure Connolly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 31 months in prison. Michael opted for a jury trial and was acquitted.
A letter signed by Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch and 54 other Members of Parliament urged the government to scrap Lammy’s plan. They say he’s taking an “axe to jury trial because of an administrative failure to provide enough court sitting days.” Under the proposal serious crimes will be “decided not by 12 men and women drawn at random from the community but a single official of the state.”
Several Labour MPs have also signed a letter calling on the government to drop the proposal. “It is our belief that the public will not stand for the erosion of a fundamental right,” it said.
Some challenge the government’s claim the move would speed up trials. “No one imagines that this will reduce the backlog,” Geoffrey Rivlin, a former deputy High Court judge, told a conference for criminal barristers.
Some critics of the proposal point out jury trials are an ancient liberty won in the 13th century. They marked an important advance, replacing “trial by ordeal,” an often deadly physical punishment that if survived showed your innocence.
But for several centuries trial by a jury of your peers was available only to the feudal nobility and other upper layers of society. The broader extension of this right to the toiling majority took bloody fights over the long evolution of the class struggle in Britain, alongside other rights as capitalism began to emerge out of feudalism.
Institutions like the “Star Chamber,” where a single judge acted as the judicial arm of the monarch, existed from the 15th to 17th centuries, meting out brutal punishments. It was abolished in 1641 during the English Revolution.
It wasn’t until much later with the development of modern industry and the emergence of the working class as a political force that struggles to abolish property qualifications for the right to vote, and consequently for jury service, took place. Women didn’t sit on juries until the 1920s. Since the 1970s, Parliament has increasingly restricted jury trials, with more and more cases being reserved solely for a magistrate or judge.
In class-divided society, defense of jury trials and other rights is crucial for the working class. Dag Tirsén, the Communist League candidate for Enfield Council in London, condemned the government’s plans. “If implemented,” he told the Militant, “they would be a serious threat to the rights of workers, increasing the possibility of frame-ups as we fight to build unions and to act in politics in our own class interests.”