Lift the Ban: plea hearing

This is the third of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. As a starting point, my motivation, you can see where I am coming from in a book review that I wrote for Sofia magazine The Notion that the Polite, Western Liberal Ever Stood for Anything At All. Previous posts: DoJ#1 and DoJ#2

Note: I shall be coming back to edit this from time to time. 

My first hearing, the plea hearing when I entered my Not Guilty plea, was at Westminster Magistrate's Court on 24th November.  There is a degree of 'batch processing' going on because of the huge numbers of defendants that the courts will have to get through. Although they've so far only charged a relatively small proportion of those arrested they are claiming that everyone will eventually be charged, and as I write this there have been more than 2000 arrests so even accounting for the many re-arrests they are going to charging more than 1000. The court therefore had a group of five defendants in the dock at one time, and on 24th November there were five sessions, so 25 people in the day. This was the first time I'd ever been inside a law court of any sort, but my wife, Joy, used to be a children's social worker and had been to family courts in connection with Adoption Orders, so was able to tell be a bit about what to expect (although the cases that Joy was involved in, and her role in it, was very different). But also the support both from the DoJ people and my fellow defendents was excellent. A few defendents were entitled to legal aid and they are represented by lawyers from HJA Solicitors, who are working with DoJ. The rest of us, including me, are for the moment 'self-representing'. 

Once again, I found everyone friendly enough! Before I went into court I was given my 'Evidence Bundle' (that really is what they call it!) by the prosecution, which contained the basic facts of what they held against me. The main thing in it was the statement by my arresting officer. I was keen to see this, because when I'd been telling people how friendly my young arresting officer had been and that I'd had some conversations with him, I was warned that that may have been a mistake: even if he was friendly he might come under pressure from his superiors/colleague to malign me. I had also heard of many cases in which the bundle was full of basic errors - like containing a photograph of the wrong person! None of that was the case for me. My judgement of my arresting officer was right and his account was accurate and fair, and there was a photo of me with my sign (which you can see in the first of these accounts).

When it came to my turn to enter my plea, the judge wanted me simply to say 'guilty' or 'not guilty' but, like many of my fellow defendents, this was when I made a statement:

I am 67 years old and have never been arrested before. But my country has been complicit in war crimes, including the slaughter of more than 20 thousand children, some of them buried alive in the rubble. And not only that, the government is trying to suppress opposition to the genocide. I cannot stay silent. I need to act according to my conscience, and so I plead not guilty.

 My trial date is 1st July.