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Written by Dr Madsen Pirie
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Monday, 30 June 2008 |
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The law used to recognize the right of individuals to protect themselves and their property from illegal transgression. People who found themselves facing assault or theft were entitled to use what the law called "reasonable force" to resist such infringement of their rights, and to secure the safety of their person and their property.
Recently the determination of the police to exercise a monopoly of violence, coupled with a determination by lawyers and judges to protect those accused, has systematically eroded the common law right of self defence. Those who have apprehended criminals in the act of theft or assault have found themselves arrested for false imprisonment, kidnapping, or assault.
Our right to protect ourselves is surrendered to an impartial authority more likely to exercise dispassionate judgement, provided that it does indeed safeguard our interests. If that authority fails to protect, however, then people have to protect themselves. In undermining that right, recent decisions have also undermined the rule of law and the right to life and property.
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You erroneously give the impression that the law has somehow changed when you say that "People.... WERE entitled to use what the law called "reasonable force"". The law hasn't changed and so they still are.
And what are these "recent decisions" you refer to? I haven't hard of any. Very few such cases end up in court and in even fewer cases does a jury convict. It's very rare indeed, for the simple reason that juries tend to be sympathetic to people acting in self defence in stressful situations and so it takes blatantly unreasonable violence before they consider it not to be "reasonable force".
I suspect that you are confused because nowadays the police have to openly refer such cases to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision to be made - this doesn't mean that the police think there should be a prosecution. In the old days when the police themselves decided on prosecutions, they would have made the decision internally and in most cases, no more would have been heard. Nowadays the referral is public, but there is no evidence I know of that the CPS is any more likely to launch a prosecution than were the police when they were responsible.
Incidentally, before you mention the Tony Martin case, you should ask yourself why he so blatantly lied about the circumstances in which he shot and killed an intruder if he believed he acted with "reasonable force".