Justice cannot be served at trial unless Jack Straw holds his nerve on unmasking Jon Venables
Ken MacdonaldThe problem about concealment in public life is that it leads to suspicion. This is very easy to understand, and the solution is equally clear: we should keep secrecy about affairs of state to a vanishing minimum.
And this is as true in justice as it is in politics. Broadly, daylight cleanses the work of the courts and the judges as much as it exiles corruption from the routines of government. Lawyers in the past have frequently sanctified confidentiality, but sometimes in ways that were painfully self-serving. And while not everything that happens in court can be revealed, we have obviously been too quick in the past to doubt any strength in a right to know.
Yet like the right to speak freely, the right to knowledge can never be absolute. If it were, the principle would quickly become threatening and tyrannical. It would destroy all privacy and savage the personal in ways we can only begin to imagine. Which of us believes in a right for others to know everything about our own lives?
n.b. Ken Macdonald is a former Director of Public Prosecutions
The reason this is not being jumped on by those you'd expect to jump on it is that there are anomalies, not least Venables own conduct. It would be good to be a fly on the wall during Straw's "chat" with the family.
ReplyDeleteCan anything ever be so secret with the internet? I have written down a name and the new prison where he is held. I don't know if it it true but someone posted it on the internet.
ReplyDeleteAny person connected with knowledge can anonymously post if they do not agree with what is happening.