West End Extra - Letters to the Editor: It’s goodnight to having a good look at court cases

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 25 January 2008

It’s goodnight to having a good look at court cases

• LAST week I watched the film Goodnight and Good Luck about the challenge to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his fear-mongers in the US in the 1950s.
One of the main criticisms of the senator’s actions was the way he and his colleagues attacked witnesses and accused them of their communist sympathies, without giving those witnesses a chance either to know the evidence against them, or to challenge that evidence at a similarly high-profile hearing.
The recent decision by the judge at the Old Bailey to exclude the public and the press from part of the murder trial of Wang Yam (who is accused of killing Allan Chappelow at his Hampstead home) is an unprecedented application of the law of public interest immunity certificates to a murder trial.
Geoffrey Robertson QC says he is likely to appeal the decision. Although the defendant and his representatives will know the evidence, the public will not.
Public authorities are becoming increasingly preoccupied with ideas of privacy and protection.
New laws passed by the Labour government have led to unparalleled infringements of personal liberty.
For example, Maya Evans, convicted under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, for reading out the names of those killed in Iraq in Parliament Square.
And Walter Wolfgang was threatened with prosecution under the Terrorism Act and thrown out of the Labour Party conference for shouting “nonsense” at Jack Straw during a debate on Iraq.
We are told that such measures make us safer.
What makes me feel safe is a free and open society, where evidence against an accused is heard in public, and where the government does not hide behind legislation aimed at terrorists to stop those who disagree with it from expressing their views.
It is also very difficult to trust this government’s claims about the security of our personal data when every week there is a new example of them being lost.
Jo Shaw
Liberal Democrat
Parliamentary Spokesperson
Holborn and St Pancras

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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