30 Tuesday April 5 2022 | the timesComment
Rakes and rogues
I
have re-read Simon Raven’s Alms
For Oblivion novel sequence,
published in the 1960s. His portraits
of Britain’s politicians, journalists,
publishers and soldiers are viciously
compelling. I knew and liked the
author, who died in 2001, never
having lent him money or gone to
bed with him. A celebrated cricketer
and rake, Simon was deported from
my old school, Charterhouse, where
he was a contemporary of the later
Times editor William Rees-Mogg —
he fictionalised Mogg as the smooth,
clever, treacherous Somerset
Lloyd-James. One message of
Raven’s books is that Tory
politicians were little more
loveable and perhaps even
more corrupt then than now.Generation gap
C
ountry pub dinner with
Paul Greengrass,
creator of many
terrific movies. I
voiced irritation
about a recent biopic,
The Courier, portraying
the British businessman
Greville Wynne, jailed in
1960s Russia for collecting
nuclear missile data. It
creates a starring role for a
woman CIA chief, such as
did not then exist, just asanother movie, Munich: The Edge of
Wa r, invents a black member of
Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 staff. The
dreadful new ITV serial of The Ipcress
File transforms the sexy secretary of
Len Deighton’s masterpiece into a
gun-toting superwoman. What would
everybody say if, for instance, some
deranged film-maker cast a white star
in Porgy and Bess, or a bloke as
Florence Nightingale? Paul
responded patiently: everyone under
50 now inhabits a colour-blind,
gender-interchangeable universe. We
are not talking factual history, such as
I write for a living, but instead
entertainment for a new generation
that views the past through a
different prism. Think Bridgerton,
he said. I drove home willing
myself to acquiesce.Slaves to fashion
I
again hesitated,
however, after
encountering in
Florida a historian
friend. He is wrestling
with US publishers about
a new edition of a schools
series. They demand that
the word “slave” is
changed throughout to
“enslaved person”, and
reject his protest that
this will make for clunky
prose. They also want
him to find a synonymT
he Falklands campaign was
my last assignment as a war
correspondent. After 40
years, I am among many
British participants who
look back on the experience as the
greatest adventure of our lives.
Veterans of the North African
campaign during the Second World
War cherished similar fond
memories which — they told me
long afterwards — contrasted starkly
with their feelings about fighting in
1944-45 Europe.
The desert, like the Falklands, was
almost uninhabited. In France and
the Netherlands, however, soldiers
saw countless homes destroyed
which resembled British homes; old
people, women and children
suffering and dying, who might have
been their own families.
It is the same with today’s
Ukraine, wherein the only romance
derives from the heroism of its
defenders.Boycotting Hong Kong’s courts helps no one
Leaving politics aside, it’s in the interests of our former colony for UK judges to oversee cases
minister saying they risked being
“used as a fig leaf for an oppressive
regime”.
But the point of law in the case of
Leung Kwok-Hung had nothing to
do with China’s security crackdown.
It merely concerned the limits of
immunity for members of a
legislative assembly — it was a ruling
that any court in the UK or
elsewhere might have made.
Moreover, Leung Kwok-Hung’s
counsel was the eminent British
lawyer, Lord Pannick QC.
So do those arguing that it’s wrong
for British judges to be hearing
appeals in Hong Kong also maintain
that Pannick was similarly
legitimising Beijing by representing
Leung Kwok-Hung in his appeal?
Does anyone seriously think Leung
would have been anything but
desperate to engage one of our most
effective advocates to plead his case?
Despite the fact that he lost that
case, Pannick has argued strongly
that the British judges should
remain. “The Hong Kong judiciary is
doing all it can to maintain its
independence,” he said. Most of that
legal community were no friends of
Beijing. “They want to be supported
by lawyers and judges in this
country, not abandoned.”
Would the people of Hong Kong
really be better off without these
foreign judges? Britain chose to
believe worthless Chinese promises
when it surrendered Hong Kong to
Beijing. It required then that the
common law be upheld until 2047.
Those pressuring British judges to
stop upholding it wrap the
abandonment of a moral obligation
in humbug.shows the UK judges are sidelined
pawns of an oppressive legal system.
But areas of law other than national
security still need to be upheld. The
UK judges hear cases that raise legal
points of general public importance,
mostly concerning commercial law
or judicial review.
Hong Kong’s own judges are
overwhelmingly independent.
Indeed, in his own statement Reed
said: “The courts in Hong Kong
continue to be internationally
respected for their commitment to
the rule of law.”
Those courts hugely value the
support of the overseas judges. The
Hong Kong Bar Association and Law
Society recently pleaded with the
British government to allow the UK
judges to stay, while 15 lawyers —
along with a former director of public
prosecutions — have applauded the
decision of the nine judges to remain.
A case last month illustrates the
way these complexities are
misunderstood. Fernando Cheung, a
former member of the Hong Kong
legislative council (LegCo), was jailed
for contempt after chanting anti-
Beijing slogans in the chamber. He
claimed council members engaging
in non-violent protest had immunity
from prosecution.
In a separate case last September
another LegCo member, Leung
Kwok-Hung was accused of breaking
procedural rules in the chamber. Five
appeal court judges including Reed
issued a ruling which was then cited
in the Cheung case as a legal
precedent which served to weaken
Cheung’s claim to immunity. This
reignited calls for the UK judges to
resign, with one former Tory cabinetD
ecent people would surely
agree that repressive
regimes should be opposed
and not legitimised. But in
some circumstances might
such opposition amount to
grandstanding which has the effect of
abandoning the regime’s victims?
Two British judges, Lords Reed
and Hodge, who are president and
vice-president of the UK Supreme
Court, have resigned from Hong
Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in
protest at a law introduced by China
in 2020 that curtailed freedom of
speech and made it easier to punish
protesters in Hong Kong.
Five of the remaining British
judges on that court, Lords
Hoffmann, Sumption, Collins and
two former presidents of the UK
Supreme Court, Lords Phillips and
Neuberger, have decided to stay, as
have three judges from Australia and
one from Canada. The sixth British
judge, Lord Walker, has yet to decide.
The five British judges said they
were “entirely satisfied” with the
independence and integrity of the
court. It was more important than
ever, they said, to support Hong
Kong’s courts in “maintaining the
rule of law and reviewing the acts of
the executive”.
So, who is right? Lord Reed said
remaining in Hong Kong wouldappear to endorse an administration
which had abandoned political
freedom and freedom of expression.
That’s a powerful and important
point. But is it overwhelming?
In August last year, Reed said that
he and Hodge would stay on the
court with the support of the foreign
secretary and lord chancellor. What
changed? The answer is the attitude
of the British government, which
only recently decided to get tough
with Beijing.
While the five who have decided to
remain are retired judges and
therefore act independently of the
government, the two who have
resigned are still serving. Reed said
he had reached his decision “inagreement with the government”.
So have these two judges been put
under political pressure? As
Sumption wrote in The Times last
year: “Calls for the withdrawal of
British judges have nothing to do
with judicial independence or the
rule of law. In reality they are
demands that British judges should
participate in a political boycott
designed to put pressure on the
Chinese government to change its
position on democracy.”
The British judges in Hong Kong
don’t hear national security cases.
These are tried by High Court judges
approved for that purpose. British
judges are unlikely to encounter such
cases on appeal. Critics say that thisBritain chose to believe
worthless promises that
were made by China
for “the poor”, because the phrase is
allegedly hurtful to poor readers.Beach house arsenal
I
n an American community where I
was lecturing, we occupied the
guesthouse of hospitable
billionaires. Our host one afternoon
invited me to visit his study. Laid out
on a sofa was as formidable an array
of firearms as I have seen outside a
war zone, headed by a Thompson
submachine gun and two automatic
rifles. Steve explained proudly that he
keeps most of his arsenal elsewhere,
but maintains a few favourites in the
beach house “for self-defence”. I have
owned sporting guns all my life. But I
am getting old, and apprehensive
about what is happening to America.
I made politely enthusiastic noises,
but inwardly cringed.Enough vegetables
O
n Sunday Anne Heseltine held
an 89th birthday lunch for
Michael at their enchanting
Oxfordshire house, Thenford. I am
not ashamed of being a hero-
worshipper, not least because the
nearly-nonagenarian prodigy never
minds being teased. Nonetheless,
when I wrote here about how much
we all enjoyed the old joke about
Margaret Thatcher referring to her
cabinet as the vegetables, His
Lordship messaged ruefully: “Some of
us laughed less heartily than others.”Max Hastings Notebook
Some of us
remember
the Falklands
very fondly
We have a right to
know the names of
Partygate offenders
Sean O’Neill
P
artygate has been a national
sport for months: bumbling
Boris presiding over a
laddish office culture of
endless parties supplied by
suitcases of clinking bottles wheeled
in from the nearest Tesco.
There have been memes and gifs
and jokes galore but there has been
anger too: the crux of the scandal is
that the people who imposed
lockdowns, shut pubs and banned
parties then considered themselves
above the law. And it seems they will
stay if not exactly above the law —
under the radar.
Having prevaricated for months
about whether to bother
investigating the Downing Street
offences, the Metropolitan Police is
now quietly emailing the guilty,
cloaking this Whitehall farce in yet
another layer of secrecy.
The Met says that in not
identifying those given fixed-penalty
notices for Partygate it is following
the College of Policing’s “approved
professional practice for media
relations”.
This decision to keep the
information secret is not based on
law but on the police’s internal
guidance on dealing with the media.
There is a significant public interest
in overriding this guidance in the
Partygate cases. We have a right to
know who among our political
masters and senior civil servants
broke the draconian emergency
laws they decided to impose on the
rest of us.
The prime minister has apparently
said he will tell us if he receives a
fine but frankly it shouldn’t be left to
his discretion. There should be a
clear public statement from the
police if they decide to sanction him
for breaking his own laws.
If Whitehall’s head of ethics (who
knew they had a head of ethics in
there?) has broken the rules then
that fact should be disclosed in a
responsible, transparent manner and
not revealed through a Fleet Street
guessing game.
This country used to be proud of
the principle of open justice. It was
considered important that justice
was administered in a public space
where citizens could see, understand
and feel reassured that the system
worked. These fines for Downing
Street staff are just the latest
diminution of that principle. We
have had secret terror trials,
billionaires effectively buying
anonymity in our courts and, thanks
to a judge-made privacy law, it is
virtually illegal now for the press to
report the identity of someone under
criminal investigation.
This matters. The police and the
courts must operate under effective
public scrutiny. And those who make
the law should not be allowed to
escape with a slap on the wrist behind
closed doors when they break it.Sean O’Neill is a senior writerMelanie
Phillips@melanielatestmerset
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