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Free Life Commentary
Issue Number 112
Friday, 19 September 2003
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc112.htm
This article and many replies to it will be published in the next issue of
Free Life Magazine:
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/freelife/
A photo gallery of this event is available at
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/images/index.htm
An Afternoon with Tony Martin
By Sean Gabb
Since time immemorial, on the third Thursday in September, Thame in
Oxfordshire has hosted what is now the largest agricultural fair in the
country. From all over England people come to buy and sell things and to
see one another. There are tractor displays, and cows, and horses, and
stalls selling clothing and food and drink, and vast car parks for the
thousands of people who attend.
I was there yesterday at the invitation of the BBC. Bill Heine, a populist
libertarian from America, has a show with Radio Oxford, and is in the
habit of getting me on air every week or so for five minutes at a time.
Yesterday, he wanted me not on the end of a telephone, but in person.
Without offering the usual fee that I charge for leaving home, he wanted
me to drive for a round trip of 300 miles to spend an hour live on air
discussing rural crime and the right to self defence. For that distance
and that time, regardless of fees, I would normally have refused. However,
this was different. One of the other guests was to be Tony Martin.
He is the farmer who shot two thieves in August 1999, killing one and
wounding the other. He was put on trial for murder and convicted. On
appeal, his conviction was changed to manslaughter, and he was eventually
released on Friday the 8th August this year, having spent more than three
years in prison. He could have been released last year, but the
authorities argued at the parole hearings that his lack of repentance made
him a continuing danger to any thieves who might try to break into his
home. He is presently facing a tort action for damages from the thief he
neglected to kill - the man is claiming for loss of earnings and for
reduced sexual function. His legal fees are being charged to the tax payers.
This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with
incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with
modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the
case. Let alone driving - I might have walked the entire circuit of the
M25 to be with him. So off I went.
The radio show was by design an anarchic affair. Bill Heine took us off
the stage that had been set up for the broadcast, and had us mingle with
the large crowd that stood around. He darted here and there with his
microphone, every so often taking calls from the listeners. His guests
were Tony Martin, I, and a Bill Bradshaw, who used to be the Vice Chairman
of the Thames Valley Police Authority. I think he had been given a peerage
by Tony Blair - which is, of course, to be regarded as null and void; and
so I will call him Mr Bradshaw. He sprayed us with the usual junk
statistics - burglary is unusual and diminishing; we are likely on average
to be attacked in our homes once every 285 years; and so on and so forth.
Al I can say in his favour is that he showed courage in turning up to a
debate in which he could not possibly get the sympathy of his audience. I
have done that, and it can be unnerving - even when you believe what you
are saying; and I cannot believe he was entirely persuaded by the truth of
some of his claims.
I do not intend to fill this article with an account of my own doings. In
any event, I am to be sent a recording of the broadcast, and I will make
this available on my website for anyone who wants to listen. However, I do
need to explain how I came to be seen as a minor hero at the fair, and how
I was able to speak so freely with people. I made my own introductory
statement roughly as follows:
There is in any society an implied contract between state and citizen.
We give up part of our right to self defence - only part, I emphasise - and
all our right to act as judge in our own causes. We resign these matters
to the state and obey its laws. In exchange, it maintains order more
efficiently and more justly than we could ourselves. In modern England,
the state has broken this contract. If it had simply given up on
maintaining order, that would be bad enough - but we could then at least
shift for ourselves. No, the state in this country has varied the terms of
the contract. It will not protect us, but it will not let us protect
ourselves. If we ignore this command, we can expect to be punished at
least as severely as the criminals who attack us. That is what the Tony
Martin case is all about. This is not just a matter for the country. The
towns have it just as bad, if not worse. If you are a victim of crime
anywhere in this country, you are in it alone and undefended. Call for the
Police, call for a home delivery pizza - see which arrives first.
Mr Bradshaw insisted I was talking nonsense - that the response times for
burglary was excellent; and that the law on self defence was "plain" and
had not changed in "hundreds of years". I poured scorn on this:
The modern law says we may use "proportionate force" to defend
ourselves. What does this mean in practice? It means this: You wake at
3:00am.
Someone is moving about downstairs. You must go down and ask - "Excuse me,
but have you come to tie me and my wife up and torture us slowly to death?
Or are you here just to lift some cash and the car keys? If the former, I
will consider what force to use that will be proportional. If the latter,
I will retire upstairs and wait for the police. What nonsense! Anyone who
is unlawfully in your home should be regarded as taking his life into his
hands. If you kill him, that is his tough luck.
That got a big round of applause, and - as said - made me a hero for the
day in Thame.
After the broadcast, I fell into conversation with Mr Martin. I was not
sure what to expect. His coverage in the media has been almost wildly
hostile. The usual picture of him shown is of a man with staring eyes and
a morose look about his mouth and lower face. He is described as a "loner"
with incoherent and nasty opinions about the world. This can all be
discounted as the smears of a controlled media. The man I met yesterday -
and I have photographs which I will publish to show it - was a cheerful,
rather stolid farmer, though with an unusual fluency of speech. Far from
avoiding company, he went into the crowd and mingled as if he had been
doing outside broadcasts all his career. At least once, he carried on a
three way conversation with someone in the crowd and with a telephone
caller.
What most impressed me most, however, was his modesty. I come across many
people who have been plucked from obscurity to face some public injustice
inflicted by the authorities. Quite often, they come to regard themselves
as people of immense importance, and take on airs and graces that sit ill
on them. Now, Mr Martin has suffered more injustice than anyone I have
ever met. He was treated as a common criminal and spent years in prison
for doing what in any sensible country would be regarded as a public
service. One of his dogs died while he was inside. His remaining dog - a
lovely black Rottweiler called Otto - had not at first recognised him
after a three years absence. He is a continuing victim of persecution
because of that law suit, and may lose still more before it has ended. To
suffer all this would send many people mad. Mr Martin, though, behaved
throughout yesterday's appearance with quiet good humour. People came up
to him in a continual stream, to shake his hand and give him their thanks
and best wishes. He smiled. He gave as well as accepted sympathy. He had a
kind word for everyone. I may have been a minor hero, but he was the main
attraction. And it did not turn his head. I have met half mad loners. This
was not one of them. I thought of John Hampden. By an odd coincidence, I
later read that he had gone to school in Thame. So did John Wilkes.
We spoke for about an hour. Again, it was a chaotic affair, interrupted by
other people and an interview he did with a rival broadcaster. We shook
hands and said goodbye three times before we did part. We spoke about the
shootings at his farm in 1999. He said that, after so much discussion of
what happened and what he was supposed to have thought, he could no longer
recall what had really happened. He said he was angry about his treatment
by the Police. In particular, they had made much of the fact that he was
fully clothed when the thieves broke into his home. They used that as
evidence of intent to use violence. "If I was sleeping in my clothes" he
asked, "what business was that of anyone? Surely what I do at home is my
business alone. Ask any farmer if, after a hard day's work, he always
bothers to get changed for bed.".
I asked if he was worried about further attacks. He showed me his mobile
telephone. It had a red button on the top. "If I press this" he said, "a
police helicopter will be overhead in five minutes. These people do not
want still more bad publicity. But" - he smiled - "I don't know what good
a police helicopter can do me after five minutes. A lot can be done in
that time". Of course, he no longer has a shotgun licence. He reminded me
of the motorcycling injury from his younger days that left him with a
propensity to deep vein thrombosis. Had those thieves in 1999 taken him by
surprise, they would have tied him up. That might have finished him there
and then. Next time, without effective means of self defence, he might not
be so lucky.
His opinions can be described as old-fashioned Tory. I can understand why
these are so shocking to the media and political classes. But I heard
nothing yesterday that any reasonable person could have found
objectionable. "Democracy is dead in this country" he told me
emphatically. "It was good while it lasted, but it's now gone. The
Government doesn't care about ordinary people. The Police treat us with
contempt. The way things are going, there will one day be a revolution in
this country. Then, we shall need a benign dictatorship. I don't mean this
present lot will have more power. I mean a benign dictatorship that will
give ordinary people back their rights." Nothing eccentric there, I think,
regardless of whether I agree with it. We exchanged addresses and parted -
he back to his farming, I to look around the fair. Bill Heine had passed
on to a debate about tractors that drive very slowly down country lanes.
The debate was heated, but did not touch me.
Over by the Countryside Alliance stall, I fell into conversation with an
old woman. She was 87, and had lost her husband and both brothers in the
War. One of her sons was settled in America with his family. But another
had a farm in Oxfordshire. He had been threatened repeatedly by intruders.
He had lost crops and machinery to them. The Police had told him they were
unable to help, but had warned him not to "take the law into his own
hands". She was safe in her own home. She had good neighbours who kept an
eye on her. But she looked about her with quiet despair. "I have been
coming to this fair and to others like it all my life" she said. "I used
to think it would go on forever - always changing with the times, but
continuing generation after generation. It will see me out, I suppose. But
I don't believe it will go on much after that. You should think yourself
lucky you have seen it while you can. There will be nothing for your
children. They will have neither country nor freedom. Sometimes nowadays,
I almost regret I survived the bombing."
I tried to assure her that even this Government could not last much
longer, and that the forces of reaction were swelling in both numbers and
conviction. But her own conviction had been too much for me. Perhaps this
is the approaching end. All nations die eventually. Why should ours be
different? If the present collapse can be dated to the appointment of Tony
Blair as Prime Minister, it was not without advance warning. It was
preceded by a long corrosion of values and of the institutes that embodied
them. Mr Blair's Government did not take power by any coup. It was elected
and re-elected by regular process. We retain a freedom of speech and
constitutional safeguards that would be formidable in any nation still
inclined to make use of them. Nothing has been done to us yet that we
could not have stopped had we only the will as a nation to resist. For
doing hardly worse, Charles I was put to death by a revolutionary
tribunal. His son James II was run out of the country for doing far less
overall. We live in a country where the majority are inclined to grumble,
but are more interested in voting people out of the Big Brother house than
in getting rid of the cast of traitors and buffoons who run our lives. My
words of assurance were hollow, and we both knew it.
Still, I did see one of the last English heroes yesterday, and I did see a
little fragment of the old England. My thanks to bill Heine - and, oddly
enough, even to the BBC that made it possible.
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