|
|
|
|
You
are in the company of
Roger Warren Evans |
|
|
| These
pages carry one-off scripts, of speeches or articles, as the flotsam and
jetsam of daily life proliferates - these are not rationally ordered, but a
sense of order should emerge elsewhere...
|
|
|
pub0011 The Angel Declaration Address by Roger Warren Evans, of LIBERTY, Barrister-at-law, at the Drugs & Society Conference at Ashford, Kent on Friday 25 October 2002 I am here because I am angry. I am simply a private citizen, a lawyer with civil rights concerns. I do not represent any organisation, although I am a signatory of the Angel Declaration, committed to doing away with the whole apparatus of drugs prohibition. Ø I am angry at the moral chaos, evident throughout this Conference, bequeathed by my generation to those who follow.Ø I am angry to hear of the injustices to methadone patients, reported by Bill Nelles (Methadone Alliance) to this Conference.Ø I am angry at the treatment of Noelle Bush, the 25-year-old niece of George Dubya, who is today detained under a compulsory treatment order, and regularly punished by additional imprisonment for breaches of that order.Ø I am angry about Jonathan Henson, the young Swansea primary schoolteacher who six years ago was reported for growing two cannabis plants on his kitchen window-sill, never charged by the Police but reported to his School, sacked by the Education Authority, punished by the Department of Education & Science by the withdrawal of his Teaching certification, and who has languished demoralised ever since.Ø I am angry for Paul Dooner, the young producer/Director of the pro-cannabis video Green Britain, who has taken four months, and paid £1,400 to secure a Certificate from the British Board of Film Control, when it took just four days, without fee, to secure a Certificate in the Netherlands.Ø I am angry for the eight young soldiers who were this week cashiered from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment for failing a single random drug-test, their careers shattered by dishonourable discharge without any Court or other formal proceedings.Ø I am angry at the attempts last week by European diplomats to secure pan-European agreement on tougher anti-drugs sanctions, although happily blocked by the Dutch Ministers, at least for the time being.Ø I am angry at the weak arguments of the Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth, speaking to us this morning, in stubborn defence of full prohbition.Ø I am angry at the 643 MPs to whom I wrote personally advocating the Angel Declaration: proud of the 10 who signed, but angry at the imperviousness of the remaining 643.I am angry, because drugs “prohibition” is a massive global infringement of human rights, a subjugation, a violation of the human spirit. I am angry at the length of time which these wrongs have endured. In the UK, we have suffered this regime for over 80 years. Sweden has come recently to the table, and pursues a “tougher” prohibition line, as we have heard from Malou Lindholm; but Sweden still has to learn the appalling long-term consequences of this form of oppression - the Swedish legislation is not yet one generation old. For us, and for France and the other WW1 combatants, the nightmare started in 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson came over to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. He came committed to get his European allies to sign up to the prohibition of both alcohol and drugs. They rejected the prohibition of alcohol, but agreed to prohibit “narcotics”, which were at that time not a major European problem. My fellow-countryman Welshman David Lloyd George gave in. France and the UK enacted punitive legislation, in our case the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920. It was under that Act that Mick Jagger was prosecuted, in the Swinging Sixties. That was the Act I was called upon to administer, starting as a young Barrister in 1963. I am angry that this draconic and unwise regime has lasted 80 years, half of them during my own professional lifetime. I am angry that the wrong of drugs prohibition is not understood, because human society has been guilty of many wrongful prohibitions before. It must always be remembered that, in the course of human developments, the most awful wrongs have been committed by way of the criminal law. Adultery has been outlawed, as were sexual and social intercourse under apartheid; suicide was a criminal offence in the UK until relatively recently; criminality was wrongly visited upon homosexuality, up to the 1950s; prostitution is effectively prohibited and criminalised; heresy and witchcraft used to attract severe punishment – many awful “prohibition” mistakes have been made in the course of human history, and I am angry that the drugs prohibition continues. It remains an awful historical mistake. And I am angry that, with the more recent UN Conventions and treaty commitments, we have tied ourselves in to a web of restrictive international promises, a thicket of restrictions against which freedom must now be reasserted. But anger makes a bad adviser. The need is for the reformers to stay cool, and work to dismantle the State’s apparatus of oppression. It was in that spirit that a group of fifteen of us got together in Spring 2001, to pose the question “Can we demonstrate that there is a workable alternative, for the UK?”. Over a period of six months, we hammered out our answer. You can read our conclusion at www.angeldeclaration.com - it was adopted in September 2001, published in January 2002, and has stood since, entirely unamended. It now has over 500 international signatories, increasing at the rate of some 50 per month. My authority to come to Ashford today is based solely upon those signatures, nothing else. One reason why we made our move was the seeming weakness of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which came into force for English Courts with the Human Rights Act, on 1 October 2000. Article 8 gives the following guarantee -
And UK practice has in large part adjusted to this constraint. The UK prosecuting authorities have effectively abandoned any attempt to enforce Section 5 of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, penalising simple possession of small amounts of drugs for personal consumption. There are still multiple convictions, but they merely reflect pleas of Guilty. There is no trace of any prisoner actually held in any UK jail for a simple possession offence. Why is that? The best explanation is that the prosecuting authorities know (or at least fear) that Article 8 would constitute a successful defence to such a charge, leading to a disastrous “Declaration of Incompatibility” in the Court of Appeal. Prosecutions therefore focus exclusively on aggravated offences – for supplying drugs, drugs-trafficking, growing or the other production of drugs, permitting the use of premises for drugs consumption. To these charges there is, by common consent, no Article 8 defence. In Spring 2001, the time had come for a more decisive campaigning move – hence the Angel Declaration. The Declaration is carefully constructed and drafted, and should be read as a whole: this is not, however, the place to undertake a full exposition.
This would not be some kind of “libertarian free-for-all”, as it is sometimes portrayed: it would be a strictly-enforced alternative form of regulation, allowing users to purchase drugs only for personal and limited social consumption, in a retail context accompanied by therapeutic and medical advice. At www.angeldeclaration.com the Declaration stands open for signature, on-line. Over the coming years, the numbers will grow, and add authority to our views. We have now decided to move on, and prepare a new, alternative UN Convention – The Other UN Convention (in our case, “UN” simply means Utterly Normal…) – and I ask for your help.
End
|
|
|
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
|
New