Misgivings About Justice In Britain

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30233, 11 September 1963, Page 15

Misgivings About Justice In Britain

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, September 10. Led by Labour and Liberal Party spokesmen an attack on the administration of justice under the present Government has been steadily mounting. The treatment of recent security cases and the operation of the Fugitive Offenders Act, particularly its application to Chief Enahoro, has been described as "profoundly unsatisfactory.” Political correspondents say criticism of the Government is rapidly gaining in strength. Now the Leader of the Opposition (Mr H. Wilson) has said he intends this week to consult Sir Frank Soskice, a former Attorney-General, on public aspects of the administration of the law. It is said Mr Wilson is perturbed aboutthe Government’s recent relations with the judiciary. The grounds on which Aloysius Gordon’s appeal succeeded have not yet been made public. Several Labour speakers have suggested the Ward case did not take its normal place in the queue and was brought on early.

Speaking at Cambridge. Miss Alice Bacon, Labour’s front-bench spokesman on home affairs, said she had received "scores of letters” from which it was clear many people had grave misgivings about the administration of justice. She instanced the trial of John Edgecombe in the absence of the Crown’s principal witness, Christine Keeler, uneasiness about the Gordon case and the way the Magistrate’s Courts Act was “misused” to keep Marilyn RiceDavies in Britain. Revisionists (N Z P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SHREWSBURY, Sept. 9. The name of Mr John Profumo, the former War Minister, is to remain on the foundation stone of the new Territorial Army headquarters in Shrewsbury, the local Territorial Army Association decided today. There were demands at the meeting for his name to be erased from the stone —at a cost of £lo—“in the light of subsequent events." Mr Profumo laid the stone in his official capacity last October.