Time for David to slay Goliath again

Daily Express
Frederick Forsyth
Friday 22nd September 06

Whether the biblical tale of tiny David taking on the massive Goliath at his own game and beating him is only a myth, the British have long had a soft spot for the Davids of this world - the underdogs who take on the mighty Establishment with all its power and increasingly arbitary and ruthless privileges.

Such a man is pensioner Robin de Crittenden, who has been syudying the actual text of the fundamental pillar of our constitution, the Bill of Rights of 1689. So far as I know, no one even dares deny the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights - the unrepealed guarantor of all our basic freedoms - but no one ever reads it.

Specifically, Mr de Crittenden claims it absolutely forbids the punishment of a British citizen who has refused to plead guilty until and unless he has been found guilty by a court of law. It sounds simple but if true the implications are huge.

His particular issue is a parking fine, a small enough matter but the point is this: if what he claims is true, then on-the-spot fines are not lawful, whether for a parking infraction or for selling a T-shirt with the logo "B****cks to Blair" (stallholder fined £80 by a single police constable under the Public Order Act).

In Mr de Crittenden's case, the parking arbitration tribunal got worried enough to cancel his fine. But he proceeded anyway on the grounds that an administrative tribunal is not a court of law and had no right to fine him or pardon him. At the High Court he was rebuffed (totally predictable) by Mr Justice Collins, so he is trying to raise the funds to go to Appeal Court.

The thing is: our increasingly arrogant Establishment in the form of central government, local government, bossy PCs with no training in the law and unelected quangos make millions a year by slapping down on-the-spot fines - whether the victim pleads guilty or not.

But suppose Collins is wrong and the lone pensioner right? Suppose the Bill of Rights really forbids punishment (and a fine is punishment) without an admission of guilt or a trial? The money-grubbers in office over us would be up a creek.

What about all those automatic parking/speeding fines? What about the massive fines imposed on small businessmen by super-quangos for non-compliance with obscure rules that they simply made up? All illegal? Possibly.

Of course, there are many who now say the judiciary is so bloated with its power that it already has sold the pass and will always find for the Establishment against the little man; that the judges will find for the foreign terrorist under the Human Rights Act but deny the terms of the Bill of Rights when it is invoked by a Britisher.

What a dreadful thing to say. But is it true? Will the Court of Appeal crush David like a Goliath?