The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 09/03/13
Justice Delayed - But Some Justice All The Same
Alfie Meadows was a student who took part in demonstrations in London in December 2010 against the Régime's slash-and-burn policies on higher education; policies which were deliberately intended to close off the option of such an education to anyone who didn't come from a wealthy family.
After violent tactics were deployed by our dear old friends the Metropolitan Police (or, to give them the more accurate title bestowed upon them by the esteemed Philip Challinor, the Metropolitan Firearms And Headbangers' Club), there was a spirited response from the protestors.
During this, Alfie Meadows was struck on the head - most probably by a police baton - and was seriously injured. So much so that he required emergency brain surgery to save his life.
None of this stopped either the Met or their chums in the Clown Persecution Service from charging Meadows with 'violent disorder', that charge of choice for state authorities desperate to make it appear that they are in control of events by deliberately destroying the lives and prospects of anyone of whom they wish to 'make an example', or to 'send a message', as a conviction can be secured on the basis of a very low and utterly subjective threshold of evidence, and such a conviction carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. It was the same charge used to convict Frank Fernie, Charlie Gilmour and Edward Woollard amongst others.
The initial trial took place in April 2012, a delay of some sixteen months after the event. Three of the defendants were acquitted on the 'violent disorder' charge (although one was convicted of arson; I can find no media reports of the sentence he was later given), but the jury failed to reach a verdict in the case of Meadows and Zak King. Not that such an inconvenience deterred the CPS of course, and a retrial was ordered.
This duly commenced last autumn, but came to a halt when the presiding judge fell ill. Nothing loth, the re-retrial duly commenced a couple of weeks ago.
This long-running farce only came to an end yesterday, when a jury at Woolwich unanimously acquitted both Meadows and King. This did not, of course, stop the judge - one Douglas Marks Moore - from talking through his wig as he released them. Obviously somewhat annoyed at having been denied the opportunity to show how 'firm' he was, he couldn't withhold himself from saying that Meadows' and King's behaviour was "on the edge of violent disorder".
Look, you footling fart, they were acquitted! Got that? It means they didn't do it (in case you weren't clear on the point, yeronner), so what you think their behaviour amounted to is neither here or there and you should have stifled the impulse to bloviate in your impotence.
So, after his life having first been put in mortal peril, and then put effectively on hold for a further two years, what now for Alfie Meadows? Well, the investigation into how he sustained his injuries was - logically enough - put on hold for the whole time that this rigmarole was being played out. The 'Independent' Police Complaints Commission may now have to clamber off its stool again and actually, you know, investigate.
Not that one has any real illusions as to the outcome, of course; we have been here too many times of late to have any confidence in an investigation carried out by police on police at the behest of a supposedly impartial body which has shown its true 'embedded' nature so often. No doubt too long a period of time will have elapsed for the officers involved to have any clear recollection of the events; and the fact that the police actually tried to prevent Meadows from getting proper medical treatment in the first place (which would have meant that he would have died within a few hours, and the police - as with de Menezes and Tomlinson - would once again have been granted the privilege traditionally accorded only to the medical profession, viz. that of being able to bury their errors) will no doubt be glossed over.
In the unlikely event of the Met being found in any way culpable, rest assured that the 'I'PCC will indulge in its customary hand-wringing about how "mistakes were made" but "lessons have been learned". And the actual culprit will - like Harwood, Smellie and all the other Headbangers before him - get clean away with a full pension and possibly even a promotion.
I mention this whole story now not just to indicate that the thuggishness of the police, the insolence of the prosecutors and the politicised nature of the Englishnwelsh judiciary are phenomena which have long tails for their victims, but also because you might not have known about it otherwise. The same media which pored lovingly over the details of the convictions of Woollard and Gilmour (especially the latter, as his step-dad is famous) scarcely reported the original trial (acquitted students are, it seems, no more newsworthy than dead Belgians), and have not covered the re-retrial at all. The Telegraph? No. The Alleged Independent? Nyet. The Times? Who cares? Only the Guardian seems to have mentioned the outcome, and that tucked away in its Education section. So I just thought I should pass on a small piece of rare good news in the war on dissent.
