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Right to silence campaign

01 January 1994

The Police Federation, Bar Council and the Law Society, the police, barristers' and solicitors' professional bodies, have come out against the inroads into the right to silence proposed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. The response of the Police Federation is likely to be motivated by concern for the rights of members in police disciplinary hearings, the objections of the other bodies are founded on the principle of the presumption of innocence, which carries the corollary that no one should be forced to assist the state in proving a case against him or her.

Addressing a meeting of the Haldane Society in the House of Commons on 3 February, Tony Benn drew the context of a state founded on principles of conquest and empire, loyalty and patronage, whose citizenry had wrought astonishing gains against the overweening power of the monarch of which the presumption of innocence, embodied in the defendant's right to silence was one.

British Irish Human Rights Watch spokesperson Jane Winter described the history of the proposal to abolish the right (see Statewatch 3:5) and Belfast solicitor Barry McGory described cases decided under the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order.