THE SHOCKING STATE OF THE SECRET COURTS IN BRITAIN - NORMAN SCARTH

From Norman Scarth 18 Nov. 2011:

To Frances Gibb & the Law Team at The Times:
In February 2008, four of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectors published a damning Report about Leeds Magistrates’ Court.   Chief Legal Director Mrs. H. Jane Gill was sacked.  (Anyone but a lawyer would have been sent to prison.)
SEEMS THAT IN SPITE OF THE REPORT & THE SACKING, THINGS HAVE GOT EVEN WORSE! 
That they should impose Secret Courts on anyone is bad enough.
That they should do so on the very man whose case in the European Court of Human Rights(Scarth v UK, 33745/96) brought a ruling (incorporated into the 1998 Human Rights Act) that ‘ALL hearings shall be in public – (other than in exceptional circumstances’) is corruption gone mad!
”ALL’ hearings includes hearings ‘In Chambers’, previously held in secret – & where all the skulduggery used to take place! 
In fact, it still does, because the law is contemptuously & blatantly flouted, never more so than in Leeds Magistrates’ Court on 17th November 2011 in Regina v Scarth.  
The fact that after the hearing had started (& after extra police had been called in!) , they did grudgingly allow in just five people meant it only became marginally less secret.  They claimed there were only five seats, which was a most blatant lie!  Two people were completely banned, one Community Reporter because she was wearing a T-shirt with the words, “CROOKED JUDGES & BENT COPPERS MUST BE STOPPED!”  One would have thought that all honest lawyers, judges & police would agree?  Seems not!   
You might like to email  Leeds Magistrates’ Court ( [email protected]  , [email protected]  , [email protected] )  & ask how many public & press seats seats there are in Court Number 5?    I cannot do so, as my emails to Bradford & Leeds Magistrates’ Court are blocked (as they are to the Ministry of ‘Justice’(???) & to ALL Bradford councillors).  
After being told I was free to go (the case having been adjourned)  I passed to the court clerk a one page document & said, “I Lay this Information before the Justices & ask that they cause Summonses to be issued”.  
(If I can be prosecuted on such a ridiculous charge, then I am entitled to prosecute those who have committed much more serious crime against me!)  They didn’t take the document from the clerk & said “We haven’t authority to do that.”  I told them “Yes you have”, & the clerk meekly told them that I was right.  Even so they refused to look at them, which I submit was in breach of their Judicial Oath, & could possibly be considered as ‘Misconduct in Public Office’.   They then told me that the document would be sent to the office, who would give me an appointment to come again & put it before a District Judge.  I protested that in big letters outside it said ‘MAGISTRATES’ COURT’ & it was improper that we should have to appear before a usurper, a paid servant of The State.   Apart from which, I went through that charade months ago, when District Judge Christopher Darnton had acted in total contempt of the law & his own Judicial Oath in refusing to issue Summons.   i asked for the names of the JPs (which we are entitled to know: see the Felixstowe Justices case).  The court clerk said, “I am entitled to refuse to give the names if I think you may use them for a mischievous purpose”.  She was quite right of course, the law does allow that.  She was also right in thinking I might use them for ‘mischevious purposes’: exposing corruption in the courts is VERY mischievous – from THEIR point of view!
Norman Scarth (Arctic Convoy Veteran).
During the commemorations of the 70th Anniversary of the first of those convoys it has been nauseating to see the hypocrisy of Press & TV expressing ‘The great Debt We Owe To All Those Brave Men.’   With only 200 of us left now, THIS is how the nation repays its debt to me!   
PS:  I don’t THINK any of the observers at Leeds Mags suffered quite as I did on 3rd May 2011 when I went as a member of the public to Wirral Magistrates’ Court.  Within five minutes of of stepping inside the door from the street  I found myself in handcuffs in a 2’3″ square cage in the back of a police van in a nearby police station yard, having been rushed through the reception area of the police station without stopping.  There I remained for almost 3 hours, engine running, driver in the seat (with his girl friend), but we didn’t go anywhere.   A mob of police then came to let me out: Sergeant Sam Parker dragged me out, threw me to the ground (I was 85 then) & said “The hearing is over so we are ‘de-arresting’ you now.”   Other officers involved were Inspector 6741 Barr, Constable 3369 Booth & Constable 8172 Le Poldevin.   Frank Field, MP for Birkenhead showed a little interest on being told, but he hasn’t done anything.  That the Quislings who run this Orwellian Police State are all so terrified of one little old man is the highest compliment they could pay me.       
Added Note:  It was in 1860 that the eminent Chief Justice Cockburn said, “The courts of England are open to all, in every sense of the words, & I trust they will always remain so”.  Lord Justice Lawrence (later to preside at Nuremberg) said much the same in the 20th century, as have other eminent jurists.   Things are very different in the 21st century! 

   NS