Trial by jury isn’t just a British legal and cultural tradition. It isn’t just a part of our legal system. It’s a safeguard against the tyranny of the state. To be judged by your peers is to be judged by the society of which you make up but one part. The people are meant to check the determination of the state to forebay its determination to prove its own worth, which all too often means people get the book thrown at them when all they truly deserve is a chapter. David Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, is seeking to abolish jury trials to a certain extent. However, the enthusiastic Fabianism that runs deep in this Labour government makes this measure all the more sinister.
The Fabian Society was born in 1884 in London by a group including such figures as George Bernard Shaw and Sydney Webb, who sought socialism through gradual democratic reform. Keir Starmer, the current prime minister of the United Kingdom, has been intellectually captured by the ideas of Shaw et al since the early pitter patters of his political beliefs. They argued that radical socialists who want to install socialism on the masses should work within mass workers’ parties, like Labour, to achieve the revolution they so desired. Writing about such radical ideas as participatory socialism, Shaw embraced this form of revolutionary socialism that sought to creep through the institutions silently, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, radicalizing these institutions to transform them beyond comprehension in double time.
Such was the revolution that New Labour introduced in 1997. Its thirteen years in power converted the British state into a strange monstrosity that saps the life out of British society, whether this be the civil service making vast, radical decisions without ministerial approval or the Bank of England becoming independent, which really meant rule by committee for monetary policy matters. The people are too slack, too whack, too inattentive to the proper functioning of society for Fabians. So, a figure like Starmer will obviously seek to rollback accountability and democracy, for the stunted cannot be allowed to bamboozle society with their wretched opinions.
His government’s propositions on jury trials reflect this deep Fabian ideological malaise that infests this government. The proposals, currently working their way through Parliament, aim to give judges or magistrates the power to make decisions regarding the guilt, or lack thereof, of people faced with sentences of less than three years. The public rhetoric from the government should reassure you that they are attempting to increase justice by cutting down on the immense backlogs that clog the British justice system, but I am always wary of Greeks even when they come bearing gifts.
The government’s own assessment says the impact on the backlogs would be negligible, with only 3% of criminal cases going to trial by jury, which undoubtedly raises suspicion for any critical thinker. If the government knows this, why even introduce the measure? It’s the obsession with expertise. There is a reason why Keir Starmer says he preferred the company of those in Davos over the London political elite. The London political elite is simply too full of obnoxious, blow hard amateurs for a man like Starmer, who feels most comfortable in the presence of “non- political experts.”
Poor old Jeremy Corbyn; a relic of Marxist ideas who posed absolutely zero threat because his conception of socialism, the variety imposed in Britain repeatedly after the Second World War, could be seen a mile away. He was chucked out of the leadership of the Labour Party and Starmer promised to be his heir. During the Corbyn years and ensuing leadership election, Starmer had deviated little from the party line. But once installed as leader, public promise after promise was abandoned in favor of a mild, bland, and deeply deceitful Fabian-style of socialist revolution. An emphasis was made to appear Socratic, as opposed to the aggressively clueless Tories. This is a deep-rooted instinct in the Fabian ideology, who believe that societal ills like a lack of housing, high unemployment, and high poverty are systemic and require coordinated solutions to resolve. Install experts to government, provide them with “independence,” and they will allocate resources properly as compared to the wild west market.
This proposal with jury trials is but a microcosm of this ideology. Judges and magistrates are experts in their field; they spend years, sometimes decades, training to know the law inside and out. The Fabian believes that these experts are better suited for deciding guilt than a random sample of twelve people plucked from the street. This ideology is endemic in this government, with multiple new quangos added to an ever-growing colossus of a quangocracy that transfers power from elected government officials to “expert” civil servants, ones who gleefully sign their contracts knowing it is very difficult to rip them up.
The Fabians from the early 1900s adopted as their emblem the wolf in sheep’s clothing. This wasn’t a joke; it was emblematic of their entire ideology, as shown by the earliest Fabian material:
“For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently…but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”
The perfect time to strike could not be more obvious for Fabian socialists. Battle for political power under the guise of moderation, expertise, and stability; appear boring, bland, and dull like an unassuming and unthreatening librarian; who not one person would suspect; once you are crowned king of the hill, strike hard and deep, scarring your enemy. This is exactly what Tony Blair’s government did and what the Starmer government is currently doing.
Keir Starmer appears as a lethargic bureaucrat who seeks to tinker with the edges of the system, compared to a Corbyn-style socialist who openly mocks current institutions and publicly threatens their downfall. Such is the strategy of Fabian gradualism. It would be a most opportunistic and safe wager to say that the overwhelming majority of Brits do not understand the constitutional revolution thrusted upon British society by the Blair government. Starmer’s government is undertaking the Fabian revolution 2.0 with this attack on jury trials, one part of a wider project to install the permanent expert class to run the permanent state.
