19131913
People :
Author : Guy Aldred
Text :
“In the first place, I wish to plead ‘Not Guilty" to all counts in this indictment. In the second place, I desire, if I may, to point out, so far as the evidence already adduced is concerned, and also the opening remarks for the Treasury, that the prosecution is one of malice, conspiracy, and calculated misdirection; and I object to an immediate committal to the sessions on the ground that such committal would be one of indecent haste, likely to make for a non-securement of justice. So far as the question of malice and conspiracy is concerned, I will pass that, but for the moment, to return to it immediately. So far as the question of calculated misdirection is concerned, I will direct the Court’s attention to what Mr. Bodkin, for the Treasury described as the accepted definition of sedition. That definition reads as follows:—'Sedition is the publication verbally or in a document of any matter intended t6, or calculated to bring into hatred or contempt or excite dissatisfaction against the person of His Majesty, the Government, or the Constitution of the Kingdom, or the administration of justice, or to excite His Majesty's subjects to attempt, otherwise than by lawful means, to alter any matter that was by law established, or to raise discontent among His Majesty's subjects, or to promote feelings of ill—will or hostility among different classes.’ Like so many other definitions of sedition, or, for that matter, of any subject, which seem at first to be thorough and correct, when submitted to a little analysis, this definition is seen to be particularly void of meaning, and to be one that is likely not only to lead to the apprehension of any person who is known as an anarchist, but for that matter, also to any person who ventured to justify the decapitation of King Charles I. Were it to be defined as an offense against His Majesty's person only, it might lead to an entire abrogation of the present constitution, inasmuch as that constitution is the outcome of the middle-class uprising of Cromwell against absolute monarchism, which resulted in the setting up of the Revolution dynasty of William and Mary. In so far, therefore, as this definition described sedition as being an endeavor calculated to bring into contempt, etc., it may lead to political embarrassment and misapprehension on the part of the loyal and faithful subjects of the realm, since, should the King desire—which I don't for a moment suggest—to usurp the functions of the Commons, sedition would be the condition in which both the King's supporters and the supporters of the Commons would find themselves, according to the point of the view. For the rest, I do not think."
Mr. Curtis Bennett, the magistrate, who frequently interposed during the speech for the defense, now said: “You must try to put it rather short. This is really showing no defense. I cannot allow you to go on for ever in this strain. What is your defense to this charge?" The magistrate followed up this remark by moving from his seat to exchange some remarks with Mr. Bodkin. The defendant waited calmly throughout this interruption, and when the magistrate had resumed his seat, after laughing and chatting with Bodkin, he proceeded to resume the thread of his discourse as though no interruption had taken place:
“that anything is likely to create such disaffection as the sense of the non-sacredness of one's private letters. Now, in this case, while it has been admitted by the police that my character is quite good, and that I am upright, the authorities have caused to be sent to me certain private letters which afterwards formed the basis of the prosecution. This, I suggest, is more likely to cause serious incitement to anti-constitutional methods by people who do not view things m the same philosophic way as myself than any activity of mine. Were the individuals who did this not agents for the police, and was their action aimed at the overthrow of some established authority, it would, legally as well as morally, be described as a conspiracy. The fact that I am only an ordinary subject of these realms should secure to me the same justice as if I was an established authority. If this be so, the fact that I am a victim of this conspiracy does not make the incitement."
The magistrate again intervened by saving this was not to the point, the prisoner replying: “By thus dealing with bus definition and the question of “conspiracy, I shall get directly to the point of the charge." This comment the magistrate overruled, by saying that the defendant was willfully wandering from the point of the charge. The latter now somewhat tartly replied: “Well, if I am beating about the bush, you have only yourself to blame for allowing Mr. Bodkin to lose himself and the court in the woods. I am only following him." On the magistrate again interposing, the accused, amid some “hear, hears" from the well of the court, said: “Very well, I have secured my object. In that case, I reserve my defense." He was then committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court, bail being allowed in £100 himself and two sureties in £50 each, or one in £100.
The sureties were not forthcoming until Friday, September 3rd, when the defendant was released from Brixton Jail, where he had spent the interval.
The case came on for trial at the Central Criminal Court on Friday, September 10th, before Mr. Justice Coleridge. Two days prior to this, in charging the Grand Jury to bring in a true bill against the accused, the Recorder of London, Sir Forrest Fulton stated that both Krishnavarma and the defendant had been guilty of writing and publishing "a great deal of dangerous and pestilential matter."
When the trial came on before Mr. Justice Coleridge, the prosecution was represented by Sir William Robson (the Attorney-General), his Junior Counsel (A. H. Bodkin), and an array of other counsel. The accused here, as at the Bow Street Police Court, conducted his own defense
In reporting the case at the time, the Daily Express stated that he was “boyish and defiant throughout," that he followed the case with keen interest, and “delivered a Hyde Park oration from the dock." The Globe stated that he was perfectly calm and self—possessed, but defiant. The entire capitalist Press commented on his youthful appearance.
In opening the case for the prosecution the Attorney-General was careful not to repeat his junior counselors definition of sedition which formed so prominent a portion of the case for the prosecution before the Bow Street magistrate. This omission was quite noticeable. His speech otherwise proceeded along much the same lines as those along which Bodkin's police court effort had developed. He stated that the defendant wrote offering help and sympathy to a man who was avowedly defending murder of the worst kind, and who had brought down upon himself the reprobation of all decent persons in every civilized community. It might be said that Krishnavarma and the defendant—as the men who had advanced and expounded such a creed were not only responsible for the death of the victim who happened to be slain by Dhingra, but also for the death of the murderer whose life was taken in obedience to the necessary law.
Attorney-General then proceeded to cite quotations from the defendant’s contributions to the columns of the Indian Sociologist. Defendant had contributed a column of Passing Reflections above the initials “G. A. A.," and seven columns of closely-printed matter, headed “Sedition,” under his full name. In the passages thus quoted, defendant declared the existence of the Government to be “a conspiracy against the liberty of the people," or, in other words, “a matter of high treason.” He declared that “Prosecution for sedition was anti-constitutional"; stated that, “according to all the laws of jurisprudence, India, in its relations with England, was in a state of nature avowed “that the British Government glories in its association with the Czar, the cowardly murderer of many, whilst executing Dhingra, the political assassin of one"; eulogized Krishnavarma as being “a modern incarnation of the much-abused Marat," possessed, as such, of “the same political insight, same uncompromising proclivities and thoroughness"; but confessed that, in his opinion, the workers had nothing to gam as an International oppressed class from identifying themselves with the cause of Indian Nationalism. He remarked, however, that it was the duty of the English military rank and file to refuse to bear arms equally against the Indians, the Egyptians, and the class from which they (the military) were recruited at home. The defendant also wrote:—
“The question at issue is not the views of any particular person. It is the matter of the unlicensed liberty of speech and writing. If we would not be hanged separately by police repression we must hang together in opposition to political tyranny."“Without the assistance of the British workers the tyrants who exploit them could not extend their dominions beyond the seas."
"Beccana has denounced as barbarous the formal pageantry attendant on the public murder of individuals by Governments. He sees in these cruel formalities of justice a cloak to tyranny, a secret language, a solemn veil, intending to conceal the sword by which we are sacrificed to the insatiable idol of despotism. In the execution of Dhingra that cloak will be publicly worn, that secret language spoken, that solemn veil employed to conceal the sword of Imperialism by which we are sacrificed to the insatiable idol of modern despotism, whose ministers are Cromer, Curzon, Morley 81 Co. Murder—which they would represent to us as an horrible crime, when the murdered is a Government flunky—we see practiced by them without repugnance or remorse when the murdered is a working man, a Nationalist patriot, an Egyptian fellaheen, or a half-starved victim of despotic society’s blood-lust. It was so at Featherstone and Denshawai; it has often been so at Newgate; and it was so with Robert Emmett, the Paris communards, and the Chicago martyrs. Who is more reprehensible than the murderers of these martyrs? The police spies who threw the bomb at Chicago; the ad hoc tribunal which murdered innocent Egyptians at Denshawai; the Asquith who assumed full responsibility for the murder of workers at Featherstone;the assassins of Robert Emmett? Yet these murderers have not been executed! Why then should Dhingra be executed? Because he is not a time-sewing executioner, but a Nationalist patriot who, though his ideals are not their ideals, is worthy of the admiration of those workers at home, who have as little to gam from the lick-splitting crew of Imperialistic, blood-sucking, capitalistic parasites at home as what the Nationalists have in India."
These passages, the Attorney-General urged, proved the serious nature of the seditious incitement of which the defendant had been guilty, especially when one remembered the excitable temperament of the Indian population to whom it was addressed. "
The case for the prosecution was now brought to a conclusion by a repetition of the evidence that has already been recorded as having been given during the police court proceedings.
The defendant declined to call witnesses or to go into the witness-box himself. But he remarked that he wished to address a short speech to the jury for the defense.
This speech lasted fifty minutes, and included, of course, a good deal of matter of but transient value. Its most important passage was the following:—
"I have no apology to make either for my attitude towards Krishnavarma, or for what I have written with reference to the Indian question. I claim the absolute freedom of the PRess, the absolute right to publish what I like, when I like, where I like. The only condition on which I can secure that right as a proletarian thinker is that I shall secure it for the Indian Nationalist Patriot, Krishnavarma. I can only do that by maintaining, at the price of my own liberty, the freedom of the Indian Nationalist Press, even where I may not agree with its principles. Krishnavarma has been denounced by the Attorney-General as ‘a criminal resident in Paris.’ Apparently that gentleman means he does not stay in London to risk being transported to India. Sir William Robson knows that if Krishnavarma is a criminal he can be extradited Why is his extradition not applied for? Because the Attorney-General is repeating in this prejudiced Court in safety that which he would not dare to express as an ordinary citizen in Paris. Gentleman of the jury, I do not wish to be harsh with the prosecution, but, if you condemn Krishnavarma for not coming to London, you cannot acquit the Attorney-General for not going to Paris."
The Attorney-General now replied for the prosecution, after which the judge addressed his summing up to the jury, who returned a verdict of “Guilty” without retiring. The following colloquy now ensued between the judge and the defendant: —
Justice Coleridge: “Have you anything to say?"Guy Aldred: “Nothing, my Lord, except that I desire no mitigation of sentence."
J. C. (mildly surprised): “Is that all? Have you nothing else to say?"
G.A.: “Nothing, except that I do not advocate political assassination."
J. C. (passing sentence): “Guy Alfred Aldred, you are young, vain, and foolish; you little know that others regard your statements far more seriously than they deserve. The sentence of this Court is twelve months’ imprisonment in the First Division."
G. A. (smiling): “Thank you, my Lord."
The defendant then left for the cells below, prior to departing for Brixton Prison, where he served his sentence. Before leaving for Brixton, however, he was allowed to see his friend, Rose Witcop.
The authorities at Brixton treated him with every consideration, He was released from jail—having earned the full remission for good conduct—on Saturday, July 2nd, 1910. It may be mentioned that Mr. Justice Coleridge passed the highest possible sentence that the law permitted.
(Source: "Dogmas Discarded," by Guy A. Aldred, The Revolt Library, No. 6, revised, extended, and, in parts abridge from an autobiographical fragment published in 1908 Author’s 1909 trial for sedition affixed, printed and published by the Bakunin Press, 1913.)
From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.
Chronology :
November 30, 1912 : Speech for the Defense -- Publication.
September 17, 2021 : Speech for the Defense -- Added.
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