The story so far: Paul Clarke found a gun in his back garden, kept it for a day, and then walked into his local police station with the gun in a bag and produced it in front of the Superintendent with the intention of handing it in to the police. He called ahead tell the Superintendent he was coming, but it is as yet unclear whether he mentioned he was bringing a gun with him1. He was then arrested and charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, a charge which a jury has now found him guilty. The judge now must, by law, pass a sentence of a minimum of five years’ imprisonment.

Now, when I commented on this story (I actually originally left my comment on Jennie Rigg’s blog post and then adapted it for this blog) I made pains to point out that in the eyes of our criminal justice system Paul Clarke had, in fact, done something wrong. That thing being to break the law by walking around with an unlicensed firearm. Now, we can argue the whithertos and the whyfores of the law itself all we like, but currently that is the law and we generally expect that when people break the law (or at least are caught breaking the law) they are punished for it.

I seem to have upset (or perhaps disappointed) a few people with that take on the matter – and not people I’m particularly pleased to have upset, it must be said. Charlotte, apparently, stared “open mouthed and incredulous” at my take at my post, whilst the great Devil’s Kitchen, though very kindly describing me as “normally sensible”, said my post was “wrong at a fundamental level”. Constantly Furious, who has somewhat led the charge on this issue, characterised my position (unfairly, I feel) as suggesting that what happened to Paul Clarke ‘served him right’. Al Jahom said in the comments on my post: “it worries me that people with such a casual attitude towards this sort of outrageous totalitarianism even exist in the UK.”

That’s a flavour – there’s been a few others saying similar things.

Well, maybe they’re all right. It’s possible that I may have gone completely off my trolley with my assertion that breaking a law which is as strict and clear as the gun laws in this country is probably not a good idea. There’s certainly been some objection to the flowery language2 of my post, which is undeniably justified, and in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have written “I don’t see what the outrage is about” since there is plenty of reason to be unhappy about this case, just not for any of the reasons which the blog posts I had read at the time focussed on. It may be that this incident truly does demonstrate the totalitarian nature of our society, and provides damning evidence that we are sleepwalking, sawn-off shotguns in hand, into a world of servitude and oppression. But I’m not so entirely sure of that just yet, and I’m still not convinced this story demonstrates anything more than the boring, unflinching, bureaucratic, dull, grey, rubber-stamping, uncaring, un-nuanced nature of our criminal justice system. That is, of course, bad enough in itself, but reams of paperwork wasn’t exactly what Orwell was warning us about. Perhaps it’s just that I’m so used to it everywhere else by now, but I really can’t seem to find it newly shocking, or indeed particularly surprising.

First of all, though, things we all most definitely appear to agree about: Paul Clarke doesn’t deserve to go to prison for five years. It doesn’t serve him right. In fact, Paul Clarke should almost definitely not have been arrested in the first place (more on that later). The law concerning possession of firearms should not be one that cannot be legally defended against – no law should be indefensible. Minimum sentences should not be imposed on judges, because in cases exactly like these we should always have some recourse by which the judge is allowed to use his or her judgement. This case is certainly yet another example of the myriad problems with the way our justice system works.

So. Where we disagree. Well, apart from the fact that I think it’s perfectly bloody obvious that there’s no totalitarian undercurrent to this affair (except, possibly, to a mind trained to see a totalitarian undercurrent to pretty much everything) I think the main point of disagreement is that my fellow bloggers seem to think the judge and jury in this case have done something wrong, whilst I think, respectfully, that that’s a load of dingo’s kidneys.

So far as I can tell, from the moment the Superintendent decided to arrest Mr Clarke everything that has happened, happened because it was supposed to happen. It happened, in fact, because that is exactly what needs to happen. These are the very systems we rely on to maintain the law. The police, after all, are there to uphold and maintain the law, as passed by the members of parliament (themselves elected by the people). The judges are there to interpret the law in individual cases, and juries are there to determine whether or not an accused party has committed the crimes they are charged with.

So, put yourself in the position of a juror. You’re on the jury in the Paul Clarke case. You have been given the evidence of what has happened and you have been asked a very simple question, to which you must answer either yes or no. The question is: was Paul Clarke carrying an unlicensed firearm?

What’s your answer? Was he or wasn’t he? Yes, or no?

I don’t know about you, but from everything I’ve read on this, I’m fairly certain he was. Guilty, your honour.

Now, as I said above, you can argue, and I would, that it’s a stupid law. You can argue that in sentencing this man a very large level of lenience ought to be shown – and I would happily make that argument too. You can argue that the case probably never should have been taken so far as to have ended up with a jury, and you know what? I’d probably agree with you. But what you can’t say, what would be absolutely inaccurate, is that he wasn’t carrying an unlicensed firearm. He was.

To put this point of view into a slightly clearer perspective, here’s a thought experiment: imagine, for the sake of argument, that on the way to the police station Paul Clarke had stopped by a bank. Perhaps he needed to make a transaction that day, and he knew he was going to be in town, so he killed two birds with one cliché, and stopped along the way. It’s not entirely implausible – for all we know, he could have done exactly that.

Now, image that whilst in the bank a security guard had discovered that Paul Clarke was carrying a sawn-off shotgun. And that, upon making this discovery, the security guard had notified the police and had Paul Clarke arrested. What would this story have looked like then?

We know, after all, that Paul Clarke’s intentions were honourable, and that he was on his way to the police station to hand the gun in. He would definitely insist as much, and could even cite his appointment with the Superintendent, which is bound to have been noted in the Superintendent’s diary, as evidence of his good intent. But, in that situation, who would have complained about him being found guilty of possession of a firearm?

The difference between that situation and the one which occurred is essentially one of semantics and location – there was evidence of his intent to hand in the weapon either way, after all. But I’m willing to bet there would have been a whole lot less outcry when he was found guilty of possessing an unlicensed weapon.

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OK, that’s the main focus of this post over – defending my little contrarian corner against such a backlash as I have not seen in quite some time. Let’s move on to some other interesting things to have come out of this case.

First off, why the hell was Paul Clarke arrested in the first place? That seems to be the strangest point about the entire case. To get arrested whilst calmly having a meeting with a Superintendent would surely require something extraordinary to happen. It is, of course, possible that the Superintendent is just a complete idiot, or that was having a bad day and the sight of a shotgun sent him into a fit of madness, but I rather like the neatness of a possible explanation from Pavlov’s Cat which came to me via JuliaM:

In 2008 a man named Paul Clarke (26) of Wood Street, Merstham is found Not Guilty of assaulting a member of the Stasi / sorry DVLA after finding him suspiciously checking out vehicles in his street.

FLASH FORWARD 2009

In 2009 a man named Paul Clarke (now 27) now of Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, (I guess he didn’t move far) is found Guilty of possession of a firearm he found in his back garden, that he subsequently handed into the police and faces 5 years in prison.

I don’t think it’s coincidence.

You know, I’m not sure it is either. So maybe what we’re looking at here is actually a somewhat vindictive police Superintendent who was unhappy with Mr Clarke for having got off a previous charge, seeing an opportunity to get back at him present itself when Mr Clarke walked into his office and produced a shotgun. From there the story takes on a life of its own.

To me, it sounds at least plausible, and slots in an extra piece of the puzzle. Even if it was a stupid and vindictive decision to arrest him, at least it’s only the same sort of stupidity and vindictiveness you seem to see everywhere in human interactions where one party has some degree of power over the other.

- – -

Lastly, what about the law? Many people have rightly made the point to me that breaking the law in and of itself is not doing something morally wrong, if in breaking the law you do not cause harm to others. That’s as may be, but it doesn’t make it any less breaking the law. And the courts are there to determine whether or not laws have been broken. The argument that somehow the law is only the law if it’s a law that we like is basically saying that Paul Clarke’s only crime was to, erm, commit a crime. How shocking that I then would have the audacity to suggest that this would make him a criminal.

Here’s the thing: what’s the point in having laws if we’re not going to expect people to follow them? And if the law is not being enforced, at what point does the law become ‘whatever I decide is not causing harm’? Why bother having police and judges and juries and indeed lawmakers if their decisions have no bearing upon our actions?

I have a lot of sympathy for those who disagree with that. I am, I admit, not being entirely consistent with my previously stated opinions. I have in the past made the opposite argument in relation to copyright law – that the law is really only what society says the law is, and so if society breaks the law in sufficient numbers it isn’t really the law any more. That when a single person breaks the law we call it a crime, but when 7 million people break the law? We call that a revolution.

But that’s not really the world we live in, and with the best will in the world it’s hard to see how, with the laws we currently have, Paul Clarke’s arrest could have lead to anything other than exactly what has happened.

It may be that only a horribly faceless bureaucratic machine could rubber stamp a conviction like this with no legal defence, and only an even worse one could pass sentences which cannot be reduced by a judge no matter what the intentions of the criminal. If this brings a literary reference to my mind, though, it isn’t Nineteen Eighty-Four but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and its marvellous description of New Labour the Vogons:

They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Please, though, let’s not take the Vogon analogy too far. I’d rather not have to imagine the kind of poetry Jack Straw would write.

  1. This point fascinates me – presumably he can’t have mentioned this. Had he mentioned he was bringing a gun in, either the Superintendent would have told him not to and thus the situation would have been averted, or the Superintendent told him to break the law, which I believe would be entrapment.

    UPDATE: Turns out Paul Clarke did not tell the Superintendent that he was bringing in a weapon. Via Constantly Furious, the court reporter who covered the Paul Clarke trial has said over Twitter “[Paul Clarke] didn’t tell police he had a gun. He said: ‘I’ve got something to give you’. He admits that was mistake but didn’t know the law”. In that case it’s worth remembering the mantra of the blogosphere during the expenses crisis – Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. [↩]

  2. I’ll be honest, I was quietly proud of the Errol Flynn line until DK so ruthlessly mocked it. [↩]