The Magistrate's Dilemma

Lord Chancellor's Office
House of Lords
London S.W.1

21st February, 1972

Personal and
In Confidence

Dear Mrs. Davies,

As you know, having discussed the matter with the Chairman of the Swansea Bench your conduct not only in dissenting openly in court from a decision reached by a majority of the Justices sitting but also in paying a fine imposed upon the defendant and in giving publicity to that action, has been reported to the Lord Chancellor.
You will remember that you had correspondence in the early part of 1970 with Lord Gardiner about your position as a magistrate and your activities in relation to Welsh Nationalists convicted of offences committed in the furtherance of their cause. Lord Gardiner made quite clear to you the obligations of those who accepted judicial office, and I refer particularly to the last paragraph but one of his letter to you of 6th April 1970.

Lord Hailsham has considered your recent actions and he has had regard to the advice about your conduct as a magistrate which Lord Gardiner gave you and which you have now ignored. Lord Hailsham understands that more than one of your judicial colleagues feels so strongly about your conduct as to be unable to sit with you on the Bench.
In all the circumstances, the Lord Chancellor desires me to inform you that the question as to whether he can permit you to remain a Justice of the Peace will be seriously considered. Before, however, he decides whether or not your name be removed from the Commission of the Peace, he wishes to give you the opportunity, if you so desire, of making representations to him.

Yours sincerely,

A. M. WEBB
Deputy Secretary of Commissions

Lord Chancellor's Office
House of Lords
London S.W.1

Personal and
In Confidence

2nd March, 1972

Dear Mrs. Davies,

Thank you for your letter of 27th February. All that Mr. Gordon Hayes has done is to draw the Lord Chancellor's attention to a press report in the Western Mail for 4th February and to write as follows : "I saw Mrs. Margaret Davies privately this morning before court, and told her that due to her continued divergent views and the fact that these had been made public, I had reported the matter to the Lord Chancellor, and until such time as his decision had been given, I would find it an embarrassment to sit with her. The Vice-Chairman of the Monday Bench, Mr. B. C. Hastie had also asked me to make plain to her the same sentiment, and that being so I thought it best she should not again sit till the matter had been dealt with by the Lord Chancellor. Mrs. Davies agreed she wanted the Lord Chancellor to deal with the matter, and graciously retired".

Yours sincerely,

A. M. WEBB

Lord Chancellor's Office
House of Lords
London S.W.1

Personal and
In Confidence

10th March, 1972

Dear Mrs. Davies,

I refer to your letter of 7th March. Mr. Hayes did write two letters, and I enclose a copy of the first one. The manuscript figure in the margin against the first paragraph is merely a reference to that newspaper cutting on a separate sheet of paper. Mr. Hayes' second letter concerned other matters except for the paragraph which I have already copied to you. The Lord Chancellor would be glad to receive your report by the end of next week.

Yours sincerely,

A. M. WEBB

C. K. ANDREWS LTD.
UPLANDS GARAGE
SWANSEA

7th February, 1972

Dear Mr. Webb,

The copy of the Western Mail enclosed was handed to me by Mr. Bernard C. Hastie, the Chairman of the Bench which dealt with the case referred to in this paper. Mr. Hastie of Scottish descent, but has lived in Swansea all his life, sat with a Mr. Trevor Rees a Welsh speaking Welshman, and Mrs. Maragret Davies. Mr. Hastie knowing Mrs. Davies's views suggested it would be better if she did not sit, but she decided she would.

It was my intention to question Mrs. Davies this morning, her right to use the Swansea Bench as a platform for propaganda but she telephoned her apologies being unable to attend.

In the light of the number of complaints I have received from Swansea Justices and the previous complaint against this lady dealt with by the Magistrates Courts Committee, when Mrs. Davies criticised the Chairman of the Friday Bench, I have no alternative but to bring the matter to your notice and kind attention.

Yours sincerely,

J. W. GORDON HAYES.
Deputy Secretary of Commissions

On Monday morning, the 31st of January, I sat with Mr. Bernard Hastie (Vice-Chairman of the Bench). Oftener than not at Swansea a court consists of two magistrates. At the beginning of the session, warrants were issued for the arrest of defaulters on fines, one of whom was Gerallt Rhun. Before the end of the session, however, he turned up in court and on entering the witness box asked to be allowed to take the oath in Welsh. I did not know this young man, neither did I know until that moment that he was what is now known in Wales as "a Welsh Language offender". Since neither the Chairman nor the Clerk understand Welsh, I offered to translate but it was decided to retire in the hope that there would be someone else in the building who would act as interpreter. During the recess, the Clerk told me that I should not go back into court, but I felt that, having been there at the beginning, I had no moral right to withdraw without hearing what the young man had to say. At this the Clerk decided that the bench should be increased to three. One of the Welsh-speaking magistrates present said that, as she felt too strongly on the Welsh language issue, she would prefer not to be involved, but Welsh-speaking Mr. Trevor Rees obliged. This addition to the number of magistrates must have been noticed by the accused for it has since been remarked upon in the Welsh press. (After I had written this account Mr. Webb acceded to my request for a copy of Mr. Hayes' complaint, and I should like to re-affirm that it was the Clerk and not Mr. Hastie who asked me not to go back into court. Mr. Hastie said nothing.)

The court resumed, with a probation officer performing the role of interpreter - assisted by some promptings by myself. When asked why he had not paid the fine, the young man replied that he would explain if the court could be told the original offence of which he had been found guilty. "This is not a court of appeal", said the Clerk, "you are here because you haven't paid the fine". I then inquired about the original offence and the Clerk replied : "Breach of the peace". When asked if he wanted time to pay, the young man quietly replied that he would rather go to prison than pay the fine. The Chairman asked what the penalty should be and the Clerk said : "Five pounds - fourteen days". I said I disagreed, but the Chairman ignored me, consulted with Mr. Rees on his other side and pronounced sentence, adding : "the lady on my left not adjudicating". I had no alternative but to say that I was adjudicating but that I dissented from the judgement. On our return to the magistrates' room the Clerk told the Chairman that he was wrong to say that I was not adjudicating; that what he should have said was that I dissented. Mr. Rees was obviously distressed, and said that he would never sit on a Welsh case again. He and I are still the best of friends and he has given me permission to quote him as saying that on this occasion he found himself in a dire moral dilemma, and that, although he felt obliged to enforce what he had been led to believe was the law, he knew that the law in relation to the Welsh language was wrong and that, in particular, such morally upright young men should not be sent to prison.

The incident weighed heavily upon me for the rest of the day. Having failed to contact the Clerk at his office during the afternoon, I eventually reached him at his home that evening and told him I proposed to pay the fine. I asked whether this could be done through the court and he informed me that it would have to be done at the prison - and that I would get a rebate of something like one twenty-fifth of £5 for the time the prisoner had already served. I procrastinated until the following morning ; then, after discussing the matter with my husband, I went to the prison and paid the fine.

I should, perhaps, explain that no publicity given to the matter was instigated by me. The newsmen who telephoned me had already heard about it from other sources. I confirmed the facts, adding that it was done as a matter of personal conscience and that I could not discuss it at a local level. Hating publicity as I do, I declined an interview on Welsh television and refrained from giving the Western Mail a "story" which would have doubtless hit the headlines. (What did in fact get a screaming headline in the Western Mail was an "attack" (sic) by your Office on some anonymous magistrates who paid a fine for another Welsh language offender.)

On the other hand, I am proud to own that what I did I did openly. To try to hide it would have been an act of cowardice. I find it hard to accept the doctrine that in public affairs, what is right in secret is wrong in public. There may be a grain of truth even in Richard Crossman's recent contention that "Secretiveness is the real English disease and the particular chronic ailment of British Government", and I was glad to read, in the December number of The Magistrate, a report of your statement concerning the press that "What goes on in court is public property, and it is not merely their right but their duty to report, and it is their right and very often their duty to comment. Private justice is almost always a denial of justice". In any case, the Welsh language is a burning issue in Wales today and one cannot have a private and a public view about it. Every case is fully reported, particularly in the Welsh press and broadcasting services. What the courts do is subjected to the closest scrutiny and nothing can be hushed up.

So much for the facts of the case. They might have been very different had the Chairman not chosen to ignore my presence on the Bench. Since there was disagreement, the proper course would have been to retire so that I might have an opportunity to put my point of view. Judging by what he said afterwards, I venture to think that I might have prevailed upon Mr. Rees. Far be it from me to suggest that the proper procedure was waived because of that risk, although the Clerk had been presumptuous enough to tell me that I knew before I went into court what I was going to say ; I refrained from replying that he certainly knew what he was going to say. Normally, the bench leans over backwards to find alternatives, and I have always understood that the ultimate sanction of imprisonment must not be used until all other methods have been tried or at least considered. Nothing was considered on this occasion and I have never seen a defaulter sent to prison with such alacrity. Indeed, even the usual Swansea practice in Welsh language cases was not adhered to. Several people convicted of the same offence as this young man have recently been brought back to court and told that they would be taken to prison after a further period of weeks unless their fines were paid in the meantime - and eventually they have all been paid. But on this occasion, when I was involved, the maximum period of imprisonment had to be imposed and carried out forthwith - without my being even consulted.

Furthermore, if the court had been left as originally constituted, a disagreement might have resulted in the adjournment of the case. Why was the court reconstituted ? What were the underlying motives ? Was it because of a fear of justice being done in a way which did not accord with the standards of the Clerk ? I raise these questions so that the quality of motives which underlie the whole situation can be assessed.

During my five and a half years as a magistrate this is the only Welsh language case in which I have been directly involved. The reason is that I was assigned to the "Monday Bench" from the start and that Welsh language cases are almost invariably heard on Wednesdays. The police have been told this by the Clerk so that they can instruct Welshmen released on police bail to appear on the following Wednesday - or on subsequent Wednesdays if there are too many of them to be tried at one session. Wed­nesday was originally chosen as a matter of convenience because a Welsh-speaking Vice-Chairman of the whole Bench sat on that day and it was not difficult to find another Welsh-speaker to sit with him. The cases were then tried in English with such ad hoc translation as was deemed necessary. That gentleman has subsequently retired and for the last batch of cases Mr. W. Randall Hughes (appointed 1970) was brought in from the Friday Bench to occupy the Chair.

In my letter to Lord Gardiner (15th January, 1970) I predicted that I would publicly dissociate myself from penalties imposed by my fellow-magistrates on non-violent patriots who broke laws which were unjust to the Welsh language. Alas, petty injustices seem to lose their impact the oftener they are repeated. At that time such cases were rare and one naively hoped that the laws and regulations which prompted them would be changed before things got worse. During the past year dozens of Welsh Language protesters have been heavily fined at Swansea, and I have held my peace while the Bench gained the unenviable reputation of being the most unsympathetic and punitive in Wales on the Welsh language issue. Avoiding a direct confrontation, I have tried to assuage my conscience with the belief that I would achieve more by trying to explain the situation to my colleagues in private. I am glad to say that several have responded with sympathy and understanding, but the effect of my efforts upon some of the more established members of the fraternity has been to reveal their fundamental hostility towards things Welsh - and, by association, towards me.

While these cases were before the Court, I became so disturbed by the unseemly publicity in the local press that I asked Mr. Hayes whether I could see him with a view to the formulation of a more satisfactory policy on Welsh cases. The interview took place in the presence of the Clerk two days later, when I said many of the things I am now saying in this document, emphasising the value of good will. Having in the meantime permitted a Welsh hearing, Mr. Uren now blamed the prosecution's intrans­igence on the question of language and agreed that if the principle of Welsh courts for Welsh cases were adopted, the latter would constitute far less than one per cent of the whole - his public remark that he might lose his job was, he said, facetious. (It is, indeed, deplorable that not one of the four prosecuting solicitors employed in this court could do his work in Welsh.)

Mr. Hayes contributed little to the discussion except to agree that the root of the difficulty was political, and to add that there was nothing we could do about it. I replied that we could at least do something by keeping the temperature down. Mr. Hayes also complained that he had heard me discussing the Welsh language issue with colleagues in the magistrates' room. He disapproved of this, which is presumably what he means when he tells Mr. Webb that he questions my "right to use the Swansea Court as a platform for propaganda". That such discussions were often not instigated by me is beside the point - except as an indication that Mr. Hayes needs an individual scapegoat on which to pin his prejudices. The astonishing thing is that, as Mr. Hayes sees it, we are perfectly free to talk about drug addiction, theft and robberies and the sheer vandalism which is costing this city £10,000 a year, but on the one problem which is peculiar to Wales silence must reign within the precincts of a court of justice. To describe these friendly conversations as propaganda demonstrates what an "alien" thing the Welsh language is to the Chairman of the Swansea Bench, and how insensitive his attitude can be towards those of us who speak it and cherish it.

I refer to this background for two reasons. The more important of the two is to draw your attention to the ominous fact that an increasing number of courts are finding it impossible to reconcile the letter of the law with justice and are being forced to seek ways of escape. And the second is this: if I were a member of the Llangefni or Talybont or Aberaeron or Carmarthen Bench, the situation in which I found myself on the 31st January would never have occurred. Have we reached a situation in Wales where what is right in one place is wrong in the other; where one is fit to be a magistrate in one town and unfit in the other - the deciding factor being the degree of Welshness or anti-Welshness that informs the Chairman and the Vice-Chairman of the Bench ?

The threat of further disturbance on this issue in Wales concerns me profoundly, and I am convinced that the repression of people who have justice on their side is a way of promoting it. I believe that there must be laws and that there must be rules, but I do not worship them. As has recently been observed in The Times, what matters is not the sanctity of the law but the sanity with which it is administered. Never has there been greater need for sanity than there is in Wales today regarding this special kind of offender. There are times when laws, in as much as they are never perfect, must be bent in the service of justice (as has happened so frequently in the courts of this land), and rules, since they do not fit all situations, must sometimes be broken. While Lords of Appeal often disagree publicly, it may well be that as a normal rule it is wise for magistrates to conceal their disagreements, but there are circumstances in which the rule must be waived in the face of considerations which transcend it. Indeed, magistrates' right to return majority decisions has never been forbidden, and this occurs frequently in courts throughout Great Britain. Similarly, with regard to magist­rates paying fines on behalf of offenders. According to a recent statement issued from your office, "it is understandable, though neither proper nor improper" for them to do so in the case of an impecunious offender, but not in these Welsh language cases. Whatever may be the justification for this new rule, I submit that there must be except­ions to it as to all rules.

I share the growing admiration of responsible people in Wales for the dedication, moral integrity and good humour of the much maligned members of the Welsh Language Society. No group of young people is so free from the vice, delinquency, drug addiction, drug pushing and senseless vandalism which beset this modern age. These are not drop-outs; rather are they passionately opting in to preserve and promote what is good, honourable and decent in Welsh tradition. That is why the majority of the people of Wales recognise the justice of their claims and why so many of us feel involved when they are made to suffer. They are resolutely non-violent in an age of growing violence. Should they fail, or lose their faith, who knows what will come after them ? Prophecies that the situation could deteriorate into one of civil war, such as rends Northern Ireland, are, in my opinion, manifestly false. The minority who are hostile to things Welsh have not, and cannot have, a coherent doctrine that could rouse them into a positive and determined political force. All the idealism, all the intellectual activity, all the readiness to sacrifice is on the other side. What is to be feared therefore, more than internal strife, is an intensification of the direct struggle between the Welsh and the Government.

No one living in Wales could deny that the estrangement is already appreciably greater than it was two years ago when I wrote to Lord Gardiner. For a government which ignores the obvious signs and warnings, the lessons of history should be fairly clear. What is urgently needed today is an official policy of reconciliation before things get worse, which should include granting the Welsh language the same dignity and the same unfettered freedom as is given to English in the courts of this land. My bilingual son is twelve years old and I confess my apprehension as to what the future may hold in store for him. What I have tried to do in a very modest way during the last few years is to bridge the widening gap. I think it is essential to keep these young idealists within the community, and I have endeavoured to maintain a niche for them within the British judicial system where they can still hope for justice while remaining what they are. If this is incompatible with the policy of the British Government and the Judiciary in Wales, the alternative is to purge the courts of me and my kind and complete the process of alienation. MARGARET DAVIES

HOUSE OF LORDS
SWIA OPW

Personal and
in Confidence

I4th April, 1972

Dear Mrs. Davies :

I write to you with great regret to tell you that, after considering very carefully what you have written to me and your exchange of letters with Lord Gardiner in the course of which he gave you a very serious warning, I have come to the conclusion that you can no longer remain a magistrate.

I would ask you to accept that, as Lord Chancellors, neither Lord Gardiner nor I have been concerned with the merits of the Welsh language issue which has been in the forefront of all your own letters. So far as I am concerned, I am content to assume for the purposes of this decision, though without necessarily agreeing with them, that there is merit in some or all of your contentions. But what Lord Gardiner and I have been concerned with as successive Lord Chancellors and what your duty as a magistrate equally involves is the administration of the law as it is and not the law as we (or any of us) think it ought to be. You appear to consider either that people can pick and choose which laws to obey or that they are entitled to draw attention to what they conceive to be a political or social injustice by deliberately flouting a particular law, for instance by committing a contempt of court, or refusing to take out a television or car licence, and escape punish­ment altogether if, as individuals, you or your colleagues on the Bench choose to think that the grievance is a substantial one.

I regret to tell you that this is not the case, and that whatever may be thought of the moral conduct of the offenders concerned you and those of your colleagues on the Bench who choose to think as you do are in breach of your duty of impartiality and of your judicial oath which, as Lord Gardiner reminded you, involves the obligation to administer justice impartially, according to law and not in defiance of the law.

If I thought from your letters that there was the smallest chance of your modifying your attitude I should have been only too happy to provide you with an opportunity to do so. In fact Lord Gardiner gave you such a chance, and you have not taken it. Instead, what you write to me shows conclusively that you are so preoccupied with the merits (as you conceive them to be) of the particular political issue which interests you that you are not prepared to administer justice impartially (or indeed capable of doing so) in any case where, even peripherally, that issue is raised, however irrelevantly. This being so, you can no longer remain honourably on the Bench. You may resign, and, to enable you to do so, I will stay my hand for a short time. But failing resignation I will give directions that your name be removed from the Commission.

Yours sincerely,

HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE

46 EATON CRESCENT
SWANSEA

30 April 1972

Dear Lord Hailsham, It is true that Lord Gardiner expressed similar beliefs to yours about the absolute authority of the law, but he did so with respect. As a citizen helping with the administ­ration of the law in an honorary capacity, I asked his opinion on some difficult questions which concerned me, and he gave his opinion in a courteous and gentlemanly manner. Your communications, on the contrary, have been those of an irate superior threatening a disobedient inferior, in which Lord Gardiner's urbane advice is transformed into "a very serious warning" and into a "chance" for the transgressor to mend her ways. Mr. Webb's first letter was aggressive and indeed injudicious, while the answer given in his second letter to a specific question of mine was not true. I would therefore remind you, with all due respect to your office, that the services that I have rendered the state weekly over the past five and a half years have been voluntary and unpaid, and that you have no power over me except to rid me of a moral responsibility of which I cannot, with a clear conscience, rid myself.

You have seen fit to judge me not by what I have done but by what I am - which suggests that honesty is not the best policy in dealing with the Lord Chancellor of England. Mr. Webb's first letter made it abundantly clear that I already stood con­demned on the basis of what I had said two years ago to Lord Gardiner. All that remained was to ascertain whether I would, faced with the threat of dismissal, recant. I say this because, having due regard to the grossly improper way in which the little case in which I was involved was conducted, what I did could not possibly be construed in be an adequate excuse for the intervention of the political executive in a judicial matter. There must be plenty of examples in your files of magistrates whose judicial behaviour has been far less exemplary than mine and of others who have been allowed to remain members of the Commission of the Peace although they are convicted law­breakers.

During your own tenure of office, there have been magistrates who have made illegal use of substantial sums of public money and have publicly claimed the right to flout the law in resisting "what they conceive to be political or social injustice". No action has been taken against them either by you or by the public prosecutor. Is this what is meant by "impartial justice" ? One must conclude either that your Government is more hostile towards the Welsh language than it is towards free milk, or that Welsh language offenders are easier prey because they do not have the moral backing of a major British political party, or, and this is my point, that the free milk offenders have not been naive enough to explain their behaviour to the Lord Chancellor and that their opponents have not been vindictive enough to lodge complaints against them.

The reasoning in your letter is vitiated by the use of the words 'justice ' and ' law ' as synonyms. On page 2 you accuse me of being unable to administer "justice" im­partially. As every Welshman knows, justice can only be administered impartially, for our word for it is cyfiawnder - "co-rightness". That is precisely our difficulty. Anghyfiawnder (in-justice), a much-used word in Wales to-day, thus conveys the meaning of 'partiality', 'discrimination'. You will therefore appreciate my reluctance to administer in-justice. When the law of the land is shot through with laws and usages which deny to Welsh-speakers the rights and privileges which it safeguards for English-speakers, it violates ' co-rightness '. The partiality of these laws and usages renders justice im­possible, and to speak of administering them "impartially" is a contradiction in terms.

The counsel regarding one's duty to enforce and obey bad laws, which you gave in a recent speech and is implicit in your letter, is far too simplistic. We have here an abiding dilemma which has tormented the spirit of man from time immemorial and, as you well know, there have been judges throughout the ages who have stretched and bent bad laws to breaking point in an endeavour to do justice despite them. Furthermore, your insinuation that I consider people free to pick and choose the laws they obey, or free to disregard laws in order to draw attention to "what they conceive to be" unjust - all this is a travesty of what I have said to you.

Your argument is made plausible at the cost of divorcing law from principle with the result that the meaning of "good" and "bad" becomes no more than a matter of personal choice, and in the end there is no justice beyond "conceptions" which can legitimately vary from one person to the next. As a Christian, you must surely recognise that Justice is an eternal principle against which human laws should always be measured. By that ' yardstick ', to deny to others fundamental human rights which the group to which you belong enjoys, is not just a form of ' badness ' about the magnitude of which people are free to argue; it is not a "grievance" which one "chooses" or does not choose to deem "substantial". It is the very negation of Justice and therefore an absolute evil. When I say that the dictates of conscience must transcend the law, I am concerned with iniquities of this order - and not with controversial questions such as whether the issue of free milk to school children should be medically controlled.

To dissociate the law, as you seem determined to do, from a hierarchy of values - and to insist that magistrates on pain of dismissal should be impartial in their attitude towards morality - is to trivialize the law by reducing it to a democracy of rules and regulations, the very multiplicity of which detracts from their individual significance. To complete the degradation, all that is then necessary is a band of mindless minions who will enforce the rules and regulations mechanically.

Unhappily, these pragmatic conceptions of law seem destined to become the prevailing ones in this secular age, while Lord Denning's civilised philosophy is brushed aside. I would submit, with all due respect, that by subscribing to this doctrine you are assisting the forces of evil which you purport to fight. It is the propagation of this anti-spiritual, anti-intellectual doctrine at all levels, rather than the fervour of honest idealists (who are your true allies), that is divesting the law of authority and of its vestiges of sanctity - until it eventually appears as a mere instrument of illegitimate power whereby what is condoned by majorities is imposed upon the rest. Such an instrument can be feared and hated, but it can command no respect. As to the one per cent of the population of the United Kingdom who speak Welsh, their faith in regaining their human rights by constitutional methods has no foundation except in the doctrine that the law is an, albeit imperfect, embodiment of Justice. Only as such can it be perfected. When the Lord Chancellor of England substitutes for this the heresy that the goodness and badness of laws is merely a matter of opinion to be settled by the majority, he extinguishes all hope and helps to create the conditions in which :

"Things fall apart ; the centre cannot hold ; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world".

Strengthening the enforcement of "the law as it is" can do nothing to remedy this loss of confidence and the chaotic effects of despair.

You have recently warned the public of an impending chaos, but seem to have no remedy for it except indiscriminate repression through which, by some mysterious alchemy, you expect to "restore a real spirit of unity and patriotism, transcending class, region, race and religion". The hallmark of chaos is its formless, undifferentiated non-entity. Lacking attributes, grades, qualities, it is the complete negation of Order. Chaos is the end-product of your reductionist doctrine of law, and it manifests itself again in your apparent refusal to differentiate qualitatively between what you describe as "the crime wave", "the exploitation of monopoly industrial power", "lawlessness in Northern Ireland", and "nationalist splinters in Wales and Scotland". Does this not remind you of the way in which Hitler completed the destruction of both the traditional and the democratic order in Germany by battling indiscriminately against capitalists, socialists, liberals, communists, freemasons, Jews, regional nationalists and every one else who had distinguishing qualities ?

In your speech at Llandrindod, when a number of cases of contempt of court at Carmarthen were still sub judice, you could not even see a significant distinction between violence and non-violence. Castigating people who openly drew attention to injustice in courts, and magistrates who paid unjustly imposed fines, you sought to identify them in the public mind with "the baboons [sic] of the I.R.A. who blow the arms and legs off innocent women and children, and break the bones and tar the heads of pregnant women, and shoot our lads in the streets of Londonderry and Belfast". By the same token you could have argued that car-parking offenders are "at the top of a very slippery slope" at the bottom of which are gangsters and murderers, the "slope" being law-breaking.

The action which the behaviour of my colleagues on the Bench compelled me to lake in the name of justice three months ago was discreet in comparison with this intemperate outburst. It aroused no adverse comment whatsoever in the press or on the air, and I have received no letters of criticism apart from your own. But your wildly injudicious speech has sent a wave of righteous indignation throughout Wales and beyond. As some of our Members of Parliament have pointed out, you have "inflamed a very delicate situation in the Welsh Courts" and have helped to provoke the very disorders which you condemn. I am tempted to add that, apart from the "baboons", your contention that the difference between the I.R.A. and people like me is one of degree rather than kind, is semantically true. Differences of kind belong to the world of nature; men and baboons are different in kind. Degree, on the contrary, stems from a hierarchic conception of reality. There is only one mankind, and within it differences of degree are the essential ones. There are grades of humanity, all of us being in some respects higher and in some respects lower than others. The differences between you and me and the I.R.A., and even the obedient men and women who do not remind you of baboons, are all essentially "a question of degree".

There are also degrees of value. Submission to the laws of the land ranks very high in the scale, but it is not the highest. Did we not punish people at Nürnberg, not for breaking but for obeying the laws of their country ? It is not enough to reply that Germany was in those days a dictatorship whereas Britain is a democracy. "The lawful authority of the ballot box", as you have called it, is certainly a very valuable device. It enables the majority to choose and to change their rulers. But it cannot decide what is right. Quantity does not determine quality. The majority is at least as likely to be wrong, or unjust, as any minority - indeed it usually is wrong when it presumes to know what is best for others. The greatest tyrannies in history have been supported by majorities and the most heinous crimes have been perpetrated in the name of "the People". In Wales nowadays we are painfully aware that ' the will of the British people ' is no substitute for such eternal principles as Justice; in Jerusalem two millennia ago, it was a majority that cried "Crucify Him".

I am the only fine-paying baboon who has revealed his or her identity since you took office. In answer to your ultimatum I hereby place my resignation in your hands. Whether you accept it or not matters little to me personally, but, alas, this is a public as well as a personal matter. It is with that on my mind that I have tried to reason with you.

Yours sincerely,

MARGARET DAVIES