PARAGON REVIEW

Issue 6

WITNESS: THE ORIGINS OF JUSTICE

The organisation called Justice - the British Section of the International Commission of Jurists - celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. The group is non-political, and because it does not handle individual cases perhaps tends to have a lower profile than, say, the National Council for Civil Liberties or Liberty. However, its origins lay in two outstanding national cases from the mid-1950s: Hungary and South Africa - both of which reflected the organisation's long-term interest in upholding the principles of justice and the right to a fair trial. Helen Roberts looks into its origins.

It is now forty years since the formal creation of the legal pressure group Justice. Although it has acquired a sober and well-respected reputation of upholding the rule of law in Britain, its origins were inextricably linked with two defining radical causes of the mid to late 1950s, the Treason Trials in South Africa and the Hungarian uprising. In both of these cases, Justice performed the role of witness to the process of law. This role has continued to provide the basis of its activities throughout its history, whether in the area of law reform or individual miscarriages of justice.

In dawn raids across South Africa on 5 December 1956, 140 people were arrested and charged with high treason under the Suppression of Communism Act. A large proportion of the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) were detained, including its President, Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Many other opponents of apartheid, such as Helen Joseph, Secretary of the South African Women's Federation, were also arrested in an operation which made no distinction between moderates and radicals, blacks or whites. In a second, more limited, wave of arrests, two of the lawyers briefed to act for the defence, Dr D Nockwe and Joe Slovo, were also detained, bringing the total number of those accused to 156.

In all seriousness, two banners were submitted as evidence at the preliminary hearing which began 14 days later in the Johannesburg Drill Hall. The banners read 'Soup with meat' and 'Soup without meat'. These had been seized at the Congress of the People which had adopted the Freedom Charter some 18 months before. The Charter began, 'We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people'. If nothing else, the Charter committed its adherents to racial unity in the struggle against apartheid. With a mass of pamphlets, speeches, books and reports of ANC meetings, the Charter formed the basis of the prosecution case. This was, in brief, that the forces for national liberation in South Africa were working to overthrow the state and establish Communism.

In Britain the response to the arrests came from several quarters - not least from the legal profession. A cross-party group of Members of Parliament with legal training initiated a joint campaign to secure fair trials for the accused. The campaign became known as Justice. Serious concerns were raised by the definition of treason employed by the South African state, viz. 'High treason is committed by those who with a hostile intention disturb, impair or endanger the in-dependence or safety of the state, or attempt or actively prepare to do so'. Furthermore the simultaneous trial of 156 people was to be held in a special criminal court comprised of three judges and no jury.

As a first step in the campaign, Gerald Gardiner QC flew to Johannesburg on behalf of Justice and the Bar Council. He was to witness the opening of the preliminary hearing as a legal observer. It was fundamental to the fate of the accused that the best lawyers, ideally those with a measure of respect amongst the Nationalist community, were engaged on their behalf. In a letter from Peter Benenson prior to his visit, Gardiner was advised to influence the choice of lawyers and to assess the need for funds from abroad to support the defence. The Treason Trials Defence Fund, established immediately after the first arrests, set a target of £150,000 to cover both legal costs and grants to the accused and their families. It was also in response to the Treason Trial that the idea of a boycott of South African goods was first raised.

Funded by Christian Action and arranged without any reference to the South African authorities, Gardiner's visit resulted in charges of interference being levelled at Justice. Eric Louw, the South African Foreign Minister, saw it as 'A calculated insult to our magistrates and judges'. Justice was however always very careful to focus its concerns on the legal framework of the trial, and not to question the impartiality or integrity of the South African judiciary. Gardiner himself was very struck by the practical implications of the Suppression of Communism Act, which was amended in 1954 to widen the definition of a Communist, commenting '. . . if you were a Communist forty years ago, you are a Communist today. And, whether you are a Communist or not, you are a Communist if the Governor-General says that you are'.

The outcomes of Gardiner's visit were twofold. It attracted publicity for the campaign for a fair trial and ensured that the Treason Trial would remain a priority for Justice throughout the long years which followed. It acted also as a catalyst to the recreation of Justice as a permanent Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). The meeting regarded as a turning point in the history of Justice was held at Niblett Hall, Inner Temple on 17 January 1957 and was attended by over 300 solicitors and barristers. Gerald Gardiner reported to the meeting on his experiences in South Africa, and he was accompanied by Norman Marsh, Secretary General of the ICJ, and Andrew Martin of the Save Hungary Committee.

As the mass arrests in South Africa became public in early December 1956, disturbing information also began to filter out of Hungary. The Hungarian uprising, which began on 23 October in Budapest with the siege of the Parliament building and the radio station, was crushed by Soviet tanks some 13 days later. The ICJ issued a press statement which declared, 'The Commission condemns as contrary to the United Nations Charter, the accepted principles of international law and the conscience of all civilised people the brutal suppression by Soviet armed force of all free government and personal liberty in Hungary'. Refugees began to flee the country in fear. The new regime headed by Janos Kadar determined to break popular resistance and punish the participants in the uprising. The district of Csepel was the last to fall. On 9 December, a decree was issued dissolving the Greater Budapest Workers' Council and both its President, Sandor Racz, and its Spokesman, Sandor Bali, were arrested. This was followed shortly afterwards by the reintroduction of internment by decree.

In response to the repression, Sir Arthur Comyns Carr QC, Geoffrey de Freitas MP and Jocelyn Simon QC MP wrote to The Times on behalf of Justice. Putting the case for a fair trial of those arrested, their letter, published on 18 December, pleaded that 'The men and women who raised their voices for liberty must not now be put to judicial death.' As in the South African case, a decision was made to send legal observers to Budapest to witness the trial of Racz and Bali. Restrictions on freedom of movement into the country meant however that the application for visas for Sir Lionel Heald QC MP, Sir Hartley Shawcross QC MP and Sir Frank Soskice QC MP was fruitless. At the Niblett Hall meeting, Andrew Martin argued that the mere attempt to do so publicly had helped to dampen down the enthusiasm for repression and prevent the trial of Racz and Bali. This view should be judged against the background of two new decrees issued in mid January 1957. In order to undertake the 'final disinfection of the focal points of the counter-revolution'(Geza Szenasi, Supreme Public Prosecutor), People's Courts were established and the death penalty introduced for strikers and those who had incited others to break the law.

Several of the founder members of Justice attended a conference organised by the ICJ in The Hague to discuss the Hungarian situation in March 1957. This month also marked the first meeting of Justice as an official member of the Commission and the process of forming the new organisation culminated some four months later in its first Executive Committee meeting and the appointment of Tom Sargant as Secretary. Hartley Shawcross, the first Chairman of Justice, was later invited to submit evidence on the actions of the Kadar regime to the United Nations Committee of Five. Towards the end of the year rumours began to circulate that General Pal Maleter would soon be tried. Maleter was one of the key figures in the uprising and he symbolised the role of the Hungarian army in supporting the workers and students. He acted as Deputy Defence Minister under Imre Nagy's short-lived People's Patriotic Government and defended the Kilian barracks in Budapest from Soviet attack.

Russian tanks on the streets of Budapest, October 1956

Justice therefore made a renewed attempt to gain access to Hungary. It was proposed to send Elwyn Jones QC, who had experience of the Poznan trials in Poland, to witness the imminent trial of members of the Workers' Council of Csepel Island Iron Works. When this failed, Peter Benenson made a personal application to visit as a journalist and was granted permission in early January 1958. He arrived in Budapest on 9 February. In a confidential report for the ICJ, Benenson documented the trial of Captain Toller, Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the XIVth district of Budapest, and six others on charges of looting. The trial typified the government's portrayal of participants in the uprising as murderers and looters. In cases where this strategy became too transparent or absurd, trials were held in secret, witness Benenson's repeated requests to attend the trial of the Csepel Island workers which were consistently evaded. Shortly after his visit, the Hungarian Chamber of Lawyers was purged and a major trial held. Out of 1300 lawyers in Budapest, 720 were purged. Both General Maleter and Imre Nagy were tried and executed in early summer 1958.

The Treason Trial in South Africa dragged on. The main trial opened in an old synagogue in Pretoria in August 1958 and four international observers were there to witness the occasion. Louis Blom Cooper, representing Justice, produced a series of articles for the Manchester Guardian; a report by Dr Edvard Hambro, former Registrar of the International Court of Justice, was published in the Bulletin of the ICJ. By this point, 65 of the original detainees had already been released without charge a year earlier, notable amongst these being Albert Luthuli. The defence began by challenging the very basis on which the remaining 91 were charged and contended that the indictment was couched in terms 'vague, contradictory, embarrassing, pre-judicial and unintelligible'. As a result the original indictment was withdrawn, a fresh indictment issued against a much reduced number of detainees and the trial proceeded. Dr Hambro commented, '. . . it is certainly possible to offend against fundamental human liberties in a law-suit conducted on the very finest principles of procedural justice.'

The next observer to fly to South Africa prepared himself by reading Alan Paton's Cry, the beloved country and The treason cage. During the visit by Edward St. John, an Australian lawyer, no major developments occurred. In contrast to the preliminary hearing during which day after day of verbatim readings of some 10,000 pieces of documentary evidence occurred, no evidence was submitted in the main trial until August 1959. Then in early 1960, the political situation worsened considerably when the ANC and the recently formed Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) decided to renew their struggle against the pass laws.

Members of the PAC were encouraged by their President RM Sobukwe to leave their passes at home and surrender themselves for arrest at the nearest police station. The ANC condemned the plans as sensationalist and ill prepared, but the campaign went ahead nonetheless on 21 March. The main focus of activity were the townships near Vereeniging and in Sharpeville Location, clashes with the police left 67 people dead and 186 wounded. Government reaction was to declare a State of Emergency and ban both the ANC and the PAC. It was in this atmosphere that Elwyn Jones QC was sent to South Africa on behalf of the ICJ. He witnessed the proceedings of the Sharpeville inquiry at Vereeniging and attended the Native Commissioner's Court at Forbsburg to hear several cases of pass law offences. Observers from the Black Sash Movement were also present. At the Treason Trial, Albert Luthuli was in his fifth week of giving evidence. This was to be the last visit by an ICJ observer.

Over the four long years since the first arrests, the Treason Trial effectively collapsed. This was not ultimately surprising. It was after all a trial at which Communist subversion could be alleged for declaring 'Comrades, I want to tell you that we serve two sandwiches and a cold drink for sixpence' at a trade union meeting. But in the midst of a State of Emergency, with the accused members of prohibited organisations, its collapse was not foreseen. In March 1961 however, the defendants were found not guilty and discharged, in a vindication of the campaign.

After 1958, Justice itself withdrew from official involvement in overseas observer missions. Incorporation into the ICJ meant a re-focussing of its activities on the rule of law in Britain and the colonies. However the experience of Hungary and South Africa had a lasting effect upon the founder members of Justice, some of whom continued this work in a personal capacity. It strengthened their belief that concern for the rule of law in one's own country was not enough and made Justice one of the most active national sections of the ICJ. As it celebrates its 40th anniversary, Justice remains an organisation with a radical agenda on legal reform and human rights, with a justifiable reputation as the conscience of the legal profession.

Helen Roberts