GOVERNMENT THUGGERY VERSUS COMPASSION -- NO CONTEST

It's not every day, and in fact very seldom indeed that i find myself agreeing with Ann Widdicombe. But today was the exception to the rule. She took exception to the fact that Ronnie Biggs, now 79, in very poor health and unlikely to see many more summers, will not be paroled despite a recommendations from the Parole Board that he should be. Biggs, who is suffering from pneumonia after breaking his hip in a fall, said that "they would seek a judicial review of the Justice Secretary’s decision as soon as possible. " Biggs, who will be 80 next month, has suffered a series of strokes and is unable to speak. He communicates through gestures and by spelling out words with an alphabet board. He is fed through a tube in the stomach and can walk only a few steps unaided.

Mr Straw wrote yesterday to Giovanni di Stefano, who represents Biggs, setting out his reasons for rejecting the parole board's recommendation that Biggs be released. Whitehall sources said that it was unusual for a minister to refuse to accept a parole board’s recommendations for a prisoner serving a fixed term. Mr di Stefano was shocked by the decision. “All the preparations were in place for him to be released,” Mr di Stefano said. “It is a cruel and unusual punishment for him not to be released. Mr Biggs legitimately expected that the parole board’s recommendations would be adhered to.”Straw’s decision was also criticised by a probation leader, the former Prisons Minister Ann Widdecombe, and prison reformers. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation officers’ union, said: “It’s difficult to see how he poses a threat to anyone apart from politicians.”


Ms Widdecombe said: “The prisons are bursting at the seams. The courts are being urged to let burglars go free, but one fairly doddery and very frail old man is being kept in prison. If you have got a prison place, for goodness sake use it to lock up someone who is genuinely a risk to the public.”

I would suggest a few names from this Government who are a greater risk to the public than Ronnie Biggs and Jack "Judge Dread Straw is certainly one of them. Ten years back, i was smuggled into the opening ceremony of the M65 motorway by TV journalists. I was an anti-motorway campaigner and no doubt the TV boys thought that the several hundred police lining the motorway was a grave threat to both the Peach and Jock Strop and hoped that a veteren Greem campaigner would at least add a little balance to what would otherwise be a gungh ho Petrol Fest led by Jack.

I waited patiently till jack had delivered the usual speech about how the motorway would would bring jobs and inward investment and then had the temerity to ask our Jack a question. Before another word could be spoken I was pushed violently to the floor by Government employed thugs. Even the pro-motorway big wigs in the audience were shocked by this and some of them came to my aid when i squared up to my assailents.

The Blair Government had just been elected for its first term and i told the assembled journos that this was a worrying portent of what New Labour would bring. Until that time, in all my years of Green campaigning i had never once experienced any violence from the police or anyone else, even during the Thatcher years.

Not for one moment would i condone robbing trains or using violence but stepping back and looking at the bigger pictures, i see a government and its corporate cronies who have stolen vast sums from both the private and public purse and then come back for more. Even so i at least thought the death sentence had been abolished in this country, that was until Blair and Straw released their Rottweilers.