Joyce Lee Malcolm Column: Our homes are still our castles
Joyce Lee Malcolm Column: Our homes are still our castles
Date: Oct 31, 2004 10:52 AM
Where I come from, our homes are still our castles
By Joyce Lee Malcolm
(Filed: 31/10/2004)
If someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night you can presume he is
not there to read the gas meter. But current British law insists that he have the
freedom of the premises. When, last Christmas, thousands of Radio 4′s Today listeners
called for legislation authorising them to protect their homes by any means necessary,
the proposal was immediately denounced as a “ludicrous, brutal, unworkable,
blood-stained piece of legislation”. Until recently that “unworkable,
blood-stained” legislation was the law of the land. There was no need to retreat
from your home, or from any room within it. An Englishman’s home was his refuge,
and, indeed, his castle.
But no more. Rather than permitting people to protect themselves, the authorities’
response to the recent series of brutal attacks on home-owners has been to advise
people to get more locks and, in case of a break-in, retreat to a secure room –
presumably the bathroom – to call the police. They are not to keep any weapon for
protection or approach the intruder. Someone might get hurt. If that someone is
the intruder the resident will be sued by the burglar and vigorously prosecuted
by the state. I heartily applaud The Sunday Telegraph’s campaign to end this lamentable
state of affairs.
Happily for us Americans, English common law prevails in the US; our homes are still
our castles. Californians, for example, are entitled to use force to protect themselves
and their property. Legislation in Oklahoma which allowed the home-owner to use
force no matter how slight the threat has reduced burglary by nearly half since
it was passed 15 years ago. What British police condemn as “vigilante”
behaviour has produced an American burglary rate less than half the English rate.
And, while 53 per cent of English burglaries occur when someone is at home, only
13 per cent do in America, where burglars admit to fearing armed home-owners more
than the police. Violent crime in the US is at a 30-year low.
Whatever became of the Englishman’s castle? He did not lose the right and means
to protect himself at once. It was teased away over the course of some 80 years
by governments claiming to be fighting crime, but actually fearful of revolution
and disorder. When the policy began, crime was rare. For almost 500 years, until
1954, England and Wales enjoyed a declining rate of violent crime. In the last years
of the 19th century, when there were no restrictions on guns, there was just one
handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million people. In 1904 there were
only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world.
The practical removal of the right to self defence began with Britain’s 1920 Firearms
Act, the first serious limitation on privately-owned firearms. It was motivated
by fear of a Bolshevik-type revolution rather than concerns about householders defending
themselves against robbers. Anyone wanting to keep a firearm had to get a certificate
from his local police chief certifying that he was a suitable person to own a weapon
and had a good reason to have it. The definition of “good reason”, left
to the police, was gradually narrowed until, in 1969, the Home Office decided “it
should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of
his house or person”. Since these guidelines were classified until 1989, there
was no opportunity for public debate.
Self defence within the home was also progressively legislated against. The 1953
Prevention of Crime Act made it illegal to carry in a public place any article “made,
adapted or intended” for an offensive purpose “without lawful authority
or reasonable excuse”. Any item carried for defence was, by definition, an
“offensive” weapon. Police were given broad power to stop and search anyone.
Individuals found with offensive weapons were guilty until proven innocent. The
scope is so broad that a standard legal textbook explains that “any article
is capable of being an offensive weapon”. The public were told that society
would protect them and their neighbours. If they saw someone being attacked they
were to walk on by, and leave it to the professionals.
Finally, in 1967, tucked into an omnibus revision of criminal law, approved without
discussion, was a section that altered the traditional standards for self-defence.
Everything was to depend on what seemed “reasonable” force after the fact.
It was never deemed reasonable to defend property with force. According to the Textbook
of Criminal Law the requirement that an individual’s efforts to defend himself be
“reasonable” is “now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt
on whether it still forms part of the law”. Another legal scholar found it
“unthinkable” that “Parliament should inadvertently have swept aside
the ancient privilege of self defence. Had such a move been debated it is unlikely
that members would have sanctioned it.” She was confident that Parliament would
quickly set things right: “In view of the inadequacy of existing law there
is some urgency here.” That plea was written 30 years ago, and the situation
is infinitely more urgent now.
At the same time as government demanded sole responsibility for protecting individuals,
it adopted a more lenient approach toward offenders. Sentences were sharply reduced,
few offenders served more than a third or a half of their term, and fewer offenders
were incarcerated. Further, they were to be protected from their victims. Tony Martin,
the Norfolk farmer jailed for killing one burglar and wounding another, was denied
parole because he posed a danger to other burglars. “It cannot possibly be
suggested,” the government lawyers argued, “that members of the public
cease to be so whilst committing criminal offences” adding, “society can
not possibly condone their (unlawful) murder or injury”.
Meanwhile, much of rural Britain is without a police presence. And the statutes
meant to protect the people have been vigorously enforced against them. Among the
articles people have been convicted of carrying for self defence are a sandbag,
a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper.
This trade-off of rights for security has been disastrous for both. Crime has rocketed.
A UN study in 2002 of 18 developed countries placed England and Wales at the top
of the Western world’s crime league. Five years after the sweeping 1998 ban on handguns,
handgun crime had doubled. As was forecast at the time, the effect of outlawing
handguns has been that only outlaws have handguns.
In recent years governments have even felt it necessary to prevent the public from
defending themselves with imitation weapons. In 1994 an English home-owner, armed
with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while
he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the home-owner for
using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following
year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths
who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the
police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.
The impact on law-abiding citizens has been stark. With no way to protect themselves,
millions of Britons live in fear. Elderly people are afraid to go out and afraid
to stay in. Self defence, wrote William Blackstone, the 18th-century jurist, is
a “natural right that no government can deprive people of, since no government
can protect the individual in his moment of need”. This Government insists
upon having a monopoly on the use of force, but can only impose it upon law-abiding
people. By practically eliminating self defence, it has removed the greatest deterrent
to crime: a people able to defend themselves.
Joyce Lee Malcolm is Professor of History at Bentley College, Massachusetts, and
Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program. Her book, Guns and Violence – the
English Experience, is published by Harvard University Press.
