Patriotic Political Prisoner or Not?
Kevan James
October 22, 2024
Political motivation or justice?
Any death is tragic. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what they have done or not done.
Death is something many people don't really understand, even when it strikes somebody to whom they are close. They do get the idea that the deceased isn't there anymore, that their voice will never be heard again. That much is self evident.
But the concept of death, the idea of death, isn't something that we generally are very comfortable with. We don't understand it and never will until we personally experience it.
That's because death is very final. There is no coming back from it.
That's why we should never re-introduce the death penalty for crimes in the UK. No matter what the checks and balances, no matter how robust a system we devise, the possibility will still exist that a mistake will be made and an innocent person will die.
Peter Lynch was such an innocent person. Not because he didn't offend - he did. But was his 'crime' so awful that he deserved two-and-half-years in prison? It was not. Did he deserve to die behind bars? Of course he didn't.
He was not doing anything overtly violent, he was not threatening to directly harm anybody. He might well have been shouting bad things, he might well have directed insults at the Police (never a good idea) and he may well have gone on to present a threat had the right - or wrong - circumstances arisen. He may well therefore have deserved a sanction of some kind and his sentence may also have been within sentencing guidelines. But was the sentence right? Was it appropriate?
No. It was not. Had he received a more just sentence he would still be alive today. And he isn't alive because there can be little doubt of a political motive behind the kind of sentences handed out to some of those involved in the rioting and protests seen as a result of children being killed at the hands of a murderer.
Rioters throw planks of wood at the police outside a hotel
Joel Goodman/London News Pictures
I've seen mass protests before. I've been at them, doing my job as a card-carrying journalist and writing of what I saw. I've seen people at football matches directly involved in offences of violence, and I've seen some of those involved in both, arrested and subsequently jailed for them. They deserved it. But none, not a single one, carried the severity of the terms of imprisonment handed down to Peter Lynch (and others, not least for what they posted on social media).
Many will have seen footage of a man smashing the windows of a Greggs outlet. Did that man deserve prison? Quite possibly. We saw people breaking into the hotel to which illegal entrants had been sent and setting fires - with people still inside. Did those people specifically deserve incarceration? I think they did.
We have seen outright violence and wanton destruction of property. We have seen people threatened directly with violent assault. All of those genuinely guilty of such behaviour must be condemned for it and I do so unreservedly.
But Peter Lynch was not one of them and there is no suggestion he was. If it should emerge that he was directly involved in violence against another person or property then a prison sentence could be appropriate. But such a fact - and it must be fact - has not been revealed.
He was no shrinking violet and had a chequered past. His conduct at the protest concerned was wrong. But that doesn't matter. What matters is a 61-year-old Grandfather is dead because of political motivation.
And that is what does matter.
© Kevan James 2024
Top Image - Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
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