Don’t Call It Treason
Charles Johnson
Sun Aug 14, 2005 at 8:26 am PDT • Views: 211
At the Telegraph, Nigel Farndale has an essay on the last man to be executed in Britain for treason (the infamous Nazi propagandist who became known as “Lord Haw Haw”) and argues for a new term to describe the Islamofascist fifth column: Whatever their crime, don’t call it treason.
Sixty years after his sensational trial at the Old Bailey, Lord Haw-Haw is back on the front pages, albeit as a footnote. Senior figures at the Crown Prosecution Service, it seems, have been discussing the possibility of charging British Muslim extremists under the Treason Act. And reporters have been flicking through their encyclopaedias to find out who was the last man to be hanged for high treason.
Lord Haw-Haw - real name William Joyce - was so-called because of the upper class drawl he affected for his “Jairminny Calling” broadcasts. The nickname suited him because he was an eccentric man with a dark sense of humour.
He even found his own trial amusing, regarding it as an elaborate joke at his own expense. He was right to do so, in a way, because it was not only a travesty of justice, but also a farce - and this may be why legal experts with long memories have been shuddering at the news that the Treason Act of 1351 is once more being dusted off for possible use against “preachers of hate”.
To the British sensibility there are few sins more icy than high treason. It is, indeed, the gravest crime known to British law. It follows that, traditionally, the punishment for it was extravagantly harsh. To quote from the original Act: “The prisoner shall be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and, after execution, shall have the head severed from the body, and the body divided into four quarters.”
By the time William Joyce stood trial in 1945, this had been reduced to a mere hanging. And if radical Muslim clerics such as Abu Uzair and Abu Izzadeen were to be found guilty of treason today, they would face nothing more onerous than a prison sentence - the death penalty for high treason having been scrapped in 1999 by Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary. This, no doubt, the clerics would regard as further proof of our national decadence.
Frank says: