Robert Henderson
Thomas Mair has been convicted of the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) . His sentence was a whole life tariff which makes it very unlikely that he will ever be released.
That is the bare bones of the matter, but there is something distinctly odd about this case for the reported facts relating to it do not seem to hang comfortably together. That Mair killed Cox is clear and his ostensible motive for committing the murder , namely, that she was a supporter of the remain side in the EU referendum is established, but precious little is else is satisfactorily explained.
The strangeness of the killing
Mair has no revealed previous history of violence , yet his attack on Cox was both sustained and involved not only the shooting of Cox but multiple stabbings. For a supposed first time killer Mair showed surprisingly little panic or squeamishness when confronted with the actuality of attacking someone in such a physically intimate manner. Instead , he was remarkably self-possessed during the attack and afterwards according to media reports, so much so that when a man called Rashid Hussain tried to intervene during the attack on Cox Mair coolly told him “ Move back, otherwise I’m going to stab you.” He also reloaded his .22 gun twice, shot Cox three times and stabbed her 15 times. Such determined and unflustered behaviour is unusual to say the least for someone who had never done anything like it before. About the only thing amateurish about the attack was the fact that he did not kill the MP quickly.
After the attack, Mair made no meaningful attempt to flee – he was arrested a mile away from the murder – and he did not disguise himself. A number of people witnessed the attack on Cox and as the killing was near Mair’s home the odds against him not being rapidly identified were vanishingly small.
The discontinuity between Mair’s behaviour before the trial and in the trial
After being arrested Mair refused to answer questions put to him by the police including questions about his political leanings. Again he appeared very self-possessed. Photographs showing him in a custody booth could have been taken of a man waiting quietly in a hospital before he is called for an examination.
During the act of killing he was reported to have shouted “Britain first”, “this is for Britain”, “Britain always comes first” and “keep Britain independent” and when he made his first appearance in court he gave his name as Death to Traitors, freedom for Britain”. There is some dispute about the exact words but the discovery of a good deal of hard right literature in his home makes such statements plausible. Mair’s behaviour to this point suggested he wanted to be caught and to use his trial as a platform to complain about the EU and the support MPs such as Cox gave to it.
At his trial everything changed. When called upon to plead he refused to do so and pleas of not guilty to the various charges were entered on his behalf, as is usual in English courts. The refusal to plead could be interpreted as Mair doing what many politically motivated people do when placed on trial, namely, attempt to remove legitimacy from the court by refusing to acknowledge it. However, people who take that course generally, one way or another, make it crystal clear what they are doing. All that Mair offered was silence until he had been convicted for he did not give evidence in his own defence.
What his attitude or strategy was in behaving in this manner is debatable because he can have had no meaningful expectation that the verdict would be anything but t guilty. Hence, he would have had no reason to fear cross examination because the fact that he killed Cox could not be reasonably said to be in dispute and prosecuting counsel would have had little to grill Mair about because the facts of the killing were not in dispute. Mair would have been able to have his own barrister lead him through whatever he wanted to say without much fear of the prosecution making him look silly in cross examination because there would have been precious little the Prosecution could have gained from cross examination as not only were the facts of the killing clear Mair defence did not include any evidence of mental illness.
Mair’s attempt to speak after conviction
After conviction Mair did try to speak before sentence but was refused leave to do so by the judge Mr Justice Wilkie . The ground for the refusal was Mair’s failure to give evidence. This struck me as very rum so I asked an experienced lawyer whether such a refusal was sound judicial practice and their answer was an unequivocal no. The refusal seem more than a little rather strange not least because little if any mitigation was presented by his barrister
The right to make an unsworn sentence before conviction was abolished in England in 1982 (by section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act. However, the Act gave a convicted defendant the right to speak in mitigation, viz:
“2 Abolition of right of accused to make unsworn statement.
(1)Subject to subsections (2) and (3) below, in any criminal proceedings the accused shall not be entitled to make a statement without being sworn, and accordingly, if he gives evidence, he shall do so [F1(subject to sections 55 and 56 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999)] on oath and be liable to cross-examination; but this section shall not affect the right of the accused, if not represented by counsel or a solicitor, to address the court or jury otherwise than on oath on any matter on which, if he were so represented, counsel or a solicitor could address the court or jury on his behalf.
(2)Nothing in subsection (1) above shall prevent the accused making a statement without being sworn—
(a)if it is one which he is required by law to make personally; or
(b)if he makes it by way of mitigation before the court passes sentence upon him.”
Plainly Mair could have wanted to make a plea in mitigation and it would almost certainly have been a plea of mitigation in the sense that he wished to explain his actions which would whatever they were bear on mitigation even if he was to say he thought his action justified because Cox was a traitor for supporting the EU.
The refusal to allow him to speak should have been challenged by his barrister but appears not to have been.
Another oddity of the trial was the reading into evidence, that is, before Mair was convicted, of the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock’s statement about how praisworthy he thought Cox was. That was simply bizarre because it could have no bearing on Mair”s guilt or innocence. Again Mair’s brief appears to have made no protest.
After sentencing there was one last loose end put into the public arena. The police announced that they were trying to find the person, if any, who sold Mair the gun with which he shot Cox. (The gun was legally held by someone other than Mair before it was stolen in August 2015.) By the time of the trial the police had had more than four months to start such a search and it is somewhat surprising that they have made no progress to date. It may even be that the police have only just started looking because the Daily Telegraph on 23 November 2016 stated that “ A major manhunt was underway on Wednesday night for the person who handed the 53-year-old loner the modified bolt-action rifle, which was stolen almost a year before the murder.”
Mair’s silence
What are we to think about Mair’s failure to give evidence? If the man was driven by his politics his natural course would surely have been to make a statement to police detailing his reasons for killing Cox. Moreover, he was distinctly bullish about his motives and politics during the killing and at his first court appearance. He might have been overwhelmed with what he had done and the reality of the circumstances he found himself in. But his calm demeanour after arrest and during the trial itself makes this unlikely and in any case he wanted to speak before sentence.
It is possible although improbable that Mair decided he would refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court by failing to either plead or give evidence until he was convicted and then give whatever message he wanted to put before the public . If so he was thwarted by the judge. I can find no media report which either carried details of a protest in court by Mair at being denied an opportunity to speak or of his barrister making representations on his behalf that he should be allowed to speak. It is conceivable that the media collectively decided not to carry details of Mair protesting or his barrister arguing that he should be allowed to speak, but that would surely be stretching credulity past breaking point.
The only really plausible explanations for Mair’s behaviour would seem to be that he is either mentally ill or that he was intimidated by the authorities into not giving evidence.
Mair’s history of mental illness
One of the most surprising things about the case is that no psychiatric evidence was offered in court. This was noteworthy for two reasons. The first was the obvious one that Mair’s behaviour and the nature of the crime itself was such as to make an assessment of his state of mind necessary if justice was to be seen to be done. The second was the fact that Mair had not only received psychiatric treatment in the past for depression but on the day before the killing he attempted unsuccessfully to get help for that condition.
There is plenty of opportunity within the justice system for mental illness to be picked up. The police have powers to order a psychiatric examination of someone they suspect has a mental illness. The question of fitness to plead may be raised before arraignment by the prosecution, defence or Judge. Requesting psychiatric reports after conviction but before sentencing is often done. It is important to understand that an accused cannot simply declare himself or herself as fit to plead.
Despite all these opportunities there was no psychiatric evidence presented to the court. Of course if Mair instructed his lawyers not to bring his mental health issues in court as a defence or mitigation they could not do so if he was considered fit to plead which he was. However, the court itself could have ordered psychiatric reports before sentencing took place and apparently did not do so.
But if Mair instructed to his lawyers not to use his medical history in the case that would make it all the more extraordinary that he failed to either give evidence or to make a public protest when he was being denied an opportunity to speak.
Had his psychiatric history been used at his trial it is possible it could have made a significant difference to the sentence Mair received . The charge could have been reduced to manslaughter if Mears was judged to have diminished responsibility or lead to a sentence of something less than a whole life term.
Intriguingly the Guardian reported that Mair had undergone a psychiatric examination but no evidence of mental illness was found, a rather surprising conclusion because of the nature of the crime, Mair’s behaviour during the attack and the fact that Mair had been treated for depression. However, the Guardian report does not say who commissioned the assessment.
The behaviour of Mair’s barrister
Judged by the media reports Mair’s barrister Simon Russell-Flint QC was virtually inert throughout the trial. He challenged only one minor point of the prosecution’s evidence, did not bring any evidence on behalf of Mair and failed to challenge the judge’s refusal to allow Mair to speak after sentence. H
A barrister’s attempt at explaining Russell-Flint’s behaviour can be found here.
It is worth noting that Mair received £75,000 in legal aid for his defence. It would be fascinating to see the detailed breakdown of how the money was spent.
What the British state had to gain from Mair’s silence
The alternative explanation that state actors have frightened Mair into keeping quiet raises the question what did they have to gain? The British elite are very twitchy about having trials in which those charged with breaches of the totalitarian ideology known as political correctness are unwilling to plead guilty. Moreover, even those who do plead not guilty very rarely rest their defence on the right to free expression seeking instead to blame their behaviour on things such as the side effects of prescription drugs. Often those who start off with a not guilty plea will be gradually worn down by officialdom until they agree to plead guilty. A first rate example of this is the case of Emma West who, after complaining on a tram about the level of immigration, was first held in the UK’s nearest to a maximum security prison for women and, after being given bail , was then harassed for months simply because she would not plead guilty. Eventually worn down by the delay and fearing that her young son might be taken away from her, she pleaded guilty to some lesser charges than those originally laid.
The reason why our politically correct powers-that -be fear a not guilty plea in such cases is they do not want their willingness to suppress free expression attacked or simply made starkly visible in a public forum or for those in the dock to challenge the politically correct view of the world. Part of the politically correct narrative is that political correctness does not impinge on free expression. This is self-evidently absurd, but it is an essential plank in the enforcement of political correctness. For the politically correct to say otherwise would be to undermine their crand show it nakedly for what it is, a totalitarian creed which insists the only acceptable view of anything which political correctness touches is the politically correct one. In principle this means everything important in human existence because the concept of discrimination lays every aspect of life open to intrusion by the ideology. No totalitarian ideology can survive if it is questioned and political correctness is more vulnerable to intellectual demolition than most because it is series of injunctions which conflict horribly with human nature .
It could have been this elite fear of having political correctness challenged which prompted the judge to refuse Mair leave to address the court. Mair’s case was of course very different from those prosecuted for non-pc speech because of his undisputed crime of murder, but the threat of someone calling those with power who supported the UK’s membership traitors, as Mair most probably would have done judged by his previous public statements during the killing and his first court appearance, might have seemed a little too close to home for our politicians in particular to view with equanimity. Treason is a unique crime. Whether it is on the statute book or not, whether it is formally defined one way or another, everyone knows in their heart of hearts what it is, the most heartrending of emotional blows, namely, betrayal.
There was also the possibility of elite fear of what one might call the Anders Breivik effect. If Mair had spoken in court and given a purely political motive for the killing and justified on the grounds that Cox was committing treason this would almost certainly this would have created an ambivalent response amongst the public. The British experience with Irish terrorism are a good example of the tendency where Irish Republicans would often say after a bombing atrocity “I don’t approve of their methods but….” There would have been condemnation of the act of killing of course, but along with that in quite a few minds there would be a sense that Mair’s political reason for the attack, that he was killing a traitor, somehow softened the purely criminal sharpness of the deed. There will also be a hard core of those who were unambiguously glad to see her dead . A piece of research carried out by Birmingham City and Nottingham Trent Universities on tweets about the murder of Cox found that at least 25,000 out of 50,000 tweets studied celebrated her death.
A silent or at least a Mair not allowed to speak publicly is a perfect fit to fill two roles for the UK’s politically correct elite’s narrative. First, he could be typified as the type of person the remain side of the referendum said was the typical leave voter, someone who was ignorant and potentially violent; second he could be pointed at as a “far right” terrorist to balance against the many Muslim terrorists. This has already happened : here are a few example links one, two, three .
There is also the possibility that the security services or the police knew about Mair and did not take any action because they hoped that he might do something which would promote the idea of that those who wanted to leave the EU are dangerous extreme rightwingers . It is conceivable although very improbable , that in some way the security services surreptitiously encouraged Mair to attack Cox to feed into the general propaganda of the pro-EU side of the Brexit referendum that portrayed leavers as racist far right know-nothings. More plausibly the security services might thought that Mair would not do anything more than engage in a public protest or perhaps a bit of criminal damage and they seriously misjudged the situation. It would be very damaging if that was the case and they had been forced to admit such a thing in the witness box.
There are those who believe that state actors or possibly fanatical remainers arranged the killing to play into the remainer propaganda that Breiteers were racist far righters. This is wildly improbable for three reasons. First, the large the number of people who would have to be engaged in such a conspiracy; second, if such a plot existed why would a novice MP with little public profile be selected to die?
Then there is the idea that Cox is not dead and the killing was in fact a sham. Only one question really needs to be asked here, namely, why on Earth would Cox have agreed to taking part in such a plot? The number of people who would have had to be in on the plot would have had to even greater than those in an actually killing arranged by the state or fanatical remainers.
Finally, there is the idea that the man who was convicted as Thomas Mair was not Thomas Mair’ but someone else who is presumably playing a part. This theory can be easily struck down. Photos of Mair when he was younger and as he was when arrested are claimed by supporters of the substitution theory to show two different people. In fact, they do the opposite,. Both photos show a similar growth on the right cheek ; the eye colour is the same, the shape of the distinctive nose is the same, and the hair colour is the same. There is also the fact that if the person who was convicted was not Mair everyone who knew him, including Mair’s relatives, would have had to refrain from pointing this out, an absurd idea.
What is the chance of British elite behaving badly?
What is the chance of the British elite behaving badly. Well, consider the case of the Liberal MP Cyril Smith. Smith admitted to the then leader of the Liberal Party David Steel that when involved with the Cambridge House boys hostel he had both spanked boys with their pants down and conducted what he euphemistically called medical examinations on the boys . Steel took no action and Smith remained within the Party and an MP.
One thing is certain about this case, we have not heard anything like the whole truth about it. We are being asked to believe that a politically motivated killer of his own volition steadfastly failed to use his capture and trial to send a political message to the public. It makes no sense.
Living In A Madhouse 