SLOW JUSTICE
Why does legislation which clearly rights injustice, or introduces obvious improvements, or treats the individual with understanding, or in any other way must clearly be of advantage, take such an interminable time to reach the statute books?
The farcically classic case is the decimalisation of British coinage. The first move towards this obvious reform came in 1849, with the introduction of the florin, value one tenth of a pound. Thereafter bill, proposal, and agitation came and went: but nothing happened for one hundred and twenty years, until a gigantic struggle managed to bludgeon through a stupid House the Decimal Currency Act of 1969.
So with the Married Women's Property Act. Previous to this a married woman lost all rights to her property, which passed automatically to her husband, and many husbands are on record of exploiting this whip hand without mercy. The scandalous Norton case brought it to public attention, but it was a further fifty years before this gross injustice was set right.
A widower was forbidden to marry the sister of his dead wife, even though she was frequently the obvious person to care for him, so they had to choose between giving up this opportunity or Living in Sin. It took another fifty years of agitation before anything was done to remove this nasty little prohibition - and why? You've guessed it - it was written into the Book of Common Prayer; religious, and therefore infallible.
The Wolfenden Report proposed sensible reforms to the laws on homosexuality, which had long been a gross invasion of human rights. Oscar Wilde's was only the most prominent among many thousands of lives destroyed in one way or another by this bigotry. Yet once it had been published it took ten years of arduous campaigning to get this level-headed approach on to the statute books.
And today? Many lives end in torture, degradation, and misery, because those suffering are not allowed to choose to end them peacefully. Sooner or later this stubborn denial of the individual's right to control his own life will no longer be enforceable, and men will wonder that we have put up with it so long. But meanwhile the prolonged struggle goes on, wresting a little relief here, a slight softening of revenge there. In the House of Lords noble gentlemen quote statistics showing the degrading effect of reform on societies where it exists - all totally inaccurate and refutable, and bishops maunder on about the sacredness of human life. Quietly the sensible and humane mine away in the dark tunnel. Eventually they will blow the whole conspiracy of silence to the sky.
But I shall not live to see it. I can only hope, like all of us, that my end will not be too painful or degrading.
Why does legislation which clearly rights injustice, or introduces obvious improvements, or treats the individual with understanding, or in any other way must clearly be of advantage, take such an interminable time to reach the statute books?
The farcically classic case is the decimalisation of British coinage. The first move towards this obvious reform came in 1849, with the introduction of the florin, value one tenth of a pound. Thereafter bill, proposal, and agitation came and went: but nothing happened for one hundred and twenty years, until a gigantic struggle managed to bludgeon through a stupid House the Decimal Currency Act of 1969.
So with the Married Women's Property Act. Previous to this a married woman lost all rights to her property, which passed automatically to her husband, and many husbands are on record of exploiting this whip hand without mercy. The scandalous Norton case brought it to public attention, but it was a further fifty years before this gross injustice was set right.
A widower was forbidden to marry the sister of his dead wife, even though she was frequently the obvious person to care for him, so they had to choose between giving up this opportunity or Living in Sin. It took another fifty years of agitation before anything was done to remove this nasty little prohibition - and why? You've guessed it - it was written into the Book of Common Prayer; religious, and therefore infallible.
The Wolfenden Report proposed sensible reforms to the laws on homosexuality, which had long been a gross invasion of human rights. Oscar Wilde's was only the most prominent among many thousands of lives destroyed in one way or another by this bigotry. Yet once it had been published it took ten years of arduous campaigning to get this level-headed approach on to the statute books.
And today? Many lives end in torture, degradation, and misery, because those suffering are not allowed to choose to end them peacefully. Sooner or later this stubborn denial of the individual's right to control his own life will no longer be enforceable, and men will wonder that we have put up with it so long. But meanwhile the prolonged struggle goes on, wresting a little relief here, a slight softening of revenge there. In the House of Lords noble gentlemen quote statistics showing the degrading effect of reform on societies where it exists - all totally inaccurate and refutable, and bishops maunder on about the sacredness of human life. Quietly the sensible and humane mine away in the dark tunnel. Eventually they will blow the whole conspiracy of silence to the sky.
But I shall not live to see it. I can only hope, like all of us, that my end will not be too painful or degrading.
