An unnamed defendant stands accused of murder. Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech.He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out. Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he's going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth.There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in our hands. We, the reader – member of the jury – must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions... but at the end of the speeches, only one matters:Did he do it?
To Shahida who gave me life
To Sadia who changed my life
To Zoha who made my life
To all my brothers and sisters at the Criminal Bar, who make the real speeches and fight the hard cases every day, for such little recognition or reward
IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT T2017229
Before: HIS HONOUR JUDGE SALMON QC
Closing Speeches:
Trial: Day 29
Tuesday 4thJuly 2017
APPEARANCES
For the Prosecution: Mr C. Salfred QC
For the Defendant: In person
Transcribed from a digital audio recording by
T. J. Nazarene Limited
Official Court Reporters and Tape Transcribers
DEFENDANT:
“In 1850, Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston, made a speech to Parliament that lasted five hours. A Portuguese Jew called Don Pacifico who was living in Greece but who was born in Gibraltar had been attacked by a racist mob. He had been beaten. His home had been vandalized. His possessions had been stolen. The Greek police had watched all of this happen but had done nothing. Don Pacifico asked for compensation from the Greek government. The Greek government refused to give him anything. So he appealed to the British.
“What did Palmerston do? Palmerston considered this Gibraltan Jew to be a British subject. So he sent a whole squadron of Royal Navy ships to Athens to block its port. After eight weeks the Greek government paid up. It was when he was challenged by a hostile crowd in Parliament that Palmerston made his five-hour speech. In it he said, ‘A British subject ought everywhere to be protected by the strong arm of the British government against injustice and wrong.’
“That is what it meant to be British then. In them days. Sorry, in those days, I’m a bit nervous. In those days if you were a British citizen, it did not matter if you were a Jew or Portuguese or a Gibraltan or whatever else. It was enough that you were a British subject. It was enough that wherever you were in the world, if harm came to you, you could count on the full might of all of England to come to your aid. This Palmerston, he sent a fleet of ships for one man!
“That is what England would do for just one of its men – even if he was a nobody Jew like Don Pacifico – the whole of England for one man. One hundred and sixty years later and this black Englishman can count on none of England. None of it. I can count on none of it except this tiny bit of it here in this room. For me, this is all of England right here. You are all of England and I need you now. I need the strong arm of your protection against injustice and wrong. I need you. I need you. I need you. And you need me. You need me so that you can be all of England.”
Basically that is as far as I got up to. Then I thought to myself, ‘What is the point?’ I ain’t no Lord Palmerston and no five-hour speech from me is going to start you cheering my corner. I ain’t stupid. I know that no speech is going to get me out of this. But you know what? It was worth reading that bit out just to see your faces. I don’t mean it as joke ting, but like as a thing to shake you up. You never knew that I could speak like a professor is it? But I just wanted you to know that there’s more than just that one side to me that you lot saw when I was giving evidence. I wanted to maybe, I don’t know, surprise you. And let me tell you there’s some surprises coming your way.
So maybe this is the first surprise. Why am I standing here doing this speech instead of my barrister? Why did I decide to stand before you all and tell it in my words? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t upset with him or nothing like that. It was more that we had a difference of opinions on certain subjects and I’ve got certain like extra information that he don’t know.
Like I’ll give you an example. You remember when I gave my evidence a couple of days back? Well that was one of them things we had opinions about. He wanted me to tell you what he called a ‘plausible story’. ‘Give them what they need to hear,’ he goes to me. So I go to him, ‘Nah bruv, I want to give them what they don’t want to hear from me, the truth.’ But he didn’t like that too much. ‘It’s too rich for them,’ he was saying, ‘it’s too rich for their blood.’
