The prejudice that undoubtedly exists among politicians against juries also comes from a lack of experience of criminal trials. Decades of knocking around the Old Bailey have convinced me that, on the whole, juries take their duties extremely seriously. They listen carefully to the evidence and come to decisions, even on a number of complicated charges, which I may not, as a defender, have liked but which all made logical sense. It was always far easier to get a jury to see themselves in the tradition of participants in a violent fight in the Bricklayers' Arms or at a dubious duel in a garage forecourt, than it was to explain contemporary life to an Old Wykemist, Fellow of All Souls, on the bench. And it was always a pleasure to speak to human beings whose minds were untarnished by legal precedents and who could listen to the voice of humanity.
Juries have one undoubted advantage over lesser tribunals.
They can acquit someone who is technically guilty of an offence which they think trivial or founded on an unjust law. In the course of history, heroic juries have refused to convict Quakers and religious non-conformists although they had broken oppressive laws. Such juries have disobeyed judges although they were bullied, starved and threatened with jail. As recently as 1971, a jury refused to convict on a case which was founded on a ludicrous tradition of the Official Secrets Act. The power of a jury to acquit in a case which they think should never have been brought is now to be denied to huge numbers of our fellow citizens.