1. “A worm, you say…!!! Would that we were all like tigers…!!! Well, we would most certainly make short work of life’s perplexing challenges. Indeed, there would be none to stop us. What a pity the real world is not that simple! Or is it? Listen: As odd as it may sound, though you are a lowly worm, O citizen, but you have teeth to thrash mountains, and beat them small.” Thus was my very forceful answer to Ms Chloe Chang, one of my adult students in Taipei, Taiwan; we were engaged in a heated debate on the implications of citizenship in an open and free society, and how an ordinary citizen may influence society in a myriad of ways for the better. The debate was occasioned by a quotation. Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi war criminals, is on record to have said, “It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”
2. I replied with such strength of passion that I almost sprayed Ms Chloe Chang with saliva, following an observation she had made a few moments earlier: “It has been said,” she said, “and this has been said by people I respect very much, that much depends on the character of the individual, since courage does not run evenly to all men but upon a phenomenon mysterious to us; for some men are born worms, whereas others are born tigers. I consider myself to be just a little worm; it would be presumptuous, and yes, in vain, for me to aspire to lofty things, anything of consequence. Indeed, I am one of those people who have nothing to give. You must understand Stephen, a little worm such as I am, cannot be expected to embody the citizenship attributes you speak of, the kind that make life worthwhile, meaningful and significant. That, sir, in my part of the world, is the preserve of tigers!”
The Nematode worm of Buckingham
3. I so profoundly disagree! Any one of us can be an active member of society, exhibiting all the attributes of citizenship. And the best of it is, the finest citizens are not necessarily natural born tigers; though tigers have their place in the great scheme of things, but ordinary men and women, that is, ordinary people like you and me, the very worms you speak of so disparagingly, are capable of the most sublime and extraordinary things. I know it to be true; I have had the privilege of personally meeting some of these citizen worms in the flesh. The worms I have had the pleasure of knowing are ordinary men and women in England, I am sure such worms exist in other societies too; these particular worms I personally know have risked much, including their reputations, some even risked their careers and money to come my aid, when I was in sore distress as a penniless refugee. I would not be speaking to you today were it not for these worms; they really have teeth, I have seen them with my own eyes thrash seemingly insurmountable mountains of trouble, and beat them small.
4. You may recall that in 2017, I wrote about a certain character, Charlie the Honey Badger of Buckingham. He is, in a peculiar way, a representative of a certain strand of men and women I met in England. It would be unfair on all men and women in England if I let his portrait stand as the last word on their character. Let me now introduce to you the counter-part to Charlie the Honey Badger of Buckingham. Let us call him the ‘Nematode worm of Buckingham’ in the interest of completeness. He represents a certain breed of men and women in England, whose kind may be found in any society, in any country, including Taiwan; you only have to look hard enough to see this particular breed, they are impressive creatures really. I am personally acquainted with this unique Nematode worm of Buckingham: it has been my joy to see him at work, both at close quarters and from afar – battling human suffering by patience, triumphing in his integrity and who, when his feet are bleeding and his limbs drooping with weariness as it were, still stands tall and walks upon his courage. His name is Mr John Cornwall. I must now give a short biographical account of his life, mentioning but two specific instances.
Mr. John Cornwall (2017) – The Nematode Worm of Buckingham
In a bit of pickle abroad
5. One sultry summer’s day in 2002. Working as I was in my little study at number 15 North End Square, an old English Cottage my wife and I rented in Buckingham; it was nothing special really, but reasonably comfortable. I heard a gentle knock on our front door downstairs. I remember thinking maybe it was some travelling Gypsy palmist wanting to read my palm, to tell me what the future held for me in exchange for a little money. It was quite normal in those days for travelling Gypsies to pass through Buckingham doing all sorts of things including reading people’s palms. There was a time when I would have readily agreed to learn what the future held for me – no longer; for I know that no man can foretell the future, but God; my hope is in God alone. I was, for that reason, hesitant to answer the door. But the gentle knock persisted. Reluctantly, I went downstairs to answer the door and there, before me, stood a retired school master, whose acquaintance I had made on or about a year earlier, he had even attended our wedding in 2001. He had a look of thunder about him and I knew straight away he wanted to talk about something really important. I invited John into the sitting room, and he begun to tell me a curious tale involving three young Britons in a bit of pickle abroad; for they had been caught up in an Egyptian swoop, which had rounded up some 80 individuals in a government crackdown on Islamic groups, following the September 11 Terrorist atrocity in the United States of America.
6. I remember thinking how strange it was for English young men, and by ‘English’ I speak very advisedly given the current climate now existing in England; that they should get mixed up in some shadowy Islamic group, getting arrested on terrorism offences, so soon after the worst terrorist attack on US soil; the thought of it gave me the heebie-jeebies. It is easy to forget, writing as one is in 2018, how huge an event September 11 was in 2001. I remember the day very well. I was in the main lecture theatre at BPP Law School, in Holborn, London; I think we were in a Civil Litigation class, as the whole tragedy unfolded on the big television screens in the lecture theatre; for some unknown reason, the live news feed cut in, interrupting the class. The class had to stop abruptly, as we were all, students and lecturer alike, shaken by the spectacle of four passenger jet liners, operated by United Airlines and American Airlines transformed into flying bombs. I recall seeing on television two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 slam into North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Centre. There was general panic because no one knew what was going on; we did not know whether the entire western world was under attack simultaneously, would London for example be next…no one knew! BPP Law School carried on as best as she could at the time. But when the dust settled down several days later, it transpired that 2,996 people had been killed, with over 6,000 people injured, and much damage to property worth in the billions of dollars had resulted. Truly, I remember thinking, only a madman would want to meddle with Islamic terrorist groups regardless of nationality.
The rise of the poisonous ‘Un-British’ sentiment
7. I was right about the heebie-jeebies. As I have written elsewhere in: “How the stupidity of English officialism played right into Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech; to devastating effect,” – the continuing official ambivalence towards ethnic minorities, coupled with a lack of a coherent and meaningful immigration policy in England was in effect, a form of sleep walking into a nightmarish situation that was wholly home-grown. Before September 11, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction with the so-called race relations and multiculturalism in England. But September 11 poured fuel on the flames ignited by the said rumblings, reawakened old ethnic xenophobia, with a renewed and enhanced prejudice this time directed mainly at Muslims. And that fire, once lit, has proved then as now difficult to extinguish. What one has to understand when dealing with race related issues, that facts in of themselves are neutral; it is the interpretation placed upon them that raises problems. While on their own facts cannot be racists per se, but the way they are spoken of certainly can. Indeed, the problem with ‘facts’ is the predominant tendency to racialize them; to ascribe meaning to an event such as September 11 and subsequent events around the world, in the absence of any other information can be disastrous. Thus people in certain groups are said to do things because, as the case was at the time, they’re Muslims. It was therefore not surprising that the media in general started portraying ‘South Asian Muslims’ for example, as the ‘alien other’ and they were not British enough, some said; thus the poisonous ‘Un-British’ sentiment grew and fed into the general atmosphere of ‘Islamophobia.’ It was open season: ignorance, prejudicial comments about Islam and its followers, had become part of the cultural and political landscape in England by the time John came calling. This then was the background – a very difficult background indeed!
8. But that was not the half of it: John’s knock on our door came at the time of much celebration in our household. That summer, the Bar Vocational Course (now Bar Professional Training Course) examination results had been published, and I had passed. It was a considerable achievement for a penniless refugee who had had his education interrupted over many years, nearly 10 years after completing the LLB programme in 1993, at the Buckingham University Law School. I was scheduled to be called to the Bar of England and Wales by my Inn, the Inner Temple, that October. So you can imagine being confronted with an ‘Everest Mountain’ of a problem John wanted solved at such a time. The problem, if not managed well; that is, if I had been foolish enough to be seduced to play the role of the ‘Knight in shining armour’ riding to the rescue of a damsel in distress as it were, there was a very good prospect that it could have spelled the end of my membership at the Bar before it had even started. However, much as I did not know John that well at the time (I now know him a lot better), I was nevertheless struck by his sincerity. It was his voice. I had no doubt he was the sort of Christian St Paul exhorts us to be in his powerful writings, namely, we must be a Christian both in word and deed. I saw a sincere Christian in John Cornwall; and he reminded me of an old Quaker friend in Cheltenham, Mr Dennis Mitchell, with whom I had many dealings over the years. Dennis, who is sadly deceased, had a habit of collecting about him ‘lost causes;’ I was one of his lost causes for a while. The thought of Dennis (he was one of my circle of friends who stood by me) compelled me to look on the bright side of things, even though I was not any the wiser as how best to help. This was difficult; I felt my mouth dry up, perhaps due to enviousness.
A Northampton boy – born and bred
9. Displaying all the conflicting emotions of a virtuous maiden selling her honour for really handy ready cash at a dimly lit street somewhere in Kings Cross District of London, I resolved to help, not knowing how the story would play out; there was no monetary exchange. I offered to play the role of a sounding board given the peculiar position I was in at the time. The strange thing is: we are, by the grace of God, still working together even as I write in 2018. I promised John that although I could not offer counsel in any meaningful way, as I was still a student at the time; but I would nevertheless assist in researching the matter or matters arising and point him in the right direction. And, as is the case with all barristers, the conversation that followed rapidly descended into an impromptu cross-examination, as I was anxious to ascertain precisely what had happened in Egypt. I started by asking, “In your own words John, please tell me how you got mixed up with these people…how do you know them?”
10. “It’s the Nisbets’ boy,” he said, “A Northampton boy – born and bred. I know the family very well. They are a Christian family, but their son converted to Islam, after falling in love with a beautiful Muslim girl, Humera Yahya. The boy took on a Muslim name, Yehiya. We now know him as Yehiya Nisbet.” As John got into his stride unfolding before me the story, I couldn’t help but notice that this was the first time in my life I had heard of an English Christian person converting to Islam in the name of love. The saying, “Love will always find a way,” is evidently true. But true love is also costly. John continued: “Yehiya Nisbet and his London friend, Reza Pankhurst, ran an internet company in Egypt. Apparently, they were rounded up by the Egyptian authorities for belonging to an illegal organisation, Hizb-ut-Tahrir. A third young man was also arrested along with them, his name is, Maajid Nawaz. He is British or shall I say, English. He is from Westcliff-on-sea, Essex. The sad thing for me is that all three of them are married with little children.” But what is “Hizb-ut-Tahrir? I’ve never heard of the organisation. What do they do?” I asked naively. “I too had never heard of it until this incident,” John answered, “But it turns out that Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a pan-Islamist political organisation, whose object is to re-establish the ‘Islamic Caliphate.’ It is legal in Britain, but is outlawed in Egypt after it tried to overthrow the Egyptian government in the 1970s. Any group not approved or endorsed by the government is outlawed.” John continued to explain to me the ‘ins and outs’ of the saga, and the long and short of it, we agreed to work together, along with Amnesty International and the British Foreign Office: first to get to the bottom of what really was going on in Egypt; and, second, to determine the best practical help we can offer.
11. All three were in the end adopted by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience, after it emerged that they had all been tortured; some with electric shocks, and had had confessions beaten out of them. They were all sentenced by the Egyptian Special Security Court in 2004 to five years in prison. Legal opinion at the time was that there was no realistic prospect of successfully appealing the sentence and that the only option available to them was diplomatic pressure from Britain. This view was confirmed by a Foreign Office contact John was acquainted with, and the official added that the only option open to John and friends was to petition the Egyptian president; for the president had the power to either ratify the court’s decision or order a retrial. Thus begun the battle to free the young men; we came to know them as, ‘The Egyptian Three.’ But who is John Cornwall, this magnificently significant Nematode worm?
John Cornwall, the magnificently significant Nematode worm
12. John was received into the world at the tail end of the Great Slump, on 13 June 1933, at number 4 High Street in Buckingham, Buckinghamshire. The Great Slump, also known as the Great Depression, was the largest and probably the most profound economic depression in British history. Like the lately concluded Major Financial Crisis of 2008, the Great Depression originated in the United States of America, and spread rapidly around the world. The worst affected parts in the United Kingdom were the industrial and mining regions in the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Unemployment reached nearly 70% in some areas of Britain, some 3.5 million Britons were out of work at the depth of the Great Slump in 1932, and many families depended on local government payments, the ‘Dole,’ for income. This was a time of great upheaval in Britain and, because Buckinghamshire was one of the few counties in England to emerge relatively unscathed, many people, especially those from the north of England, migrated to the area and settled. It is probable that our friend, Charlie the Honey Badger’s father was one of the migrants from the North East of England to settle in the county, in Buckingham Town.
13. In addition to the Great Slump, John’s childhood was marked by the legacy of the First Great War both at school and in the home. He was part of the ‘Aftermath’ generation and it is likely his father and many male members of his extended family would have had some experience of the First Great War. Many young men returning from the Great War, they were the mainstay of the then British Army; and, as returning war veterans, were encouraged to marry as marriage was in those days considered beneficial to them and society; because marriage was a source of emotional stability. Marriages in the 1930s were, I think, the highest ever to be recorded in British modern history. The institution of marriage was encouraged all round. It is therefore not surprising that John’s father, a butcher, met his mother, the daughter of a Congregational minister, at a dance at the Buckingham Town Hall; they were introduced by the son of the Congregational Church organist. John’s mother was a great catch for his father; for she had trained as a nurse, and worked at Great Ormond Street and Guy’s Hospitals.
Drinking at the fountain of the Congregational Church minister
14. As insects take the colour of the leaves they feed on, the same may be said of children; for children, especially in their early youth, when the eye is probably their most effectual tool for acquiring knowledge, they unconsciously imitate what they see. Childhood for John was his very influential strong ‘Liberal’ grandfather, the Rev. C. J. Martin, more than both his father and mother; his grandfather was a happy man, hopeful and confident in God. Those lovely afternoons I shared with John at his current home in Buckingham, and oh my, how he regaled me with stories about his grandfather’s work, and how his work influenced others both at home and abroad! Of his grandfather and his childhood John remembers above all the sermons: the humanitarian principles he espoused, coming as they did against the background of the rise of ‘Fascist’ politics in Europe and Nazism in German; and the subsequent struggle to free Europe. John spoke very fondly of his childhood, listening to extraordinary tales told by adults visiting the family home, of evacuees billeted at his home, including a former German POW who stayed with them for a season; he went on to become a firm family friend. “You see Stephen,” I can hear John speaking in his inimitable Buckinghamshire accent, even as I write; “Our home hosted every Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales; every missionary on furlough and the Provincial Moderator.” The Provincial Moderator, Rev John Phillips, was according to John’s recollections, part of the a delegation appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Fisher (1946-1954), to go South Africa for a three month trip in the early part of the 1950s, to investigate the effects of apartheid; apparently, their report may have influenced the Church of England to formally oppose apartheid in South Africa.
15. Thus, every act he witnessed or word heard as a child, carried with it an influence so powerful that it extended over, and gave a colour, not only to the whole of his adult life, but made itself felt upon the local community in which John would in the succeeding years come to call home. It was therefore not surprising to hear spoken of him, during a proposal to make John an Honorary Freeman of Buckingham in 2016 – he was cited for: “His work as a Borough Councillor and Mayor, but also for his exceptional work for Human Rights and in particular through his work for Amnesty International and his campaigning for the release of prisoners of Conscience.” Councillor Ruth Newell, John’s proposer for the honour of Freeman of the Town, went on to draw attention to a particular instance when he served Buckingham as, probably, the youngest Mayor, that: “During his term as Mayor he led Buckingham’s effort for the ‘Freedom From Hunger’ international campaign, when John found a village in Madras State, India, to support in its need of development. Its name is Kunnuvarrankottai.”
16. Although John never followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, to become an ordained minister, he nevertheless walked in his ways; for John became a lay preacher in the Congregational Union of England and Wales at a tender age, he preached regularly in the local churches in Buckinghamshire, going on to become the last Chairman of the North Bucks and District before the dissolution of the Congregational Union in 1972, and subsequently became the first Chairman of the United Reformed Church of Northampton and Area District. Clearly an active churchman, he represented his church at the Buckingham Council of Churches; and, it was in this particular capacity that Councillor Ruth Newell made another citation. Cllr. Newell said, “The Council of Churches rose to the occasion when JOHN persuaded the then Rural District Council to provide a home for one Ugandan Asian family when Idi Amin expelled them all. Members of the Churches worked together to furnish and equip the house and then maintained support for the family for many years. That was a real success socially and economically.”
The Egyptian Three and the fourth man walk free
17. As the years rolled by, John and I got to know a lot more about the Egyptian Three plus another, the fourth man. We would often have impromptu meetings: sometimes in the middle of the High Street in Buckingham, at other times we would walk along the River Great Ouse, which meanders through the Town. “You know Nisbet is a professional web designer. He met his wife at the Westminster University and subsequently converted to Islam; apparently, he was not particularly sure about his Christian upbringing. His ambition, at least before he was arrested, was to find a solution to injustices around the world.” “What about Nawaz?” I would ask. “He was still a student at School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), London, by the time he got caught up in this mess. He was studying Law and Arabic. He had travelled to Alexandria University along with his wife and young baby, to complete his third year there by studying Arabic.” The long and short of this curious saga was that, after a 4 year marathon of campaigning, the Egyptian Three and another man were finally freed in 2006. For this particular piece of work, along with his general work as a Human Rights Activist, Councillor Ruth Newell said thus: “JOHN abhors injustice, prejudice and cruelty, so welcomed a small circle of friends to his garden on 28th May 1976 and founded the local Amnesty Group. Bert Whitehead campaigned successfully for two Prisoners of Conscience, one in Turkey and the other in Malawi (a cross referencing of the facts suggests that the prisoner of conscience in Malawi probably died in goal, but the campaign is deemed a success, as it put the prisoner’s plight firmly in the public eye. His death did not go unnoticed). The ‘Egypt Three’ were Ian Nisbet, Maajid Nawaz and Reza Pankhurst, and JOHN worked alongside their families to free them. He was also deeply involved in the campaign to free another British citizen from prison in Egypt. He is known as the ‘fourth man’ and is protected from publicity because the tortures he suffered caused him permanent damage.”
Children may be strangled, but Deeds never
18. I here speak with George Eliot, also known as Mary Anne Evans, when she said that, “Children may be strangled, but Deeds never: they have an indestructible life, both in and out of our consciousness.” While Maajid Nawaz sat in an Egyptian goal, enduring twelve weeks of interrogations, electric shocks and beatings in order to get a confession out of him; which were followed by a five year jail sentence, he suddenly found himself with plenty of time to think. He also found himself in the odd company of Omar Bayoumi and Dr Tauriq al Sawah, both of whom had been convicted for their part in the plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat; and the weirdest discovery for Maajid was that the pair had renounced the violence of their youth; they likewise encouraged him to pursue a more ‘compassionate’ interpretation of Islam. His new friends in prison provoked strange thoughts in his mind, a reckoning of sorts if you like; he even pondered how his former friends and colleagues at Hizb-at-Tahrir had abandoned him, written off as a fallen soldier as it were. He laid those profound considerations to his heart.
19. His thoughts quickly drifted to those eccentric people he had heard of, members of Amnesty International, that front or bastion, so he probably thought, of English Imperialism. Next, he wondered how these odd people came to take an interest in him, after learning that Amnesty International had taken up his case: “I was just amazed, we’d always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt – maybe these democratic values aren’t always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously … it was the beginning of my serious doubts.” But it was learning about a certain old English gentleman, upon whose shoulders he discovered afterwards, the primary responsibility of initiating the campaign to win his freedom fell, which pricked his conscience the most.
20. The story has it that Nawaz’s mother bumped into the said old English gentleman on a certain day, and discovered that his name was John Cornwall; she had heard about this man before, he was apparently one of three English friends who regularly wrote letters to Maajid in prison. So when she met John for the first time, she seized the opportunity and asked him: “Why do you go to all this trouble for people you don’t know?” No one recalls the exact answer, it’s no matter however; it is understandable that no one remembers the precise wording as it was a long time ago, writing as I am in 2018. However, a clue may be found in an observation made by Dr Jenny Taylor of LAPIDAMEDIA. During an interview she was conducting with John, she noticed that his left hand had no fingers. A careful enquiry revealed that John had accidently got his hand stuck in the blades while operating a sausage mincer at his father’s butcher shop. Had a quick-thinking employee not come to his rescue, it is possible John would have lost his life. He was seven years old at the time, and the experience was extremely traumatic that he hardly ever spoke about it. In all the years I have known John, I don’t ever recall him saying a word about his hand. I often wondered, but never had the courage to ask; there are some things which are best left unsaid. Dr Taylor observed, “It may be that, by the grace of God in an age when trauma counselling was unheard of, John sublimated the terror of his imprisonment in a mincing machine, and channelled it into fighting for the liberation of all those whom he intuits share a similarly unmerited fate.”
The Quilliam Foundation
21. But whatever the real answer may have been, it was enough to sow a seed in Maajid’s soul; for he had proofs that a commitment to human rights for all, at least judging by his own personal experience, trumped fear-mongering and prejudice; and the rest of the story as they say, is history – it led to the formation of the Quilliam Foundation. The Quilliam Foundation is an International think-tank dedicated to counter-extremism, focusing on Islamism. The think-tank lobbies governments and public institutions to espouse a more nuanced policy making process(s) respecting Islam. It encourages greater democracy in the Muslim world, while at the same time, empowering moderate Muslim voices. Their latest achievement was the successful launch at the House of Commons on 25 April, a report, entitled, “The Rise of Religious Nationalism, Intolerance, and Persecution in Burma.” The foundation was named after Abdullah Quilliam, the first British convert to Islam and the founder of the first Muslim mosque in the 19th century Britain. *Please see below for an Editor’s Update about the Quilliam Foundation.
For more details, please contact: https://www.frontlineclub.com/
Anne Reynolds
22. Of all John’s many campaigns, numbered among them was the campaign in support of the Human Rights of the ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), a support for which he paid a considerable price; the most significant in my view is, perhaps, the Anna Reynolds case. And, although the case did not lead to a decisive change in English law, it undoubtedly turned the tide in the way the English legal establishment treats women in circumstances similar to Anne Reynolds’ situation at the time.
23. The circumstances of the case were that Anna Reynolds killed her sleeping mother with a hammer, at the tender age of 17 years old. She was at the time of the killing, suffering from the combined effects of extreme hormone imbalance and post-natal depression, after giving birth to a baby boy. An aggravating feature of the tragedy that emerged afterwards, scandalizing an already outraged local population, was the fact that having successfully concealed her pregnancy from her mother, Anna returned to her part-time job so soon after giving birth and, while doing heavy lifting at the supermarket where she worked, she suffered a huge haemorrhage. The doctor who saved Anna’s life unwittingly said to her mother, “You know your daughter has had a baby, don’t you?”
24. Nothing like this had been seen in the 1980s Brackley Town, in the county of Northamptonshire. It was like Christmas had come early for the press – both local and national. “Competition for attention-grabbing headlines was intense,” said John, as he narrated the ensuing story to me and continued, “I knew the Editor and the court reporter of our old-established Advertiser. In fact it was a very difficult time for reporters on some papers like the Northampton Chronicle and Echo because their articles were sexed-up and inappropriate headlines were added.” He continued to tell the story as he remembered the events, “A court official was reported, probably falsely, as describing the girl as ‘evil.’ However, some papers began mentioning one of her teachers who was trying to tone down the sensation, claiming that the assault was completely out of character. The Advertiser reporter at the committal hearing told me she had never heard anyone in such distress… At Northampton Crown Court the Police evidence included the fact that the 17-year-old had rung them to confess, saying, ‘I saw someone doing it, and it was me!’” As the law stood at the time, it seemed straight forward – an ‘open and shut’ case, as they say in the criminal legal trade.
25. But was it an open and shut case? The legal position in the early 1980s was not entirely clear. It so happened that the Anna Reynolds case came hot on the heels of two other cases, involving women, in or less similar circumstances. The first case was, Regina v. Craddock. The circumstances of the case were that Sandra Craddock, a barmaid, had stabbed to death a colleague following an argument. At trial, a defence of diminished responsibility was put forward on her behalf and was accepted; it was accepted because her defence team were able to show that her long history of convictions and attempted suicide were all in some way or other connected with her menstrual cycle. A verdict of manslaughter was returned by the jury. And, as it happened, the very next day, a second case, Regina v. English, went before a trial judge. Christine English was on trial for murder, after she had driven a car to her married lover, pinning him up against a telegraph pole following a row; he died of his injuries afterwards. Unlike Craddock however, English had no previous criminal convictions, enjoyed an impeccable record as some criminal lawyers are wont to say. But she had previously received treatment for depression. At the trial, her defence team called expert evidence and, were successful in showing that English experienced irrational irritability and aggression during her menstrual cycle. A defence of diminished responsibility was accepted; she was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. But would the same apply in the Anna Reynolds case? It should be remembered that Anna had murdered her sleeping mother by smashing a hammer to her head, apparently, in cold blood. And, what has the menstrual cycle got to do with justice? What is diminished responsibility anyway, some in the baying crowd demanded to know?
Diminished responsibility
26. According to my 7th Edition Oxford Dictionary of Law (2013), ‘Diminished Responsibility’ is, “An abnormal state of mind that does not constitute ‘insanity’ (R v. Seers [1984] 79 Cr App 261 CA) but is a partial defence to a charge of murder. The abnormality of mind (which need not be a disease of the mind) must substantially impair the mental responsibility of the accused for his acts, i.e. it must reduce his powers of control, judgment, or reasoning to a condition that would be considered abnormal by the ordinary man (R v. Byrne [1960] 2 QB 396). It may be caused by disease, injury, or mental sub-normality, and is liberally interpreted to cover such conditions as depression or ‘irresistible impulse (R v. Vinagre [1979] 69 Cr App R 104).”
27. Whereas in the above two cases, that is, Craddock and English, a defence of diminished responsibility was accepted on the ground that both defendants committed murders during their menstrual cycle, and yet, the popular jury was then and still is out today, with regard to the true consequences of menstruation on a woman’s life in general. Indeed, nothing has so divided opinion the world over, than the true meaning of the ‘monthly cycle’ on the day-to-day experience of a woman. Only the other day during my searches for this blogpost, I e-mailed a leading medical practitioner with experience of working in Africa, to enquire of him how this particular subject is handled in an African context. While I grant you that his specialism lies in paediatrics, I nevertheless found his silence on the matter, telling. The subject of menstruation is as controversial today as it ever was, and in many societies, it remains as one of those taboos, the unmentionable, only to be spoken of in whispers: it defines womanhood. The saying that it is difficult to be a woman is clearly true. However, the vagaries of ‘menstrual cycle’ or shall we say, ‘pre-menstrual tension’ were first discovered in 1931 by Dr Robert Frank; but the syndrome, its causes and its cures remained an enigma for want of credible scholarship until, that is, Dr Katherina Dalton came along.
Dr Katherina Dalton
28. Dr Katherina Dalton, affectionately known as ‘Kittie,’ died on 17 September 2004 aged 87, leaving behind a considerable body of work on this subject. Her interest in menstruation was piqued when in the 1950s she noticed as a general practitioner that her women patients had symptoms that coincided with their menstruation cycles. She conducted numerous searches and in 1953 published a seminal paper, which led to “pioneering work on the effects of PMS on schoolwork, accidents, crime, psychiatric illness and behaviour.” She published many more research papers on PMS, postnatal depression, the importance of steady blood sugar levels, and the dangers of vitamin B6. Dr Dalton is the one who defined pre-menstruation symptoms as, “the recurrence of symptoms in the pre-menstruum with complete absence of symptoms in the post menstruum.” But it was her subsequent work as an expert witness for the defence on the impact of pre-menstruation symptoms in the court room that gained her notoriety. Her expert evidence was able to show that those accused of murder, could not possibly be held to be liable because their minds were temporality unbalanced by reason of untreated pre-menstrual symptoms; they therefore did not have the necessary legal mind or ‘mens rea’ – a state of mind the prosecution must show to prove the defendant had at the time of committing a crime in order to obtain a conviction in a court of law.
It is more blessed to give than to receive
29. At Northampton Crown Court where the Anna Reynolds case was being tried, the same expert witness as had appeared in the above two cases, gave evidence that Anna killed her mother while suffering from a severe case of pre-menstrual symptom; that she was not in full possession of her faculties, and therefore suffered a temporary loss of self-control. They testified that her case fell within the legal parameters of diminished responsibility. However, on this occasion, the jury returned a verdict of guilty for murder. The trial judge had no option but to sentence her to a term of life imprisonment. Anna was sent to Holloway Prison.
30. One of the free papers, ‘The Banbury Cake,’ published a screaming front-page headline story of an interview with the widow who lived next door when the killing happened; the neighbour, clearly distressed by the whole affair, was quoted in the last paragraph to have said, “If some of us had showed a little bit of love, none of this would have happened.” This was the prompting John had been waiting for. The whole tenor of the reporting had worried him, and began to share his concerns with friends both at work and in the church, but was met with a brick wall as it were. There was general hostility towards Anna Reynolds. But it was what happened next that really got John fired up: “A little while later,” John retelling the events as they happened, “after the Anna Reynolds’ trial; a longer, much denser letter was published in the local paper, The Advertiser.” John found out afterwards that the Editor had held the letter back for a fortnight, apparently, awaiting legal advice. It turned out that the author of the letter was a law student at Cambridge University, a son of the teacher who knew Anna well. The young law student argued that the judge’s summing-up had failed to give enough weight to the expert psychiatric evidence, and that the verdict should have been, ‘Manslaughter, by reason of diminished responsibility.’ Although he knew nothing about English law, John felt in his bones that the trial had not been fair; for the nature of crime was so outrageous, it had generated much hostility towards Anna. He was disturbed by this new development, that is, troubled by the letter in the local paper. “The point of discipleship,” he said, “is not whether your view is popular, but whether it could be true.” It was John’s joy to give, to make himself available, to support Anna in any way he could; for the duty is ours, and we must mind it, but events are God’s, we must refer the disposal of them to Him.
A time to keep silence and a time to speak
31. It is true that there is a time to keep silence, when by speaking we may offend or aggravate the situation; for we should think twice before we speak once, especially in a case as outrageous as Anna Reynolds was; we should think long, and we shall the better be able to speak short and to the point. John thought long, and came down on the side of Anna Reynolds – to hell with popularity – the time for him to speak had come. As it happened, John was due to give a talk at a Camera Club in Banbury. It occurred to him that as Brackley is half way to Banbury, it might be a good idea to initiate contact with the individuals whose disquiet about the way the case was handled had been reported in the papers. He set off an hour early in the hopes of calling to see the student’s mother. John rang the only Brackley number with the right surname and the next thing he knew, he was speaking to the student’s mother, Anna Reynolds’ French and German teacher. “On arrival I was shown into the front room,” he said, “and sat on the only chair not piled high with petition forms and background leaflets.” John continued: “The story I was told confirmed my expectation that, as usual with human beings, the situation was far more complex than the Press had implied. At root, it was like the neighbour had said: there had been a lack of love.” His bowels of compassion thus moved, all that was left for John to say was: “Count me in. I will help all I can in Buckingham.”
32. The first thing John did was to write a letter to The Advertiser. His letter pulled no punches and provoked a reaction; dividing opinion in the process and at the same time compelling people to think. “Some women felt their own integrity was threatened by the suggestion that hormonal imbalance could determine conduct to such an extent,” John said and added, “they opposed ‘The Justice for Anna Reynolds Campaign.’” Some women, however, had memories and insights into the vicissitudes occasioned by premenstrual symptoms, which led them to sympathise. “Men were generally nonplussed,” John continued to tell his remarkable tale, “I stood alone.” He added: “You see Stephen, once one individual steps forward and take a stand, a few others will be emboldened…I had given a lead before and proved myself right on contentious matters when the easy path of prejudice and indifference had to be rejected.” John recalls a particular instance worth mentioning here. While going about collecting signatures for the petition, he came to one house and knocked at the door: “The father opened the door, saw what I was doing and loudly declared, ‘Nobody in this house is going to sign that petition.’…equally loud protestations of keen interest from the family behind him did not prevent him from closing the door.”
Dr Dalton – the last piece of the jigsaw
33. Long did John and his motley crew of ‘Nematode worms’ keep alive Anna Reynolds’ case in the public eye, lest she be forgotten. He took up a correspondence with Anne as she sat in prison at Royal Holloway, her other friends did not desert her either. And then, along came a series of providential happenings: the first was an article in The Daily Telegraph, a most unlikely of papers, it weighed in on the side of Anna; next, came BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour, also weighed in for Anna. It so happened that a while back there had been two very powerful documentaries on the work of Dr Dalton aired on BBC 2; John remembers watching them little knowing that the day would come when he would have need to call upon her services. And, one evening, as it happened, Mrs Audrey Cornwall, John’s wife, returned home from the supermarket with a copy of the Living Magazine, which carried an article written by Dr Dalton. It was at that moment, as John put it: “In my mind the last piece of the jigsaw moved neatly into place. I knew what to do.”
34. That self-same evening John picked up the telephone and called the teacher mentioned above. The teacher proceeded to tell him that people at Brackley had also read the article, but, alas, they elected not to contact Dr Dalton, as they feared it would be to no purpose whatsoever. To which John promptly countered, “I am writing!” And write he did. Dr Dalton replied to John’s letter by return post, in which she said that she “was already very concerned about the case,” and asked John to arrange for everyone who knew Anna really well to go and meet her at her practice, at number 100 Harley Street, London. She asked John to get in touch with her secretary to arrange an appointment, as she was off to the United States on a lecture tour. A party of three Nematode worms duly wriggled up to London, and returned back with much rejoicing; for Dr Dalton had willingly been persuaded to lend her support to Anna Reynold’s cause. She wanted to see Anna.
35. Dr Dalton’s subsequent report concluded that Anna was the worst case she had seen in the 50,000 cases she had studied. The long and short of the story is that on appeal, the Appeal Court overturned the trial court’s judgment and substituted a verdict of manslaughter only. Anna Reynolds was instead sentenced to probation with a condition that she submit herself to psychiatric supervision. Her hormonal imbalance was duly normalized by the combined endeavours of Doctors Dalton (the mother) and her son, a general practitioner. Anna Reynolds went on to become a successful author, librettist, playwright, teacher, and advisor to the Home Office. Apart from mentioning her name, which is in the public domain, all other references about Anna Reynolds are and will remain undisclosed in the interest of her privacy.
A Nematode worm: – seasoned with salt
36. Reminiscing about the Anna Reynolds saga in 2018 as I worked on this blogpost, John shared with me in an e-mail, how a few years after those momentous events, “The Women’s Institutes (WI) were about to discuss a resolution at their national AGM at the Royal Albert Hall deploring the habit of the courts in treating women more harshly than men. Many women were unaware of that and didn’t know what to do with the resolution as they made their preparations. The President of the Bucks Federation of WI lived in Buckingham, and having a vague memory of the Anna case rang to explain that they were to hold a day conference in Aylesbury to prepare their delegates for the debates on the three resolutions they were to consider. She asked if I could recommend a speaker with the knowledge and background to help with that one. I said, ‘Dr Katherina Dalton, 100 Harley Street, London.’ She was taken aback and went on to ring the then Dean at Buckingham University Law School. He replied, ‘Dr Katherina Dalton, 100 Harley Street, London.’ Dr Dalton came to speak at Aylesbury, and just blew them away. They went into the meeting like lambs and came out like lions, and the resolution was won. When I eventually told Professor Susan Edwards (now Emeritus Professor of law at the Buckingham University Law School) about the affair she was delighted and said, ‘I used to work with Kitty!’ I think it is most likely that Professor Edwards had a lot to do with the Serious Crimes Act of 2015 which made coercion a crime… Just recalling the campaign brings a lump to my throat.” To which I say: Hallelujah.
37. You see Ms Chloe Chang; I have seen the tigers you speak of. Indeed, some of those tigers have fearsome reputations; they loom large in places like Africa and Asia. But if all the tigers in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world were put into one scale, and John, the Nematode worm of Buckingham into another, I’d wager to say, that all the tigers put together would kick the beam. Clearly, even if we settle with just the two illustrations set out above, John’s life is not in vain. There is something about him that is unusual; his life clearly tastes different, it is seasoned with salt. John is one of those people of whom it may correctly be said, that he is the salt of the earth; an inspiration and, an example. Ms Chloe Chang, you too can be a ‘Nematode worm’ just like John; imitate his example. Now go…thrash mountains, and beat them small!
Editor’s Update: The Quillian Foundation closed its doors for good on 9th April 2021, after 13 years of operation. Alas, the foundation though started with the best of intentions, it unwittingly ended up promoting policies that were considered by many to be harmful to the Muslim community in Britain. Dated: 23th April 2021.