Sean Gabb meets Tony Martin in Oxfordshire

The latest Free Life Commentary is the occasional essay series written and e-published by the Libertarian Alliance’s Sean Gabb. In the latest, number 112, he descibes how he yesterday spent An Afternoon with Tony Martin:

Since time immemorial, on the third Thursday in September, Thame in Oxfordshire has hosted what is now the largest agricultural fair in the country. From all over England people come to buy and sell things and to see one another. There are tractor displays, and cows, and horses, and stalls selling clothing and food and drink, and vast car parks for the thousands of people who attend.

I was there yesterday at the invitation of the BBC. Bill Heine, a populist libertarian from America, has a show with Radio Oxford, and is in the habit of getting me on air every week or so for five minutes at a time. Yesterday, he wanted me not on the end of a telephone, but in person. Without offering the usual fee that I charge for leaving home, he wanted me to drive for a round trip of 300 miles to spend an hour live on air discussing rural crime and the right to self defence. For that distance and that time, regardless of fees, I would normally have refused. However, this was different. One of the other guests was to be Tony Martin.

He is the farmer who shot two thieves in August 1999, killing one and wounding the other. He was put on trial for murder and convicted. On appeal, his conviction was changed to manslaughter, and he was eventually released on Friday the 8th August this year, having spent more than three years in prison. He could have been released last year, but the authorities argued at the parole hearings that his lack of repentance made him a continuing danger to any thieves who might try to break into his home. He is presently facing a tort action for damages from the thief he neglected to kill – the man is claiming for loss of earnings and for reduced sexual function. His legal fees are being charged to the tax payers.

This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving – I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.

And so should you, by reading the whole thing. Sean took photographs of the event, or persuaded others to take photos in those cases where he was a photographee. Sean, to those who have known him at all long, looks impressively slim, while Tony Martin looks pleasingly plump despite his ordeal by injustice, and subsequently by celebrity.

The piece may be about a rather doleful subject, namely injustice and official stupidity. Nevertheless I found that reading it made me feel quite cheerful – cheerful that such men as Tony Martin exist, cheerful that I have a friend like Sean Gabb who is prepared to go to all that trouble just to lend him moral support and then to write about it, and cheerful that I now have the chance to give the whole event another little boost, thanks to Samizdata.