If There's Hope It Lies In The Proles...

Andrew Woodhouse: Guilty of being a good citizen

One of the last places in Britain where an ordinary person still trusted with real responsibility is the jury room.

A few days ago an ordinary jury discharged that responsibility faithfully when they defied elite prejudice, defied the police and defied the spirit of the times to do some justice.

Last Wednesday things looked pretty dark for Andrew Woodhouse. He was facing possible life in prison for causing grievous bodily harm to a thief.

The defendant has a landscape gardening business which in the words of his lawyer “has been almost wiped out by crime”. Last year he was woken after midnight by an alarm at his business. On arriving there he found two thieves stealing diesel from his vehicles. In his own words:

“I swore at the men and grabbed one of them. I felt a blow to my hand and shoulder and began grappling with them. I was pushed over and then grabbed something from one of their hands which felt like a wooden fence post. I didn’t want to be on the floor with someone hitting me with the wood like that. I swung out like a mad man between six and ten times. I was just lashing out, man. I was hitting as hard as I could.”

The thief who was beaten with his own weapon, Kevin Green, suffered two broken legs and a fractured arm and is apparently still walking on crutches 10 months later.

Woodhouse then rugby tackled the other robber and sat on him till the police arrived.

There are two ways of viewing the crime.

To anyone from the real world Woodhouse’s account vividly and authentically describes the very fluid situation of a desperate struggle. It’s the middle of the night, Woodhouse is outraged but also scared. He freely admitted that a red mist descended and he fought like a mad man, but given the circumstances, that is entirely normal.

It’s a regrettable story. Woodhouse himself said that he was “gutted and sickened” by Green’s injuries. But it was the crooks who set the whole nasty business in motion in the first place by their decision to steal. And the defendant’s actions were not only understandable but laudable.

The only aspect that might make you think twice about approving of Woodhouse is the extent of Green’s injuries. Indeed if it was me or your average lawyer wielding the post, Green would have escaped with bruising, but as Woodhouse’s lawyer said, “he’s made of sterner stuff” and he wasn’t only referring to his courage. Woodhouse has an impressive physique. No doubt when he hits you, it’s like stepping in front of the Great Western. But that is all the more reason not to threaten him with a fence post.

The other way of looking at it is through liberal eyes.

A man who wasn’t doing something so terribly bad was viciously assaulted by a privileged man who must be made an example of.

That lefties don’t think stealing to be very serious is shown by the sentences handed out to the two thieves caught by Woodhouse. They were both fined just £75.

Compare that to the tens of thousands routinely paid out in compensation to the victim of a racial slur or sexist behaviour at work. I don’t want to underplay the real suffering of these victims of unpleasantness in the office. In many cases the compensation is entirely justified. But compare what those victims suffered to what Andrew Woodhouse went through.

The company he has worked hard to build up over the years is being bankrupted by thefts. After several assaults on his business he lives day in day out under the threat of crime and the loss of everything he has worked so hard to build.

He’s woken up in the middle of the night by an alarm at his company and ventures out to face the unknown. Will he be attacked or will this just be another financial loss?

He is forced into a fight but by good fortune comes out on top. Strong as Woodhouse is, anything could have happened in the dark faced by two assailants one of them armed. This could easily have been another “burglary gone wrong”  (if only they would all go right!) . Another sad case of a law abiding family man brutally done to death by thugs.

Then when the guardians of law and order do finally arrive, they assess the situation  and... arrest the victim. It must be a relief for the police to nab a law-abiding citizen: they don’t run away, they don’t try to bite them, and they politely tell the truth.

And so after all the stress of living under the constant threat of crime for years, and after a fierce struggle, Woodhouse is threatened with a possible life sentence. A threat that hung over him for 10 months till his acquittal. How does that compare to having your feelings hurt by the water cooler?

After causing all that heartache the court thought that a £75 fine was appropriate for the thieves. Motorists get fined more for a parking violation! Even if their burglary had “gone right” the anguish caused by theft is at least of the same order of severity as that caused by sexism or racism at work. The punishment of these misery makers should reflect that.

Regular polls reveal that people want criminals to receive much stiffer sentences. They don’t for the simple reason that the real rulers of Britain (whoever wins elections) are the liberal elite and liberals think stealing is a minor crime and the desire to punish such thieves is primitive and barbaric.

The other more nebulous crime that Woodhouse committed was being a wealth creator. By its nature this prejudice is difficult to pin down. One trivial example of this liberal mindset in action was the detail thrown in by the supposedly right-wing Telegraph article that Woodhouse was: “in bed with his wife Lisa at their detached home in the village of Govilon, near Abergavenny, when the burglar alarm went off.”

How could the size of his house possibly have any relevance in a story about a man who prevented a robbery? Only if his wealth in some way mitigated the thieves’ crime or increased his own guilt could the size of his house have any bearing.

But this time after all the torment and against all the odds a good citizen was found not guilty by 12 ordinary people. 

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for our liberal elite. No matter how much they patiently explain things to us, chastise us or threaten us, we poor deluded proles just don’t get it.

The police did their bit in arresting the rich man who over-reacted to a petty theft.

The Crown Prosecution Service brought the case in the confident expectation of a conviction.

The judge played his part in the charade of justice.

Then those willfully ignorant proles found him not guilty. What more could their betters have done to help them to the correct verdict? If we can’t be trusted to behave like civilized subjects, I guess they’re gonna have to remove us from the equation. That quaint old obsolescent remnant of our savage past, the jury trial, has got to go.

But if like me you think our elites long ago disappeared down the intellectual equivalent of their own arsehole, I have just one thing to say to you.

If there’s hope it lies in the proles...