Yet another crazy story in today's news is that the Fawcett Society, a left wing feminist organisation, wants the convictions of women who were found guilty of various offences during the suffragette campaign of the early 20th century to be overturned. Really ?
The rewriting of laws, and even the rewriting of history, in order to conform to current views, mores, populist ideas and so on, seems to be taking hold with a vengeance. Already, those convicted of homosexual offences in the past have been pardoned, as have those shot for cowardice in the First World War. Now we are to pardon those women who committed an assortment of acts which were then, and often still are, criminal offences, simply because, I suppose, their cause is now considered to have been 'just'.
This really is lunacy. Law and history cannot be rewritten just because what happened in the past is at odds with current thinking. The death penalty has been abolished in most western countries; should we now posthumously commute the sentences of those NAZI war criminals who were hanged at Nuremburg, just because we no longer like the notion of the death penalty ? Should we issue posthumous pardons to those who were transported or hanged for minor offences in the 19th century, because their crimes no longer call for such draconian punishment ? Should we issue apologies to the descendants of those who were flogged, sent to the treadmill, keel-hauled or press-ganged, just because we no longer do such things ?
Of course not. By all means recognize that some people suffered unfairly and horribly, but that is history and we can all learn from it. Over time, opinions change and laws are changed, but laws should not be changed retrospectively in order to magically obviate responsibility for acts which were criminal at the time of their commission.
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