Retaking the English Castle

Named for the saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle, the paper — by Harrison Pitt and Rupert Lowe — argues that Britain has fallen into what it calls anarcho-tyranny: serious offenders walk free while law-abiding people are disarmed, sued, or prosecuted for defending themselves or for speech. It treats that as recent and reversible.

The whole programme is five recommendations. Pepper spray would be legal for law-abiding adults, which means repealing the relevant bans in the Firearms Act 1968 and the Offensive Weapons Act 2019. A one-line “Stanley Amendment”, first proposed by Lord Stanley of Alderley in 1984, would state that an occupier owes no duty of care to a trespasser who enters to commit a crime.

Two further measures are about the courts: jury trial kept in all criminal cases, especially self-defence and defence of property, and a requirement that the Attorney General personally consent before anyone is prosecuted for excessive force in self-defence, at home or in public. The fifth is constitutional: repeal Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 in full, using powers the paper says Westminster holds under the Scotland Act 1998.