12 months for poaching... in 1973!

Ernie Critchley, the miner whose hobby-ferretinghas landed him in jail for a year and who is afraid to take his appeal to a higher court. Right: His wife June receives the news of the lost appeal. Miners' appeal on year's jail refused A JUDGE sitting in leave for a Yorksl against a 12-mont poaching.

BRIEFLY • BRIEFLY TWENTY-ONE grinders-whose strike has hit tractor production at Massey Ferguson of Coventry — are expected to meet tomorrow. The strike, which involves piecework pay rates, has led to 600 day and night-shift assembly workers being laid off.

A CENSURE motion on actor and writer Peter Ustinov will be sity's considered D. association today cos cere Dundee Universtudent following his refusal to speak out as Rector in favour of the rent strike. The resolution will be proposed by student association president Eric Sanderson, who also intends to move for an end of the rent strike by 200 of the university's 800 students. The strike is against the Tory government's plan to put up rents for student accommodation.

PROPERTY developer Mr George Herbert Cross, of The Dower House, Compton Chamberlayne. Salisbury, Wilts, who started work as a 10s-a-week estate agent's clerk, left £2,192.096 gross, $1,900,331 net (duty £20,277) in his will published yesterday. He died on November 26, aged 88. Innocent will suffer if Tories tamper THE INFLUENTIAL Bar THE INFLUENTIAL Bar Council has come out with Council has come out with an attack on the Tory draft an attack on the Tory draft legislation to change the laws legislation to change the laws of evidence in criminal cases.

In a statement issued today the council says: 'We are anxious that injustice should not be suffered by the innocent and we believe that, taken as a whole, the proposals would be liable to increase this possibility.

'We are as anxious as anyone that those who commit crime should be brought to justice. We do not believe, however, that the proposals of the Criminal Law Revision Committee will contribute materially to this end.' At a Press conference Bar YESTERDAY'S WORKERS ERNIE CRITCHLEY informed his wife, June, in a letter from Armley prison, near Leeds, that he had lost his appeal. He wrote:

Dear June, Ann and Jean, turned down, love, bus been My first appeal has been position is this, love. I can appeal again to three judges, June, but this time it would take six weeks to three months before I will hear anything and chambers has refused ire miner to appeal jail sentence for Ernest Critchley (34) of Fryston Colliery, near Castleford, is serving his sentence at Armley prison, Leeds.

The savage jail sentence was made at the York County Court on January 15 after Critchley and another miner, Roy Wright, pleaded guilty to poaching on the Escrick Park Estate at York.

When they were arrested by a game warden and the police the men had a bag containing ten pheasants valued at about f8.

Critchley's case has been rejected by a single judge sitting the Court of Criminal Appeal.

On hearing the news Mrs Joan Critchley broke down. 'How am I going to tell the children?' she asked.

Further details have now emerged about the case. • The estate is owned by a wealthy Tory family which has connections with the 'Yorkshire Post'. • The judge who sentenced Critchley is former Tory MP.

Our inquiries reveal that: with 'justice'-barristers Council chairman Mr Roger Parker said that the Tory proposals hit at the basic concepts of 'English justice'. Already, Mr Parker said, a French judge has pointed out that if the amendments were legislated, they would overthrow safeguards against injustice which had taken centuries to develop.

Continuing its criticism, the Council says that barristers are concerned that some of the main proposals 'go far beyond the amendment of technical rules' and, in practice, impair fundamentally the constitutional position the individual.

if I lose I can lose from, 30 to 90 days. I don't like to take the risk of putting more time on, June.

But if you and Ann want me to risk it, I will, love. It is only fair that you should have your say, love, because it is you who will be waiting for me at home. I hope this does not upset you, love. I hope our Ann is all right and our Jean is getting better. You say you don't half miss me, Ernie Critchley's two dar (7) who, along with their their father, a miner, is in THE SQUIRE at Escrick Park is one Nigel Forbes Adam, youngest son of Colin Gurdon Forbes Adam. Nigel's father is married to the Honourable Irene Constance Lawley, only child of the third Baron Wenlock. And it was the Baron Wenlock who originally governed the estate during the 19th Irene married Colin Forbes Adam in 1920 when he was a rising light in the India Service.. In 1912, when he was just 23 and fresh from Eton and Cambridge, Colin Forbes Adam went off to India where, in On many grounds the Council opposes the loss of the accused's right of silence during his trial. The Bill proposes that if an accused person refuses police questions or declines to give evidence at his trial the judge can comment on this to the jury.

If this happened, the report said, police would obtain acceptable powers and interrogation would become oppressive. Mr Parker said the abolition of the right of silence during a trial meant, in effect: 'Be silent if you dare-but if you are silent, you iters Ann (14) and Jean rother, face hardship now the following year, he became assistant collector and magistrate in Poona.

In 1920 he was appointed private secretary to the Governor of Bombay. He retired from the India Service in 1925 and, on the eve of the General Strike, he returned to Britain.

From 1934 to 1939 he was commissioner for the 'Special Area of Durham and Tyneside', which was devastated by unemployment and poverty.

'Who's Who does not reveal his activities for the space of 20 years-the war years and after-but he reJune, how do you think I feel?

I miss you more this time than I did before. It must be because I love you all so very much, my darling. By the way, when is your birthday, love.

I know it is in February. Is it the 21st? Look after yourself because you have not said how you are. From your ever-loving husband, all the best to you and the two girls.

God bless, Ernie. emerges in 1960 as chairman of the Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Company, publishers of the 'Yorkshire Post.

While his son, Nigel, manages the estate, his father lives in retirement in Petersham though he still retains his membership of the elegant Yorkshire Club, the meeting place of all the local Tories.

uncovered some background of Mr Justice Nield, the man who jailed Critchley for a year and fined Roy Wright £100. Sir Basil Edward Nield was educated Harrow private school and graduated at Magdalen College, Oxford.

He has had a long association with Tory politics.

From 1930 until 1940 he was chairman of the Chester Conservative Association.

In 1940 he was elected Tory MP for the City of Chester and held this seat until 1956. He sat on the legal board of the Church Assembly and the Home Secretary's advisory committee on the treatment of offenders in 1957. He was also chancellor of the Diocese of Liverpool from 1948 to 1956, the same will be liable to convict yourThis, he said, would change the position of the individual in our society, his relationship with authority, and his right when in conflict with authority to remain silent.

The Council also sharply criticized the proposals that hearsay evidence should be admissible.

'We believe that in criminal cases hearsay evidence is inherently unreliable, is capable of being manufactured with ease and is usually incapable of being tested in cross-examination.' Investigation by ALEX MITCHELL years he held the post Recorder of Salford.

To this day he belongs to the Oxford Society, the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor, while he is a life member of the Royal Society of St George.

He belongs to London's two most notable Tory clubs-the Carlton and the Junion Carlton.

MRS JUNE Critchley, wife of the jailed miner, has received a letter expressing sympathy. It is from Mr W.. Pickersgill, of Micklefield, near Leeds. He writes: 'I was very sorry to read of your husband being sent to prison. It makes it worse for you all being a happy family. You might remember a similar case a few years ago when three men were caught at Escrick.

We only went for a bit of sport and fun really, but we were caught and later sent to prison. We were wrongly convicted thenbut more so your husband today. It seems that today you can go to work, but not do anything else. 'Well, I think you might have some luck with your appeal. There is a lot worse things. Well we will have to wait and see. It's not right.' The drastic interference with criminal court procedure shows the extent to which the Tories are preparing the legal ground for dictatorship.

It goes hand-in-hand with the plans to abolish the jury system in certain cases.

At every turn the Tories are attacking rights of all descripion. But the Bar Council, a lection of blue-nosed barristers, cannot and will not be able to stop the Tory juggernaut.

That is the task of the working class organized under the banner of the revolutionary party.