NOVEMBER 2007
Legal Observation - British Mercenaries subject to precedent in British Law
Letter to the Independent L James,Scotland
Sir, Your excellent account of the British security industry(27thOctober 2007,see below) raises the question of the legality of hiring, training and equipping men to fight abroad for private companies or individuals.
These forces are private armies similar to those raised and financed by the nobility during the Wars of the Roses. If Warwick the Kingmaker had employed corporate-speak, he would no doubt have described his train of knights and archers as a form of "risk management".The mayhem caused by these forces prompted legislation which restricted armed retinues.
Does Colonel Tim Spicer of Aegis have a licence from the Crown to retain soldiers, and does he insist that all his recruits are of the rank of "esquire"?
even more pertinent is the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act, which makes it a crime for British subjects to engage in foreign wars as mercenaries. It was used to prosecute Cecil Rodes's filibusterers who invaded the Transvaal in 1895. This coup de main was undertaken by Dr.Jameson and troopers from the British South Africa Company Police, mercenaries who had been recruited in Britain to provide "internal security". Like the baronial retinues of the Middle Ages, it was the ancestor of a security industry whose purposes seem at loggerheads with the spirit and the intention of the Law.