Thanks Beetle and Lazs. I assumed it was from her book, turns out it was from one of her articles, Gun Control's Twisted Outcome. It's widely available on the web.
This is what Lee Malcolm says:
That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be “reasonable” force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is “now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."
According to this site:
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/guns/UK/gullible4.htmlthis is whatGlanville Williams actually says:
The requirement of reasonableness is unhappy. Enough has been said in criticism of it, and the CLRC has recommended that it should be expunged from the law. In practice, as we have seen, the requirement may be construed indulgently to the defendant, for, as Holmes J memorably said in the United States Supreme Court, “detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.” As we shall see in the next section, the requirement is now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law.
So Lee Malcolm cites Glanville Williams as an authority on the law, claiming he says there is doubt wether self defence is still part of the law. What Glanville Williams actually says is there is doubt wether "reasonableness" is still a requirement for the self defence case. In other words, that self defence is
easier to justify in law. The exact opposite of what Malcolm claims he's saying.
It doesn't fill me with much confidence in Malcolm's opinions. Either she's deliberately lying, or in her desire to read what she wants to read, she's misunderstood something that's quite simple.
The site that pointed out the error also has some usefull stuff on self defence in the UK if anyone's interested.
