Regrettably the European Court itself decided to copy Butler-Sloss LJ’s example and imposed anonymity on the proceedings shortly before the oral hearing in both Pelling and Bayram v. UK. The initial decision was taken illegally by the Registry on 25 October 2000 to anonymise the Admissibility Judgments on the Court Website, which it had no power to do. Having done the deed the Registrar then wrote to the parties asking for their submissions on anonymity! Despite strong protests from Dr Pelling and Mr Bayram's lawyers the Vice-President W.Fuhrmann (Austria) upheld the decision on 2 November as an interim measure to hold until the Court’s final Judgment. Normally anonymity arises under Rule 47(3) when an applicant requests it and arguably there is nothing in the Rules of Court permitting imposition of anonymity against the will of a party. Indeed, in his Originating Application of 26 April 1997 Dr Pelling had completed section 24 of the Form which stated “It will be assumed that there is no objection to the identity of the applicant being disclosed unless it is stated here in unambiguous terms that the applicant does object:” by writing, “Given the nature of this Application not only may my identity be disclosed but concealment of it is strictly forbidden”. Dr Pelling’s application that Judge Fuhrmann be removed from the case for manifest prejudgment was refused by the President. Since the Court has no injunctive or penal powers the decision may be ignored by anyone who prefers to report the proceedings under full names. Meanwhile, until Judgment, the Website refers to the cases as “P. v. United kingdom” and “B. v. United Kingdom”.
At the actual hearing Mr Bayram’s representative resolutely referred to him and his son and son’s mother by their full names, which upset one of the Judges, Mrs H.S.Greve of Norway. However, the President had cleared such references before the hearing, admitting to Mr Bayram's lawyers that the Court could not prevent them. Likewise in the natural course of his address Dr Pelling named himself and his son, pointing out that P-B himself objected to being called that because he is proud of the name “Pelling-Bruce” which his parents gave him. In his address, after attacking the Court of Appeal Injunction, Dr Pelling had intended to go on to supplement his written submissions on the Court’s own anonymity decision. However, the President objected to this so a rapid adaptation of that part of the speech became necessary. Dr Pelling did observe that, “Censorship is the first and strongest weapon of the Totalitarian State; it was used in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; does the Court want to be seen to be upholding such practices?”. This led straight in to the concluding part of his speech which we reproduce next.
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