Myth-busting!

by Les May

ANONYMITY until and unless charged for those suspected of sexual crimes has returned to the public agenda with the launching of a parliamentary petition.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/247912

Such a change was recommended by the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/20/suspects-should-stay-anonymous-until-charged-mps-say

Why this was never acted upon and it has been left to people who have experienced significant personal distress and loss of income because they have been named as being investigated for sexual offences, I do not know.  One possible reason is the myth propagated by some prominent feminists and their acolytes in the media that without the police being allowed to ‘trawl for evidence’, victims as they would call them, complainants to the rest of us, would not come forward.  They would have us believe that this period of pre-charge publicity is essential in securing convictions. This is not true.

Under the changes advocated by the group Falsely Accused Individuals for Reform (FAIR) the restriction on naming a suspect would cease once charges had been brought.  Three of the highest profile sexual abuse cases of recent years were those of Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall and Max Clifford.  I looked at the time which elapsed between each of them being charged and the trial date, and the number of time they appeared in court including the trial date.

Harris was charged in August 2013, went to trial eight months later in May 2014 and appeared in court 3 times;  Hall was arrested in December 2012, went to trial four months later in April 2013 and appeared in court 3 times; Clifford was charged in December 2012, went to trial fifteen months later in March 2014 and appeared in court 4 times.  In other words there was plenty of time for each of them to be repeatedly named in the press after charging and before trial. Significantly the publicity generated by the trial resulted in Hall facing further charges in July 2013 and Harris also faced further charges.

Having seen some of the responses given by some women journalists I am inclined to wonder if they actually realise how limited are the aims of the supporters of FAIR.  There is no demand here that persons being alleged to have committed sexual offences should not be named, only that they should not be named until charged with a specific offence, other than in exceptional circumstances.

The journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown insists that pre-charge publicity is vital if complainants are to come forward.  But when she received in May 2012 a letter alleging that Stuart Hall had committed such an offence she did not feel this so strongly that she publicised the fact; she gave the letter to the police.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/cliff-richard-bbc-reputation-damage-victims-opinion/

Seven months later Hall was charged after a police investigation. Now it may be that Yasmin was just being a good citizen and doing what you or I would do. Alternatively it may be that she realised that the allegation just might be false and that if she publicised it Hall might sue for defamation.

Seemingly repeating what Harriet Harman has said Alibhai-Brown says,

‘FAIR campaigners should focus instead on reckless police officers who bypass strict guidance on when and whether names of suspects should be made public.  According to the rules, identification should be withheld until the person is charged, except when there is some basis for believing there is a pattern of criminal activity.’

The underlined section would cover the Worboys case which is routinely trotted out as an example of why anonymity should not be granted before charges are brought.

You might wonder, as I do, how the ‘strict guidance’ differs materially from what those who support the FAIR campaign are asking for. This seems to have escaped Yasmin and Harriet.

In October 2017 Harriet said, ‘I think that the absolute key to this, when I think about my own experience and think about the Harvey Weinstein thing, is we need a system of whistle-blowing, anonymous whistle-blowing’. So no anonymity there Harriet? How did this woman get to be Solicitor-General and caretaker leader of the Labour party?

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2017/10/half-baked-harriet.html

(Note that the link embedded in the above is dead.)

The journalist Melanie Phillips is on record as saying ‘More secrecy in our courts is not the answer’.  Again she seems to have misunderstood the aims of FAIR.  Once someone has been charged with a specific offence it would be permissible to name them.  There is no secrecy involved.   Anyone being questioned or charged would have access to legal representation.  Again no secrecy.

The evidence seems to point to the fact that the publicity surrounding the charging and trial of those alleged to have carried out crimes of a sexual nature is sufficient to encourage other complainants to come forward.  Hall and Harris both faced further charges after their first trial as more complainants contacted the police.   Worboys too has faced further charges as up to 100 complainants have come forward since his trial and conviction in 2008.   We clearly don’t need people to be ‘hung out like like fly paper’ (in the words of Paul Gamboccini) to convince complainants to come forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Worboys#Later_developments

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/20/john-worboys-admits-drugging-four-more-women

In the UK we tend to think our institutions and ways of doing things are the envy of the world. The Brexit saga has somewhat dented this optimistic view.   But this is what the picture of the English legal system looks like to an Irish Supreme Court judge.  It is not a very flattering picture.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/hardiman-questions-methods-of-uk-sex-claim-inquiries-1.2533054

A House of Lords Library Briefing prepared in advance of the second reading of the Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill [HL] can be found by following the link below and going to the bottom of the page.

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/LLN-2019-0025

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Taking Working Class Toryism seriously

by Andrew Wallace  (24/04/17)

 IN just a few weeks’ time the British working class will turn out in unprecedented numbers in order to support a right wing Conservative government, marking an apotheosis of trends in which working people of modest means have enthusiastically endorsed a party pursuing an historical agenda which would seem on the surface at least to be hostile to their interests.

However I would say that as a leftist because I have already accepted it as self-evident that a Conservative agenda is not commensurate with the interests of those at the bottom of our socio-economic hierarchy.  I have imbibed sufficient life experiences and also by way of exposure to arguments in books and articles over the years to convince me of the malevolence of their brand of free market fundamentalism.

So like many lefties I feel irked to say the least with that most heretical act of political deviancy, the perverse irrationalism of working class Toryism.  Social networks are presently going into overdrive as Corbynistas are confronted with the rude reality as many of their friends and family have the temerity to circulate a number of pugnacious right wing memes.  The echo chambers are being systemically punctured and we are being cumulatively disabused of the progressive habitats of alternative media.

And thereby hangs a dilemma for us to collectively confront, the left’s deep denial and impotence to comprehend, let alone combat, the reality of the great ‘heresy’.

‘Heresy’

Working class Toryism has a long standing history. Marx thought that the advent of universal suffrage equated with the ‘political supremacy of the working class’. 19^th century parliamentarians fretted that the Reform Acts would destroy their dominance. This of course never happened and Conservatives like Disraeli were canny in cultivating blue collar Tories.

As maverick social thinkers like Michael Collins (labelled a ‘bête noir of the liberal left’ for his ‘destructive nostalgia') have argued with increasing plausibility, the instincts and sentiments of certain traditional working class communities are often far removed from the left liberal worldview. His discussion of the costermongers of old delineates their Tory and royalist sympathies and their antipathy to anything that might constitute a bohemian socialist import.

Collins also breaks rank with liberal niceties when he talks of culture and the salience of race and the white working class. For Collins, multiculturalism has been used as a tool by a metropolitan elite to censor and marginalise the indigenous white left behind, inviting a backlash that further strengthens forces on the far right.

Powellism

Enoch Powell’s controversial Rivers of Blood speech from 1968 (described aptly by Stuart Hall’ essay as ‘A torpedo aimed at the boiler room of consensus’), was a powerful reminder of the traction and mass appeal of a right wing doyen.  Socialists of the day had no choice but to acknowledge Powell’s formidable appeal to many workers at this time, particularly when organised labour in the form of the dockers and building workers marched in his support.  As the International Socialists (forerunners of the Socialist Workers Party) conceded: The ready response to his speech has revealed the prevalence of racialist ideas among workers, inculcated by centuries of capitalism and imperialism

From Ragged Trousered bankruptcy to Vanguardism

Robert Tressell’s famous novel, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, is essentially an extended Socratic dialogue in the form of a novel, as the main protagonist, Frank Owen, engages with the congenital working class conservatism of his work colleagues.  The novel is actually a useful reminder as to socialism’s problematic nature with its ostensible working class base.  Owen has to go to great lengths to proselytise for the superior virtues and rationalism of socialism.  Owen’s fellow workers are highly resistant to left wing ideas and generally happy to acquiesce in the status quo.  This is surely a salutary reminder that such ideas are far from having a privileged locus and position in working class communities, there is no spontaneity or easy populist reception for socialism.  

On the contrary, socialism is now seen as a didactic radical import.  Without the hoped for organic growth of working class left wing movements, this would have to be remedied by vanguardism, thereby negating one of the original premises of socialist thought, that working class emancipation had to be the work of the working class themselves. Unfortunately as the unfolding of history goes, that innovation didn’t work out particularly world.

Acknowledging the reality of a rightist working class

We urgently need to understand the limitations of conventional leftism and the elephant in the room – how the working classes have defected on mass to the right.  There will be lots of heads banging against walls come June 9^th, but as I have argued here, this is not a new problem.   Each generation have to partake of this bitter fruit.  However we are still compounded by our collective delusions and failure to understand the reality on the ground.