27.06.2001

A sick society

Perhaps it might be ?kinder? to hang them. The media-inspired hysteria around the imminent release of the James Bulger child-killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, is chilling. What type of lives can these two young men look forward to when they are ?freed?? They will live every day in constant torment, terrified by the threat of exposure and bloody retribution at the hands of some mob or a foam-flecked individual vigilante.

Just as there is special poignancy in the death of a child, there is a unique sense of loss in seeing these two young lives bent out of shape so terribly. James Bulger died a horrible death, no doubt made more terrifying to him by an inability to understand what was being done or why. Any human being will feel a jolt of pain for that poor, tortured and utterly bewildered child.

Bulger died horribly, Venables and Thompson have lived horribly. First as barely literate ?scallies?, as deeply scarred products of dysfunctional and abusive homes. Then as institutionalised ?monsters? for eight years, aware that they were demonised by the outside world. Now they face release and the prospect of being remorselessly hunted down by the tabloids, with a baying pack of vengeful thugs in their wake.

This tells us something truly frightening about contemporary British society. Take, for example, Denise Fergus, James Bulger?s mother. Here is a woman who has not been allowed to emotionally ?heal? over the last eight years - she admits she is still ?consumed with hatred and anger and fear? (Daily Mail June 25). Her home remains a shrine to the memory of James, her new children subject to paranoid restrictions on their movements - a ?protective terror? that is apparently ?understandable?, emotes Lynda Lee-Potter (ibid).

The media has made this woman a walking wound, a victim unable to reconcile herself with the past. Disgustingly, hacks such as Potter are willing to give this poor, half-demented woman a national platform for views on criminality and justice akin to the Talibans?:

?They were evil and they are still evil, which is why I am so worried. They have got a taste for blood and I just feel terribly sorry for their next victim.?

?I think they?ll both find a friend and they?ll corrupt them and lead them down the same path so we?ll end up with four killers at large?.

?I know they?ll go back to the railway line where they tortured James. I know they?ll go to the graveyard where he?s buried. Once a murderer, always a murderer, and they?ll need to go back to the scene of their crime? (ibid).

This is incoherent ranting - nothing more. We must be desperately sorry for this woman and her loss. But it is distasteful to read these words being presented as ?legitimate? comment in a national newspaper. This is someone driven half-mad by the scavenging media pack that gathered around James Bulger?s still warm corpse. Denise Fergus today is a product less of that horrific act of eight years ago: more of the despicable media feeding frenzy that descended on her and continues to exploit her grief to this day.

Even more frightening is the resonance her words seem to have with wide swathes of our society. Unable to comprehend the social causes of the deviant behaviour displayed by Venables and Thompson, millions of people attribute their act to some innate ?evil?. The foreman in the original trial was Alan Barry, a church warden. His considered view is that, ?Thompson ? out of the two was more evil ? [Thompson] stared at me with a sinful smirk which made him look like the character Damien from The Omen? (Daily Express June 27).

Frankly, in a rational society such alarming, superstitious mumbo-jumbo would disqualify Mr Barry?s opinions from any serious consideration. He possibly might have made a useful member of the 16th century Council of Trent, but nothing much later historically. Yet the Express considers his views worthy of prominence.

Unfortunately, these sort of irrational prejudices are common. Masses of people do not look to the nature of our society to explain crime and cruelty. Instead, malign individuals are blamed, those that somehow were born ?evil?. Society?s contradictions are projected onto an external, alienated entity - evil - that visits horror on our otherwise ?normal?, harmonious society through the agency of ?monsters? such as Venables and Thompson. We have a society that is unable to look at the truth about itself, unable to understand how it - not Satan or video nasties - is able to produce children capable of such deeds.

Our society has become more fractured and atomised since the late 1970s and early 80s. This is a product of the period of political reaction ushered in by our class?s defeats, domestically and internationally. With the supposed final triumph of capitalism over its ideological enemies, not only ?official communism? but, more to the point, trade union solidarity, society has lost much cohesion, become more irrational. Venables and Thompson were typical of new class of semi-Dickensian ?street urchins? that re-appeared on the streets of our major cities, mitching off school, doing a little casual pilfering from local shops and generally causing a mini-mayhem. In that sense, they are metaphors for the social decay and dislocation visited on our society by the class war general Thatcher and her project of inflicting a strategic defeat on our class.

Communists believe that human beings - all human beings - are redeemable. Clearly, with care, with specialised and intensive education these two appear to have flourished academically. They are now for certain qualitatively different people. Here is a lesson on how to retrieve the potential in even deeply flawed humans.

Beyond that, what if all our children - including the pre-murder Thompson and Venables - were given sufficient resources and time to develop their full potentials as rounded humans? When the likes of David Mellor rail against the ?cushy life? these two have apparently had by dint of the fact they have been decently educated and cared for, he actually expresses his profound contempt for all humanity (Sunday People June 24).

They are bound to be outed. A Whitehall source has confirmed that some of the details that have already appeared in the press ?can only have come from people closely involved with the case? (Evening Standard June 25). We may see a re-run of the scenes of protest and violence prompted by the News of the World?s recent anti-paedophile campaign. If we do, we must be clear that these are not authentic expressions of working class anger and cohesion. They are the actions of atomised people, cohered into a reactionary mob, expressing blind, snarling hatred against a society that seems out of control.

What has that to do with working class politics?

Yet - incredibly - groups such as Red Action and the Socialist Party attempted to tinge these anti-paedophile protests ?red?, to suggest they had some sort of progressive potential. We should be clear - they are reminders of the deep, as yet untapped, reservoir of reaction in contemporary society.

They are the opposite of the politics of the working class, whatever their sociological composition.

Mark Fischer