‘I am absolutely sure that, like me, every parent in the country is outraged and shocked by what has happened and angered about what happened to that infant’ - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
It would truly be dangerous if focus on the torture murder of Baby P were to the exclusion and detriment of the other children being murdered or grievously harmed with disquieting frequency in the UK. It would seriously compromise the eminently worthy principle that ‘every child matters.’ The death of Baby P continues to capture the public imagination. As Newsweek reported ‘the result has been an explosion of press coverage … and an even bigger explosion of Internet outrage …’ The Sun is close to having a million signatures supporting its call for social workers involved in mishandling the case to be sacked. Variance with the political slant of this particular redtop should not blind us to the deep emotional vein it has tapped into. Why it should be allowed to make the running is something the more serious print media might wish to consider.
With public anger said to have reached ‘boiling point’ there are some who seem to baulk at the coverage given to the torture murder of the 17 month old infant. Readers are subject to old mantras that parents kill their kids pretty frequently or that tragedy tales always increase sales of books, papers and magazines not to mention magnetising viewers to television screens. In a somewhat different context, using language which according to the Guardian turned ‘a powerless, real-life victim into a might-have-been offender’, it was suggested by the head of Barnardo’s that had Baby P survived until he was a teenager he probably would have become a ‘feral, parasitic yob.’ Elsewhere there was the stale old complaint ‘why – when millions are being killed and raped in DR Congo – is Baby P the universal headline?’
Not much new under the sun there. We have heard it all before. When the North of Ireland was consumed by armed conflict there were those who would highlight human rights concerns about far off exotic places. But on their own door step there was evidence only of uncomfortable silence. Oppose mass murder in Soweto but try to understand the context behind it in Derry; hit out at police torture in Buenos Aires but label those in custody in Belfast as self-harmers; champion war brutalised Congolese children but allude disparagingly to tortured working class English kids.
Dare we suggest that perhaps in the Haringey incident much of it amounts to good old fashioned political bias? The Congo carries a violent legacy of colonialism that undulates in rhythm with the beat of a left wing tom-tom. Championing children there makes for some good anti-imperialist posturing. In Haringey, which in some circles is a ‘Labour Party bastion with a reputation as a far-left refuge and some of the worst neighbourhoods in the city’, the objective interests of the proletariat are not best served by making too much noise over a little urchin.
We already know about the children killed in others part of the world including those who remained haunted by King Leopold’s ghost. They are not to be ignored. But if there is any substance behind the view that ‘every child matters’ then little white Londoners matter every bit as much as little black Brazzavillans. And if children can’t be made to matter closer to home then proclaimed concern about their awful fate in the Congo is pure waffle. A failure to address the issue more stringently in Britain and seek refuge in the children of the Congo will inevitably be followed by a failure to do anything at all. We will end up with a ridiculous sort of equality where all children don’t matter equally.
The public outcry and intense popular interest in Baby P’s short life and horrible death is an expression of pure angst that there was one child who did not matter enough to the professionals tasked with protecting his welfare. A voiceless baby who died in the midst of professional silence is now the public face of a noisy justice campaign fuelled by the unheard screams of the tortured infant. The public are doing what the professionals did not.
Chocolate was smeared over the wounds of Baby P by the hideous woman who helped kill him as a means to conceal the evidence of the wounds inflicted by her Nazi rutting mate. Some politically loaded commentary is using a different kind of smear for a scarcely different purpose. In the end it all amounts to concealment.
ReplyDeleteIt seems the never again thing mean nothing.