Michael Gove begins handing schools over to private tyranny

Today, Education Secretary Michael Gove has unveiled details of the first 16 "free schools" set up under the coalition government's initiative. This is no doubt far less than Gove had hoped - "laughably" so, in Ed Balls' words - but it still sets a worrying precedent.

The selling point, of course, is "choice." It's the right's favourite buzzword for selling unaccountable private tyranny. And anybody who opposes it is a Stalinist control freak.

Typical of such sentiments is Harry Phibbs in the Daily Mail;

The educational establishment, an alliance of the teacher unions, Councils wishing to defend their school empires, Quangocrats and Department of Education civil servants, seem to take encouragement that they will be able to thwart any change.

They hope that they will be able to retain centralised control to ensure progressive orthodoxies in the classroom are followed. They want to retain control of what our children are taught and how they are taught.

These people are convinced that they know best and therefore that the threat of parent power must be averted. Often they are uncomfortable about any reference to ‘bad schools’ or ‘bad teachers’ - and are most reluctant to support the closure of a school for having poor exam results or being half empty.

Yet they are all too keen for grammar schools, church schools or independent schools to shut down - it seems the more successful a school, the more they despise it. Even when a school remains non-selective and state-owned there is hostility when it gains Academy status - because of the modest degree of independence from bureaucratic conformity.

There is a degree of truth buried in the rhetoric. The education system, as it stands, is far from perfect, and there are some worthwhile criticisms to be made.

The rigid and centralised National Curriculum is restrictive to creativity, training children to be human resources ready for sale on the labour market. Education is shaped by ideology - though a capitalist one rather than an ill-defined "politically correct/cultural Marxist" one as the right would insist.

This is not to mention that through catchment areas and the disparity in funding between the privileged and deprived, the state school system reinforces the class system and stagnates social mobility.

It is a strawman to suggest that, if you want to bring about change in some area, all those who oppose you are wedded to the status quo. But it is a strawman the right cling to for dear life.

As this overtly ideological article for the Spectator shows, the National Union of Teachers' campaign on this issue has been caught by the strawman;

Any head teacher of a school trying to free itself from state control will have had no summer holiday this year. In the weeks since Michael Gove introduced a law allowing top-rated schools to break free from local authority control, trade unions have been on the hunt for anyone daring to express interest in this offer. Heads have been sent letters, demanding they reveal their intentions. Those who do not reply are told they had better prepare for a battle. A secret war which will decide the future of English education is underway.

The National Union of Teachers wants to seek out and bully into submission any school thinking of becoming ‘free’ (which means becoming an ‘Academy’, thereby remaining in the state sector but free from local authority rules). ‘Free schools’ or academies will be allowed to expand and compete with other schools; they’ll be free to poach good teachers and (whisper it) sack bad ones. As the NUT knows, this is a threat to the current system, in which exceptional teachers are often poorly paid, and only 18 bad teachers have been struck off for incompetence in the last four decades. The NUT’s mission is to stop schools taking up Gove’s offer, as laid out in the Academies Act. Its methods, you might think, are sheer thuggery.

Take, for example, Mrs Y, a headmistress in a predominantly black inner-city school. She was ‘outed’ when Gove’s department released names of schools interested in applying for independent status. She received a letter by an official from the National Union of Teachers, angry that she had not revealed her plans earlier. A copy of their exchange has been seen by The Spectator. ‘I knew we would find out very soon,’ she was told. ‘This fundamental attack on state schools, held democratically accountable through local authorities, apparently means very little to you.’ 

‘We are absolutely not seeking a conflict,’ the letter continued. ‘Nontheless [sic] we regard these proposals as a fundamental attack on state education and will, for the sake of our members and the children we teach, do everything we can to stop any school becoming an academy. And this includes industrial action and campaigning amongst the parents.’

The message could not be clearer. Unless the headmistress drops her plans, the NUT will try to organise a strike in her school. ‘Our members — your staff — wish for this unanimously agreed motion to be raised at the next Governors meeting. We will campaign with all at our disposal.’ 

Perhaps the authors of the article - Fraser Nelson and Ed Howker - need reminding of the definition of "thuggery." It is not, last I checked, using all available resources to mount a democratic campaign of protest.

But, when these schools enjoy their newly-found "freedom" such "frightening" and "thuggish" things as dissent and democracy will be of the past. Isn't "choice" grand?

In reality, the problem is that the Tories "free schools" are nothing of the sort. Though offered to private instead of state power, they are still bound by ideology and restrictive to the freedom and creativity of the people who really matter - the children.

As I've expounded previously;

This is not what the Conservatives are offering. They are offering freedom to parents, to businesses, and to the mystical power of the market and competition, but freedom for children is not on the agenda. A particular case in point is that the City Academies, born of the same ideas under the stewardship of Tony Blair, have become "a 'Trojan horse' for radical evangelicals." This not only means that reason is being expelled from the classroom, but that along with it the autonomy of students to mandate their own learning.

The "parents, teachers, churches, charities and companies" that the Tories want to give these new schools over to, and to whom Blair gave the Academies, have no precedent for radical libertarian ideas. The "free schools" they create will be "free" only for them, and education is bound to suffer. There needs to be a serious move towards a more libertarian education system, but that cannot be realised as long as genuine freedom for those being educated is sidelined in favour of passing autocratic control to the highest bidder.

The question now becomes how, whilst making the argument for genuinely libertarian education, we can fight against what - small now - could become a tidal trend in the education sector.

The aim of such resistance should not only be to oppose the current reforms, but also make the argument for a move in the entirely opposite direction. That is, towards free schools as the term was originally intended. The tradition not of Cameron and Gove but of Francisco Ferrer and AS Neill.

Currently, our children are caught between state bureaucracy and private tyranny. For their sake - indeed, for the sake of the future - we need to organise and fight for the third alternative.

"Toerag parents" or, the art of blaming the poor for capitalism's ills

New research by the Prince's Trust has found that young people from jobless families are more likely to grow up feeling talentless and expecting to end up on the dole.

The report is titled Destined for the dole? Breaking the cycle of worklessness in the UK (PDF).

In it, we read that 16 to 24-year-olds whose parents did not work were twice as likely as their peers to feel they had no skills or talents. 20% expected to end up on benefits. One in 10 claimed to struggle at school as a result of their parents' unemployment, and they were more likely to leave school at 16 because their family and friends did the same.

As chief executive Martina Milburn commented;

Too many young people are facing a cycle of worklessness and can’t see a way out. It is a tragedy to think that so many feel condemned to a life on benefits.

However, she stresses the need to "giv[e] young people skills, confidence and positive role models" in order to "stop these disadvantaged young people becoming disadvantaged adults."

This reflects the fact that "young people want to work, with more than three quarters (76 per cent) saying that finding a good job is their main priority for the future and nearly two thirds (65 per cent) stating that their main aim is to support their family." And "more than six out of ten (63 per cent) say that having more volunteering opportunities in their local area would give them the skills they needed to find a job."

The problem is that entire communities find themselves abandoned by the wheels of capitalism. In many areas, well-paid, unionised workplaces have disappeared to be placed by demoralising, low-wage McJobs for with little scope for development in a disposable workforce.

This is why the research also found that more young people in Liverpool and Manchester grow up in jobless households than anywhere else in the UK.

77% of young people in the north west of England had struggled to find a job, while 9% end up on benefits because those around them have. Looking at the places where this problem is most endemic, it is easy to see why.

In a previous article dissecting the snobbery of Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell, I cited a Times Educational Supplement assessment of Knowsley;

Barely more than a third (33 per cent) of pupils in the Merseyside borough achieve the Government's target of five A*-C grades, including English and maths.

But, as is so often, the figures do not tell the whole story. Formed in the great local authority reshuffle in the mid-1970s, Knowsley suffers as so many like it for being on the periphery of a major city.

But as Liverpool played the role as the country's poorest son, Knowsley was equally affected by deprivation and neglect.

Even as money in its billions was poured into the regeneration of Liverpool's city centre thanks to private investment and the huge cash bonanza that accompanied the European Capital of Culture, the city's suburbs saw little of the good times.

But vast swathes of Liverpool's outskirts still sit bereft of investment and direction. Whole housing estates stand vacant, while roads such as Edge Lane, which feeds into Knowsley, are lined by boarded-up council houses.

This is the backdrop for Knowsley's startlingly poor statistics.

As I said at the time, "working people have been abandoned ... with money spent on corporate welfare and tax breaks for the rich instead of industry and infrastructure."

People on benefits "want to work and are prevented only by the availability of jobs with a sustainable income." Which, of course, is the conclusion of this new Prince's Trust report.

But, as ever, politicians have ignored the facts in order to fit their own agenda. Employment minister Chris Grayling insists that "our plans for a national work programme and benefit reform are the only way to start to make a real difference." Those plans being the same ones which will drive the disabled even further into poverty and attack those most in need of welfare.

To add insult to injury, Labour MP Frank Field has laid the blame for the "vicious downward spiral" of "permanent squalor, chaos and hostility" at the feet of "toerag parents who haven't got a clue how to raise children, and delegate the role of breadwinner to the social security system."

As he puts it in the Daily Mail;

A deepening sense of malaise hangs over our society. Violent crime is widespread, family breakdown endemic.

Too many urban areas are scarred by anti-social behaviour, binge-drinking and drug abuse.

Standards of educational attainment remain stubbornly low, while the vast welfare system provides perverse incentives towards mass idleness and irresponsibility.

Some commentators argue that it was always like this, that modern Britain is no more chaotic than it has been in previous centuries.

And there is an element of truth in this.

I am no nostalgic, wide-eyed romantic. Indeed, from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century, Britain could be a pretty nasty place in which to live.

But it cannot be denied that during the Victorian age, the social fabric of our country underwent a remarkable transformation as all classes embraced the ethos of self-respect.

As a greater emphasis was placed on thrift, decency and social responsibility, rates of crime and illegitimacy both fell dramatically.

Rising standards of living partly explain this shift.

But even among the poor and badly-paid manual workers, living in dismal, often overcrowded conditions, there was a growing desire to behave respectably and with dignity.

It was an attitude reinforced not only by strong family structures, but also by a powerful network of civic institutions, including working men’s clubs, trades unions, churches and youth clubs.

Yet that culture, which prevailed in Britain until the early Sixties, now seems a world away.

In the past five decades, this positive social outlook has been largely eradicated.

The results can be seen all around us, whether it be in the growing number of fatherless, jobless households, or the failure of more and more parents to rear children properly.

All of which reactionary drivel could as easily have come from the pen of Mail columnist Mad Mel Phillips as from the Labour MP for Birkenhead.

The erosion of community solidarity in fact derives from a combination of the casualisation of work and the increasing frequency of home moves. The latter being driven by a decline in social housing and a bubble of inflationary pressures which have relegated more people to tenants rather than homeowners.

The economic deprivation which I described above is the real reason for the spiral of despair and helplessness which has gripped the poorest areas. And whilst lack of sustainable income traps people on welfare, a whole host of financial and social factors impede peoples' ability and/or willingness to move out of deprived areas.

But that is too complex for Field. Scapegoating single mothers and harking back to the cruel discipline and obscene class inequality of the Victorian era is apparently the easy way out.

More job losses are on the way, and the government is set to send more people and communities into unemployment and even deeper poverty. Blaming us for their actions - from the Thatcher era and beyond to the present "austerity" - may soothe their consciences, but it does nothing to address the real problems.

If we want to reverse the situation, we need direct action and militancy - on the streets and picket lines - to repel the attacks on our class. The ruling class will not change direction out of the goodness of their hearts, but only if we can force them to do so.

Meanwhile, now is the time to rebuild and strengthen the institutions of mutual aid and solidarity which have held working class communities together in spite of state and capital. We need to build the bonds of the society we desire within the shell of the society we live in.

We cannot wait for politicians of any stripe to draw back from cheap gimmicks and economic dogma. We need to take the initiative for ourselves. It's time for the "toerags" to fight back.

More suffering for the people of Fallujah and why we can't gloss over war crimes

Doctors in Fallujah have been reporting a rise in birth defects since 2004. Alongside this, a new survey has found that cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all on the increase as well.

According to the report's abstract;

There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah, Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. The total population in the resulting sample was 4,843 persons with and overall response rate was better than 60%. Relative Risks for cancer were age-standardised and compared to rates in the Middle East Cancer Registry (MECC, Garbiah Egypt) for 1999 and rates in Jordan 1996–2001. Between Jan 2005 and the survey end date there were 62 cases of cancer malignancy reported (RR = 4.22; CI: 2.8, 6.6; p < 0.00000001) including 16 cases of childhood cancer 0-14 (RR = 12.6; CI: 4.9, 32; p < 0.00000001). Highest risks were found in all-leukaemia in the age groups 0-34 (20 cases RR = 38.5; CI: 19.2, 77; p < 0.00000001), all lymphoma 0–34 (8 cases, RR = 9.24;CI: 4.12, 20.8; p < 0.00000001), female breast cancer 0–44 (12 cases RR = 9.7;CI: 3.6, 25.6; p < 0.00000001) and brain tumours all ages (4 cases, RR = 7.4;CI: 2.4, 23.1; P < 0.004). Infant mortality was based on the mean birth rate over the 4 year period 2006–2009 with 1/6th added for cases reported in January and February 2010. There were 34 deaths in the age group 0–1 in this period giving a rate of 80 deaths per 1,000 births. This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p < 0.00001) 17 in Jordan in 2008 and 9.7 in Kuwait in 2008. The mean birth sex-ratio in the recent 5-year cohort was anomalous. Normally the sex ratio in human populations is a constant with 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls. This is disturbed if there is a genetic damage stress. The ratio of boys to 1,000 girls in the 0–4, 5–9, 10–14 and 15–19 age cohorts in the Fallujah sample were 860, 1,182, 1,108 and 1,010 respectively suggesting genetic damage to the 0–4 group (p < 0.01). Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively.

Last night, BBC News covered this story in more detail. The report, though harrowing, is worth watching.

However, there is just one minor point to pick up on. Namely, the idea that "fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents" is at the root of this problem and that "the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium)" doesn't need to be overtly identified with either side.

In fact, what happened in Fallujah can only accurately be described as a war crime perpetrated by the United states military. "Balance," as ever, only obfuscates this fact.

The US Army National Ground Intelligence Centre's report on the "Battle of Fallujah I," states that it "was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle whose outcome was far less certain" than military victory. They were concerned that "the effects of media  coverage, enemy information operations (IO), and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations."

Reading the report, it soon becomes clear why;

During the shaping operations, Regimental Combat Team-1 (RCT-1) from the First Marine Division established a cordon of traffic control points (TCPs) on major roads around Fallujah in order to isolate the city's defenders and prevent their escape. Supplies of food and medicine were allowed in, but only women, children, and old men were allowed out. Other MEF units simultaneously conducted aggressive counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in the surrounding area (Ar Ramadi, Khaldiyah, Al Kharmah, and Northern Babil) in order to interdict and prevent insurgent groups outside Fallujah from interfering. Civilians were warned to evacuate the city.

In other words, whilst the women and children were allowed to escape, the men were contained within the city walls to await their fate.

There is a strong parallel here with events in the Srebrenica Massacre during the Bosnian war. There, Serb forces separated the men and boys from the broader group of Bosniak refugees at Potočari, busing out the women and children, and slaughtering the men.

As Noam Chomsky has commented, the only major difference is that "with Fallujah, the US didn't truck out the women and children, it bombed them out."

Then, according to the NGIC report, "on 5 April 2004, Phase II kicked off;"

Two battalion task forces from RCT-1 assaulted Fallujah, about 2000 men in total, mostly light infantry supported by 10 M1A1 tanks, 24 AAVP-7 tracks, and a battery of M198 howitzers. The 2d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment (2/1) attacked from the northwest into the Jolan district while the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment (1/5) attacked from the southeast into the industrial district (Shuhidah). The MEF

During the campaign, at least one US battalion had "orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not." As a result, according to Iraq Body Count's analysis, "at least 572 of the roughly 800 reported deaths during the first US siege of Fallujah in April 2004 were civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children."

The US withdrew on May 1st, but went back in on November 8th. This time, the consequences would be even starker.

Dahr Jamail was the first to report that "he U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah." This was backed up by reports in the Washington Post that "some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water."

The March-April 2005 edition of Field Artillery ran a special on the assault, which stated quite candidly;

WP [white phosphorous] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breaches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high-explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. .. We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions. 

Then there was the use of depleted uranium. Deplete uranium is 1.67 times as dense as lead, giving bullets  and shells tipped with it a higher pressure at the point of impact which leads to deeper penetration.

It is also known to have adverse health effects. In 2001, it was reported that malignant diseases had increased by 200% in Kosovo since the 1998 NATO bombing campaign. It has been linked to Gulf War syndrome and the increased likelihood of veterans to have children with birth defects. At the same time, Iraqis have blamed it for the rise in cancer rates country-wide.

The latest survey from Fallujah seems to confirm that link. This makes the campaign there part of a wider tradition going back through the use of Agent Organge in Vietnam to the nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki: not only horrendous, destructive acts, but ones whose effect reaches far beyond the present.

This is what media outlets such as the BBC gloss over when they talk about "fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents" or fail to identify who is behind "the use of novel weapons."

But this needs to be pointed out, and remembered. The seige of Fallujah in 2004 was a horrendous war crime, and for the poor, wretched children being born there the horror of it is only just beginning. By glossing over who the perpetrators of this attrocity are, we are only adding insult to injury.

Thoughts on hitting children

The Children's Society has published a survey (PDF) on parents' attitudes to child care and child discipline. In particular, it has found that a third of respondents find it acceptable to smack children in order to chastise them.

According to the press release;

The survey shows that people weigh up the risks associated with slapping children very differently from other threats to their safety. Thirty-two per cent think slapping has little impact on children and young people, while another third remain divided on the issue. Unusually, teenagers are thought to be at more risk of physical punishment than younger children (36% rated secondary school age children at high risk compared to 29% of primary age children).

Far more older people (over 65) - 46% - think slapping presents a low level of physical and emotional risk for children. This finding may point to a generational shift in opinions about acceptable parenting.

Responding to the findings, the Society says that "physical violence is something children definitely need to be protected from. The survey revealed a worrying lack of concern by one third of people surveyed about parents slapping children. Children are the only group of people in this country who can be legally hit on a regular basis by others, with little protection in law."

True to reactionary form, the Daily Mail found author Patricia Morgan to respond that "Children are the only people who can be legally sent to bed by others. Does that make it wrong?"

The problem with this retort is that most adults, told to go to bed, would either say "fuck off" and stay up or comply because, you know what, they were tired and did have to get up early the next day. When smacked, however, only Quakers and the Amish are morally bound not to respond with a sharp right hook.

Children, especially small children, lack such means to defend themselves. Morgan - whose ultra-conservative credentials include arguing against women in the labour market - isn't fazed by such petty quibbles.

She tells us that "all the existing research shows that children brought up by permissive parents do worse than those who set boundaries and enforce the rules, and that those who are smacked as a punishment for breaking rules in such families do better."

The main problem with this is that it assumes that the only choices are being "permissive" and "enforcing the rules." The third alternative, as I have extolled numerous times before, is libertarian child-rearing, where the adult's duty of protection is not mistaken for absolute dominion over the child and freedom is not confused with licence.

In the words of A.S Neill, founder of Summerhill School, "in the disciplined home, the children have no rights. In the spoiled home, they have all the rights. The proper home is one in which children and adults have equal rights."

Returning to the narrow question of smacking, it is not clear that "there is a major gap between what parents think and what the campaigners tell them," as Morgan insists. The survey finds parental opinion on the risk levels of physical punishment roughly divided into thirds - 32% deeming it "low risk," 33% "high risk," and 36% in the middle with "medium risk."

Moreover, the Children's Society cite various sources which show up Morgan's insistence that kids "who are smacked as a punishment for breaking rules in such families do better;"

• Children are the only group of people in UK society who can be legally hit and hurt by others. (Removing the defence of 'reasonable chastisement' from the Children Act 2004 would simply mean children would have the same protection in criminal law as adults.)
• Children are still being hit, Research commissioned by the DCSF (IPSOS MORI 2008, Sherbert Research 2007) shows this.
• A ban is becoming 'inevitable' as study after study points to the likely damaging effects of slapping on children. (Sir Roger Singleton's 2010 report recommendations to ban physical punishment in schools was accepted by the previous Government).
• Research evidence suggests children smacked for disobedience could become more aggressive as they get older. (A recent University of Tulane study in New Orleans found that three year olds smacked for disobedience were more likely to be aggressive by the age of five).
• Children themselves are against it and fear parents who slap because they think they are 'out of control'. (The Government’s Central Office of Information’s own Children and Young People survey of 64 four to 16 year olds – 2007 – revealed two thirds had been smacked.) (Save the Children and the National Children’s Bureau polled 76 children in in 1999 and found 19 had been smacked on the head, face or cheek.)
• Slapping contravenes Article 19 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (the UK has been criticised 3 times for its failure to protect children. (In 2006, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reminded all signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the UK, that equal protection for children is ‘an immediate and unqualified obligation’.)

Against which the common thread that "I was smacked as a kid and it never did me any harm" holds little to no weight. I can say that I was never hit as a child, and I never ended up a criminal, thug, or hoodlum, but in itself this proves nothing. It is the analytical evidence that matters.

If we really want to doright by our children, then we need to educate them and be honest with them, not beat them when they do something we don't like. As I've said previously, this "allows them to develop not just their own individuality, but also a sense of morality and justice not based on coercion."

 

Aside from anything else, we should question what those who use physical punishments are raising their children to be. Doing right only because of fear of punishment isn't morality, it's cowardice.

The Church's callous hypocrisy as Pope rubs salt in the wounds of abuse victims

From today's Independent;

Pope Benedict XVI is looking into organising a private meeting with victims of clerical abuse during his upcoming state visit to Britain later this summer. 

Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster and leader of Catholics in England and Wales, said today that “careful consideration” was being made by the Vatican into holding some sort of private meeting during his four day visit. 

...

Archbishop Nichols was keen to emphasise that any decision over meeting abuse survivors would not be made to assuage the media or the church’s critics. 

“There will be, as you have seen in previous visits, careful consideration given to whether it is appropriate for the Pope to privately meet with people who have suffered abuse,” he said. “It’s very important that, if such a visit was to take place, it is not seen as a way to use those who have suffered – whose pain is intense and continuing – to satisfy some kind of public agenda or public curiosity. Nobody should be pressing the pope to meet victims of abuse in order to get a good photograph.”

That last sentence smacks of the most brazen and insensitive hypocrisy.

Given that the Catholic Church, right up to the Pope himself, has been involved in the deliberate cover-up of these abuses precisely to prevent bad publicity, it is cynical at best to suggest that it is critics who are after "a good photograph."

That aside, as I've argued before, there should be no question of Joseph Ratzinger even of coming to Britain, let alone meeting the victims of his priests. Especially at our expense.

If Ratzinger wants to meet the victims of abuse conducted by his priests and deliberately covered up by him for "the good of the Universal Church," then should only be allowed to do so at the Hague, wearing shackles.

To repeat myself;

As Geoffrey Robertson argued in the Guardian, this is a case for "international law, which now counts the widespread or systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity." The case must be made that "acts causing harm to mental or physical health, committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale, if condoned by a government or a de facto authority" are crimes against humanity. On those grounds, Joseph Ratzzinger must be arrested.

The case for banning mosquitoes, and how demonising children is part of the class war

Today, the Council of Europe is debating Mosquitoes. That is, the electronic devices which emit painful, high pitched sounds audible only to children and young adults. With any luck, the things will finally be recognised as a violation of human rights and banned.

According to the Guardian, "25% of local councils use or have used the £500 machines." But "their use is not formally regulated and in most cases no warning or information is given about their installation."

The machines are part of a culture that has developed that automatically assumes children - particularly teenagers - to be a threat or a pest. It fits in well with "only two children at a time" signs in shops, and the emergence of the term "hoodie" in outraged, Daily Mail parlance, determining criminality by what clothes you wear.

There are, undoubtedly, teenagers who are a menace. Drinking on street corners, snarling at passers by, commiting acts of random vandalism or hooliganism. But this is no justification to write-off an entire generation, fear their clothing, and wage sonic warfare against them.

If you want to address the problem of teenagers joining criminal gangs, or so-called "feral youth," that's fine. But, like everything, it is best done using reason over hysteria.

"Broken Britain" is a product of class and capitalism, not of sex, divorce, violent video games, or any of the other moralistic bullshit the conservative right tries to boil it down to.

Kids are having sex because that's what they've always done. Couples are splitting up because they're no longer in love, because the relationship is abusive, or because it simply doesn't work anymore. In more privileged families and areas, this doesn't have as much of an effect.

It is on the sink estates and in the areas of grinding poverty where everything from low household income to lacking infrastructure and a failing local economy take their toll.

Of course, there are a great many people who rise to the challenge stoically, and manage to survive and care for their families without turning to crime. But not everyone is equipped to deal with deprivation and desperation. But for the economic model we live under, we shouldn't have to be.

Philip Johnston argued, in the Telegraph two years ago, that "increasing prosperity has brought rising crime across the board." In evidence, he cites the fact that "In the 1930s, in the depth of the worst depression of the century, crime was low." But he proves my point when he admits that "this was because everyone was in the same boat; there was an equality of misery."

Who do you steal from when everyone is lacking? But, when we have "greater disparities of wealth," crime rises.

Johnston tried to write this off by adding "a marked decline in the likelihood of imprisonment for a crime since the 1950s; and changing moral standards" to the list of causes, but this is a red herring.

The fact is that "jail is now so commonplace that 7% of all children during their school years will experience their dad’s imprisonment." And the United States shoots down the apparent correlation by having both the highest per capita prison population in the free world and one of the highest per capita crime rates in the world.

This is not to mention the Victorian era. The state was tough on crime, the police force was in its brutal prime, morality was at standards that make today's conservatives look like bed-wetting liberals. And unbridled capitalism created such an enormous disparity between poverty and wealth that crime - not least juvenile crime and street-gangs - was rife.

None of this can be resolved by causing auditory pain for everyone under 25. One could even go so far as to say that such devices are meant to attack the symptoms and ignore the underlying problems.

As Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty puts it;

What type of society uses a low-level sonic weapon on its children? Imagine the outcry if a device was introduced that caused blanket discomfort to people of one race or gender, rather than to our kids.

The Mosquito has no place in a country that values its children and seeks to instill them with dignity and respect.

Demonising and attacking children in this way is just another facet of the class war. I sincerely hope that the Mosquito is banned, so that those waging it have one less weapon to attack us with.

How the Yicheng "control group" defied the one-child policy

From Al Jazeera, it emerges that when China instituted its one-child policy, it also set up a control group. In the city of Yicheng, parents could have as many children as they want.

The results were very interesting;

Without the draconian legislation affecting the rest of China, the population growth rate is actually less. Most importantly, there is also no aversion to having girls, whilst the rest of the country is experiencing an overwhelming gender imbalance.

One can only wonder how much more dramatic the results would be if there was any kind of sex education worthy of the name in China. Or if the quality of life improved for the working class and peasantry of the country from the presently horrendous labour conditions. Indeed, without the education and quality of life proven to reduce birth rates, freedom alone has done a bang-up job.

The sooner this is accepted, the sooner we can put an end to practices like this;

The detention of children is far from over

Upon formation, the new government claimed that it will bring an end to "the detention of children for immigration purposes." The first step in this is Damian Green's announcement that "children of failed asylum seekers will no longer be detained overnight at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre."

Touted as a "positive outcome," what this actually means is that they will "be moved to Yarl's Wood centre in Bedfordshire which has specialist facilities and support services." For those who don't know what these "specialist services" are, I highly recommend the report titled Outsourcing Abuse (PDF) from 2008, and the more recent follow-up by Baroness O'Loan (PDF).

As Harriet Wistrich, of Birnberg Peirce & Partners, told BBC News, the reports "recognised that use of control and restraint, and the use of handcuffs, on this very vulnerable group of detainees has often been disproportionate, unnecessary and inappropriate," and "the use of force on such people can cause long-lasting damage as we have been able to prove on many occasions where civil claims have been brought and settled."

The recent Yarl's Wood hunger strike, catalysed by the extensive abuses which the report covers, only adds further doubt to the idea that this is a "positive outcome."

No Borders Brighton point out the human consequences of Green's plan;

It may have gotten you temporarily into the Scottish government's good books but that is of no comfort to people like Sehar Shebaz, who was detained on Monday with her 8 month old baby when she went to report on Monday. She had fled her violent husband in Pakistan to claim asylum in the UK, fearing for her life if she is returned to Pakistan (women who leave their husbands are under threat from his extended family and are often killed or maimed in acid attacks).

With the ending of the detention of children in Dungavel, she and her baby, like the other families detained there, were due to be moved to be moved to Yarl's Wood today. However, Ms Shebaz was refusing to cooperate with the move, claiming that her baby is too young to be forces to endure a nine hour journey in the back of a van. She herself is also ill, having been vomiting since the early hours of yesterday morning.

The response of the 'enlightened' UKBA regime? To threaten to remove her baby from her and transport them in separate vans anyway. So much for the new coalition's commitment to respecting human rights and reigning in the abuses perpetrated by the Big Brother state on people. Of course, they will claim that she is not a UK citizen but should that allow them to treat Sehar and her child any differently that they would expect them and their children?

No change or new beginning, then, in this transition from New Labour to the Con-Dem Coalition. As No Borders Brighton say in another post, "it seems like immigration bureaucracy is the same the world over: glacially slow, wilfully stupid and blind to human suffering."

See also When they said ‘We will end child detention,’ they meant ‘Keep on arresting babies’ by Clare Sambrook.

Now is the time to state the case for libertarian education

Starting tomorrow, thousands of primary schools across Britain will be taking part in a boycott of the Key Stage 2 SATS tests. Teachers in London are organising a "SATS picnic" near the London Eye, encouraging teachers to bring their classes and childrens to bring their favourite books. Elsewhere, teachers are using the opportunity to take pupils on outings or to host lessons in creative writing.

If it goes ahead, then the action will already have brought about - albeir briefly - some of the things neccesary in an overhaul of the education system. Namely, a greater emphasis on creative work and the stripping away of formal examination.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) are leading the boycott as part of a campaign for "assesment reform." They argue that the tests are bad for children, teachers and education, cause unnecessary stress and lead to the creation of league tables which undermine the work of schools and heads. However, there is much more to it than this - especially from a libertarian point of view.*

The basic argument for reform centres on the fact that children are over-tested. The final report of the Cambridge Primary Review (PDF), published last year, found that the prevailing concept of standards in education is "restricted, restrictive and misleading." The report found that "the English insistence on the earliest possible start to formal schooling, against the grain of international evidence and practice, is educationally counterproductive," and "national tests, national teaching strategies, inspection, centrally-determined teacher training and ringfenced finance have together produced a ‘state theory of learning’."

Centrally-prescribed, "one size fits all" education, which "treat[s] literacy and numeracy as proxies for the whole of primary education," needs to end. The "considerable communal potential of schools" is not being tapped into, and "top-down control and edict [should] be replaced by professional empowerment, mutual accountability and proper respect for research and experience."

What the report doesn't mention is the role that children have to play in this model. As a reformist body, though it has plenty of good suggestions, the core presumptions of the establishment - not least that of children being removed from any kind of decision making process - remains intact.

In Summerhill, the book named after the revolutionary school he founded, A.S Neill challenged this notion;

Classroom walls and the National Curriculum narrow the teacher’s outlook, and prevent him from seeing the true essentials of education. His work deals with the part of the child that is above the neck; and perforce, the emotional, vital part of the child is foreign territory to him.

Indifferent scholars who, under discipline, scrape through college or university and become unimaginative teachers, mediocre doctors, and incompetent lawyers would possibly be good mechanics or excellent bricklayers or first rate policemen.

I would rather Summerhill produced a happy street sweeper than a neurotic prime minister.

In all countries, capitalist, socialist or communist, elaborate schools are built to educate the young. But all the wonderful labs and workshops do nothing to help Jane or Peter or Ivan surmount the emotional damage and the social evils bred by the pressure on him from his parents, his schoolteachers, and the pressure of the coercive quality of our civilisation.

The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best. All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.

We set out to make a school in which we should allow children freedom to be themselves. In order to do this we had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruction. We have been called brave, but it did not require courage. All it required was what we had – a complete belief in the child as a good, not an evil, being. Since 1921 this belief in the goodness of the child has never wavered; it rather has become a final faith.

The Summerhill model, - direct democracy, accountability, and community discipline, in which the children engage as much as the teachers - works. Hence why the case for the notice of complaint issued by authoritarian then-Home Secretary David Blunkett collapsed, and the subsequent Ofsted report (PDF) noted that "pupils’ personal development, including their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, is outstanding and behaviour is good, mainly as a result of the good quality care, support and guidance they receive."

The liberal end of the spectrum only touches upon this. The ability of teachers and schools to set their own path is examined in-depth, but never that of the children to do the same. The fact that league tables pit schools against one another is criticised endlessly, and the fact that children are forced into the same competition is barely even mentioned. Questions of education being cooperative rather than competitive, or children being given scope to make decisions doesn't even come up.

Even the most liberal of commentators, faced with the idea that a duty of care doesn't mean a right of control, and that children can engage in the democratic self-management of their own lives, will baulk.

There is too much invested in the idea that children need "discipline" and "control." They are "hoodies" and "feral youth," forming mobs and committing attrocities. Either we haven't beat the shit out of them enough, or we beat them too much rather than "moulding" them through less coercive methods. The point is the same - they're not doing what we want, therefore our preferred method of control isn't being enacted properly.

The SATS boycott is not about these issues. The framework of debate is much narrower, and the liberty of children doesn't come into it. It should. Now is the time for the advocates of libertarian education and child-rearing to come out of the woodwork and to make themselves heard.

*It should be noted that, unlike other areas, there is no crossover in perspectives between left- and right-libertarianism on education. Whilst a big part of my argument on schooling focuses on freedom and driect-democracy exercised by the children, right-libertarianism focuses exclusively on freedom for school boards, private businesses, and the quasi-mystical entity that is "the market." As ever in right-libertarian thought, freedom for those who do not own capital or property (in this case, children) is non-existent. Have a look at both the LPUK and US Libertarian Party policies on this to see what I mean.

Dangerous dogs are made, not born

Yet another young child has been killed in a savage attack by a dog. The uncle of the girl, only 18 months old, has been held on suspicion of manslaughter and the animal was destroyed. No doubt, this will set of another round of debate on "dangerous" dogs. Also of no doubt is that the substance of the debate will miss the point entirely.

During the last such tragedy, four year old Jean-Paul Massey on Merseyside, much was made of the fact that the dog in question was a Pit Bull. The breed is banned in Britain under the Dangerous Dogs Act. This led to hysterical calls for a much tougher enforcement of the law, and the image of the snarling Pit Bull as an image of fear and horror once again did the rounds in the media.

Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, will tell you this is nonsense. With his now-deceased Pit Bull, Daddy, he challenged "their image as violent, savage, uncontrollable beasts" and "stood as champion for calm-submissive pit bulls everywhere." Commenting on a similar ban in Miami-Dade, he notes that "banning the dog doesn’t solve the problem," but "only creates fear and ignorance." The fact is that "Pit Bulls were designed by people to be gladiators" and "it is a human’s responsibility to redirect that energy into something positive like search and rescue. It doesn’t matter the breed."

Kate Belgrave argues a similar point in her blog Hangbitch;

The act has been no picnic for dogs, either: with its emphasis on banning breeds (the pitbull type terrier, the Japanese Tosa, and the rarely-seen-here-anyway Dogo Argentino and the Fila Brasileiro) the DDA has succeeded mainly in contributing to the global destruction of the reputation of dogs that had – particularly in the pit-type dog’s case – a great history as favoured companions and champions. They were never bred for conflict with people, as we’ll see.

By virtue of their illegality, they’ve become attractive to a small number of dog owners who like the thought of a canine fiend.

They’re thrown into pits for illegal dogfights (I know three rescue dogs, Ace, Tazz and Channa, who were rescued from owners who used them as pit bait. Their new owners walk them in Greenwich park, where we walk our dog).

Indeed, Pit Bulls "don’t come out of the box as uberkillers with special fangs and an innate inclination to go batshit." They are reared that way, with starvation and torment often a part of their "training" to be a "weapon dog."

The solution is not more legislation, or any kind of breed specific bans, but a recognition that the owners are to blame for these deaths. Not the dogs. Belgrave outlines the proposals being put forward based upon this realisation;

So it is that the Dogs Trust is lobbying all three political parties to shift the DDA’s emphasis. They wants all dogs microchipped at point of exchange, so that dogs can be traced to original breeders – the trust is working with local authorities on a UK wide chipping campaign.

They also want doggie Asbos – the early identification of dogs and owners that have begun to cause trouble, and compulsory obedience training, neutering, and leads and muzzles for problem dogs.

The Communication Workers Union, which represents postal workers (6,000 of whom are attacked by dogs each year) and keeps numbers on dog attacks, is of like mind. ‘We’re very much of the ‘it’s the deed, not the breed’ point of view,’ says spokesman Karl Stewart. ‘And we’d agree that the DDA’s emphasis on breeds has missed the point somewhat.’

The CWU wants the DDA changed to allow prosecution of owners whose dogs attack on private property. At the moment, the law only targets people with dogs ‘that are dangerously out of control in a public place,’ which isn’t terribly helpful for posties, who by law must deliver mail to all addresses.

Such an approach needs to be ironed out and explored in depth, of course. But there can be no doubt that it will be far more effective than hysteria about and demonisation of specific breeds. Such a reaction does nothing except impede any course of action that could actually prevent more such tragic attacks on children from occurring.

The case to arrest the Pope

Last Friday, the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal became even more explosive with the revelation that the Pope (head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time of the incident) had signed a letter "delaying Church action against a paedophile priest." This is the most compelling proof yet of his complicity in the cover-up of child rape for the "good of the Universal Church."

This comes six days after journalist Johann Hari, on Dateline London, made the case that Joseph Ratzinger should be arrested for a conspiracy to cover up grave abuses (part 1, part 2, part 3). As he put it;

The paper trail goes to Ratzinger … The language of mistakes and repentance is wrong. This is a matter of criminal law. We’re talking about an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children that enabled that rape to go on for a very long period. It’s not enough to say sorry. If you’re sorry, hand yourself over to the police and let them investigate it.

Hari will be pleased to learn, then, that Professor Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have taken up his cause. The Times reports that they "have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church" using "the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998."

On his website, Dawkins has denied being so "personally grandiloquent" as to want to slap the cuffs on himself. However, he does wholeheartedly support the idea. According to him, the Catholic Church is a "profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution" and must be challenged. I won't hesitate to agree with this, or with Christopher Hitchens' assessment that the pope "is not above or outside the law. The institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."

Here, I wish to repeat my previous insistence that - in line with my wider views of crimes against children - what awaits Ratzinger should not be a baying lynch mob, and that the issue should not be drowned in hysteria. What is at issue here is the deliberate, institutional cover-up of child abuse, and those involved should face justice.

Vengeance is no more appropriate than overt protection for the "good of the Universal Church." As Geoffrey Robertson argued in the Guardian, this is a case for "international law, which now counts the widespread or systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity." The case must be made that "acts causing harm to mental or physical health, committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale, if condoned by a government or a de facto authority" are crimes against humanity. On those grounds, Joseph Ratzzinger must be arrested.

Opposing the morally bankrupt Catholic hierarchy

Today "a leading Vatican cardinal has called for "housecleaning" as paedophile priest scandals from Italy to Ireland pile pressure on Pope Benedict," BBC News reports. Walter Kasper, head of the ecumenical council, has called for a "culture of alertness and bravery" and said that victims should come first. That he is the first leader to make such a pronouncement exposes the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic hierarchy.

After Joseph Ratzinger, now operating under the title of Pope Benedict XVI, issued an apology for a sex abuse scandal within the Church in Ireland, it emerged that he had failed to act on abuse reports in the 1990s. But this is only the tip of the iceberg in a global child sex abuse scandal which implicates not only those who carried out the acts, but a battery of prominent figures in Catholicism who either failed to act or actively protected the guilty.

Before we go any further, there is a need for rationality and perspective on this issue. Whilst the crimes themselves are utterly grotesque, in themselves they are an indictment only of the individuals who committed them. I am not for an instant suggesting that all Catholics, or even all Catholic priests, indulge in this behaviour. There is absolutely no need to resort to any kind of anti-Catholic hysteria, not least because the victims and their families are, themselves, Catholic.

Likewise, I am not calling for those who perpetrated the acts to receive any kind of barbarous retribution. I have previously been very outspoken against the mob hysteria that crimes against children can (quite understandably) evoke, and I stick by that. Whether these men are guilty, and what their punishment should be, should be decided in a fair trial by an impartial jury.

No, my point here is about the willingness of the Catholic hierarchy - right up to Ratzinger - to turn a blind eye to and cover up these crimes. Whatever their motives, this is nothing less than complicity, and those involved should face trial as accesories as surely as those who committed the original abuse should be tried. That they will not, due to the "respect" they command as religious leaders, is an indictment of our attitude towards organised religion in the West. It also puts the (remote) possiblity that Ratzinger could resign over the affair into perspective as a pale insult.

A further question that needs to be raised in this affair is the link between the suppression of sexuality in religious institutions and attrocious crimes. Such abuse is nowhere near as widespread in other Christian denominations as it is within the Catholic Church. The link has to be made between this fact and the vow of celibacy that ordained Catholic priests make. Especially given the strong possiblity of a link between sexual repression and rape.

Meanwhile, Joseph Ratzinger is due to visit Britain in September. The visit will be funded to the tune of £20 million by British taxpayers, and a movement has already arisen in opposition to this. But more needs to be done. The issue isn't that Ratzinger's visit is taxpayer-funded, but that it is happening at all. We should be making him accountable for his crimes, not rolling out the red carpet.

We, non-Catholic and Catholic alike, must demand to know why this man is being revered as an honoured guest whilst complicit in a massive cover-up of child abuse. If we get no answer, then the ony option left is to take to the streets in protest against him and the corrupt hierarchy he sits atop.

Twisted and insensitive?

Maggie Atkinson, the Children's Commissioner for England, is "twisted and insensitive." More accurately, she has offered an opinion on the James Bulger case that disagrees with those for whom reason is an affront to moral outrage. As a result, according to Bulger's mother Denise Fergus, she is "stupid," "owes James and me an apology," and "should resign, or be sacked."

Such comments are perfectly understandable from a mother who has lost her child. However, they offer nothing to any discussion on policy.

Atkinson raised the issue of the age at which children can be held responsible for their own actions in a court of law. It is an important debate which needs to be had, as evidenced by the differing ages of criminal responsibility in countries across the world. Belgium, Luxembourg, and most US states place it at 18. Texas, Spain, Japan, and Poland place it at 16. Many other countries place it between 12 and 15. Only Switzerland, Nigeria, South Africa, Scotland, and Sri Lanka place it lower than England at 7 or 8 years old.

Personally, I must confess that I do not know where I stand. At present, I am inclined to believe that an age for criminal responsibility cannot be set in stone and must be judged upon the merits of the individual case. The case of Silje Raedergard in Norway, who was killed a year after Bulger by two boys younger than Thompson and Venables, only highlights the differences in individual incidents.

An old report for the BBC World Service describes the treatment the killers received;

In Norway the boys were treated as victims, not killers. The legal age for prosecution stands at 15 and so the children were free to return to kindergarten within a week of the incident occurring.

The local community felt dismayed that such a thing could happen in their city and felt little anger when the two boys were given counselling for the following four years. Trond Andreassen was the head psychologist at the child prosecution agency in Trondheim, he recalls the meetings that he held with the parents of the local kindergarten:

‘We explained that these boys would start there and what we would do to keep everybody safe. The parents of the other children accepted this situation and a lot of parents thought that these children needed to be in the kindergarten and needed to be taken care of.’

Whilst the victim's mother offered her own opinions on the issue in the Guardian;

My five-year-old daughter, Silje, was killed by two boys near our home in Trondheim, Norway. It was a year after the killing of James Bulger, and the two incidents were compared in the press. In Norway, where the age of criminality is 15, the boys were treated differently. Silje was stripped, stoned and beaten, and left for dead. I do not understand why and I will never recover, but I don't hate the boys. I think they understood what they had done, but not the consequences. The boys went back to school, were helped by psychologists and have had to learn how to treat others to fit back into society.

One can agree or disagree with what happened, and the mother's opinion, as you see fit. However, there is nothing to be gained by suggesting that dissenting opinions are "twisted" or "insensitive" and should be censured. As Kenneth Clarke told the Andrew Marr show, "I don't actually agree with the children's commissioner, but she obviously shouldn't resign for expressing an opinion on a perfectly serious and quite difficult subject."

Chris Huhne went further, noting that "we have the youngest age of criminal responsibility in the whole of Europe, with the exception of Scotland, in England and Wales, and that there is room for a public debate about whether we got it right." Though understandable given what she has gone through, Denise Fergus's call for Atkinson's sacking only serve to stifle that debate and should be rejected out of hand.

Rima,"M," and the traumas of child detention in Britain

The following story arrived in my inbox two days ago. Written by Clare Sambrook of End Child Detention Now (ECDN), it can also be found on Open Democracy. With the Yarl's Wood hunger strike ongoing, and today seeing a massive solidarity protest in Liverpool, I thought that it deserved reposting.

Take one traumatised child, classify as 'adult', arrest, lock up, and bundle onto plane, bound for danger - Labour's Britain in 2010

‘He looks my age,’ says my nine-year-old son. ‘He looks sort of like me.’

There’s a picture on my screen: a small, slight boy who, for legal reasons, we’ll call M. He’s being cuddled by his 17 year old big brother Z. Both boys are smiling. They have been reunited after a long, hard separation.

Back home in war-torn Afghanistan their parents and a sister were killed. Big brother Z was first to come to Britain, traumatised, in November 2008. He has refugee status, studies for his GCSEs at school in Leicester.

This past October little brother M made his way here. Despite M’s size, his vulnerability, his boyish looks, officials said, you’re not 14, you’re an adult.

Instead of being taken into care, M was bounced around between three different adult hostels and a house-share with older men — and refused asylum.

Welsh Refugee Council staff were baffled and concerned. To them he looked every inch a traumatised boy.

Across the Afghani community and Red Cross networks, word rippled out: a boy called M badly needs to find his big brother Z.

The boy on the right is M: jailed in adult cell, transported

by caged van, booked as an adult onto flight into

war zone

The boys were reunited in February — and just in time, for if the big brother was, by official assent, just 17, then surely it must follow that the younger, smaller, slighter brother must be... younger.

M’s solicitor told his UKBA case-worker the good news and made an appointment. ‘I felt relieved,’ says Sabina Hussain, Welsh Refugee Council’s child advocacy officer, ‘I was looking forward to some stability for the brothers, and reuniting them for good.’

Last Monday, a bright, sunny St David’s Day morning, Sabina went with M to help him lodge his fresh asylum claim at the Border Agency’s Cardiff office.

M was arrested, and locked up in Cardiff Bay Police Cells, in extreme distress, dwarfed in man-sized padded clothing to protect him from self-harm. His seat was booked on a flight bound for Afghanistan, Tuesday 9 March.

In the dark early hours of Tuesday 2nd March, M was taken with an adult detainee by caged van on the 109 mile journey from Cardiff to Oxfordshire and Campsfield House, an adult detention facility run by the government’s commercial partner Serco. He shared a dormitory with seven men.

Welsh Refugee Council instructed solicitors, spearheaded an emergency campaign. Concerned citizens lobbied MPs and the Home Office. On Thursday morning, just days before the flight, Sabina said: ‘M is crying, “please help me, I'm scared, this place is no good, no sleep, no eat, I want my brother”. We are gravely concerned for his welfare.’

Solicitors appealed to the High Court to block M’s deportation. Sabina joined him in Campsfield House to await the Court’s decision.

Meanwhile, up in Glasgow, university professor Alison Phipps was asking friends to testify that she and her husband Robert Swinfen love their foster daughter Rima, that she loves them and that Rima really is 17, and not, as the authorities insist, over 20.

Fleeing religious persecution in Eritrea, shipwrecked off Italy, Rima Andmariam had sheltered in a derelict Milan squat, gone hungry, lost a finger, made her way to Britain and Cardiff — aged 15, according to her papers which Cardiff UKBA and social services refused to accept, insisting she was an adult.

Rima fled, moved from house to house, lived rough until twelve months ago when Alison and Robert took her in as their natural daughter. In May last year Rima was seized and locked up in Dungavel, a former prison.

When Rima’s solicitor lodged an application for judicial review, the Border Agency swept her out of its range, taking her 356 miles south by caged van to Yarl’s Wood, Serco’s notorious Bedfordshire detention centre. Another application for review, deportation averted. After seven days in Yarl’s Wood Rima was home again.

And then, last month, the day after Valentine’s Day, the government told Rima she would be forcibly deported to Italy within weeks. The family campaigns vigorously for clemency, fearing that each new dawn will bring the Border Agency’s arrest squad to their door.

Last Thursday afternoon the Hon Mr Justice Cranston stayed M’s deportation, ordered UKBA to free him and instructed Cardiff Council to provide accommodation suitable for a 14 year old boy, pending a full judicial review hearing. That night an exhausted M was released from Campsfield, driven back to Cardiff and placed with foster carers.

M’s fate and Rima’s hang in the balance — here, in Britain, a country where asking for sanctuary is a right, not a crime, and where, according to the government, every child matters.

Rima’s website can be found here.

The national petition to end child detention is here. 

And there’s a petition just for doctors, here.

Jon Venables, media hysteria, and mob justice

I entered the weekend with absolutely every intention of avoiding the subject. However, Monday has come around, it has refused to leave the headlines, and so it seems that I am left with the task of analysing the Jon Venables story and the public reaction.

It is not a task I cherish, for a variety of reasons. Not least amongst them is the fact that the furious passion that this subject (understandably) evokes can quickly to turn to blind anger amongst those of a different opinion to me, rendering them unable to tell the difference between somebody disagreeing with them using reason and a child molesting demon wrought out of the fires of hell by Satan himself. The argument quickly becomes akin to wagging your finger at an oncoming bear. Not only is it futile, it is utterly pointless and counterproductive.

Two things made me change my mind about speaking up. The first was learning, today, that text and email messages are doing the rounds claiming to "out" Venables' new identity. I could not, in good conscience, say nothing about the dangers of mob mentality as the risk of some poor sod having his head staved in through a combination of bad luck and the notably lax fact-checking abilities of vigilantes. The second reason was the hope that, somewhere, there exist reasonable people who don't think that indiscriminate violence is the only response to appaling crimes.

Venables has been arrested for a breach of the licence conditions imposed upon him and Robert Thompson upon their release in 2001. Though the Sunday Mirror speculated that the reason had to do with child porn offences, the fact is that nothing has been confirmed and Jack Straw has refused to reveal the real reasons for his re-imprisonment as it is "not in the interest of justice." In fact, the most likely reason seems to be the far less auspicious crime of drug use, as even the Mirror and other hysteria-drumming tabloids admit that "Venables is understood to have been masking severe psychological problems by abusing drugs and alcohol on a daily basis." The fact "that he was publicly revealing his identity" only compounds this estimation, painting a very different picture than the unremorseful and inhuman monstrosity that the press want us to see.

A common objection to such an observation is that it amounts to a "defence" of the criminal and even the crime itself. The absurdity of such an idea should not need pointing out. Unfortunately, due in substantial part to the tabloid media's willingness to fan the flames of insanity and hysteria, it does.

I was seven when the James Bulger murder happened. I was three years younger than the killers and had a brother the same age as the victim. I remember, even at that age, feeling utter horror and revulsion at what happened - compounded by the fact that I could make no sense of it whatsoever.

It was a truly horrendous crime, and nobody is questioning that fact.

What I am questioning is with the way that this whole thing has been continuously dragged up and rehashed over the years by the media, as part of a broader frenzy which has the public ready to turn into a baying lynch mob at the drop of a hat.

At the time, I remember hearing that the family of one boy who was detained for questioning having to flee the city. And the campaign of hate did not desist even with his release and the subsequent arrest of Thompson and Venables. Actual guilt quickly takes a back seat to the need to take revenge on someone, a fact I realised even at tat time when I could not articulate it.

Then we have the crowds throwing stones at police vans, willing to do obscene violence to two ten year old boys who had yet to be proven guilty. Imagine if the crowd had managed to break into the van and drag the two boys out. If they had been able to brutalise, torture, and lynch them. Now imagine that the two ten year old boys so horribly murdered by the mob hadn't been Thompson and Venebles. Due to circumstantial evidence, two innocents had been arrested and charged. And now, they were dead at the hands of people who only hours before were decrying exactly such a crime.

In Spiked, Brendan O'Neill asks of this act, "should we really be surprised?" His point is that it is that politicians and the media who painted them as "monsters, symbolic of everything from the collapse of family values to the rise of a feral underclass." His argument is a powerful one, and points to where the rampant hysteria described above emanates from;

Politicians relentlessly exploited the Bulger killing. For Tony Blair, then shadow home secretary, it was a perfect symbol of the moral decay of the Tory years. In a statement every bit as expertly spun as his later ‘People’s Princess’ spiel, he said the killing of James Bulger was a ‘hammer blow struck against the sleeping conscience of the country, urging us to wake up and look unflinchingly at what we see’. The respectable media lapped it up: the Independent ran with the headline ‘The hammer blow to our conscience’ while The Economist called on Britain to ‘examine the dark corners of its soul’. Even the tabloids’ more bizarre behaviour was inspired by elite hysteria rather than mob pressure. The Sun’s public burning of copies of the horror film Child’s Play 3 sprang from Justice Morland’s throwaway remark that, ‘I suspect that exposure to violent video films may in part be an explanation [for the Bulger murder]’. There’s still no evidence that Venables and Thompson ever watched Child’s Play 3. The powers-that-be had simply bought into a crazy rumour.

Such an unending carnival of hate, fear, and hysteria has taken its worst toll not on a public more willing to use violence and presume guilt before innocence, but on James' Mother. Denise Fergus has not been allowed to grieve in private and move on, as most who've lost a loved one (even in extreme circumstances) are able to do. To have even the marital breakdown that the case and the press coverage caused covered in depth by the media has pushed her over the edge now, it seems, and she'll be without any form of peace or closure for the rest of her life.

As such, when people such as Tony Parsons ask "why we don’t have a court that looks out for the human rights of James Bulger’s mother and father," it may be worth reminding them that the only right denied is that to not have your grief dragged out across two decades by the tabloid media.