Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant

Camilla Cavendish has a very powerful piece in The Times today over a case in which a mother has fled the country to stop her child being taken into care, her husband has been jailed for 16 months for helping and it's illegal for us all to even mention their names: even to the point that posters can't be printed to try and find the woman or the child:

It won't do that, of course, because to name the woman and her children would be to tear a hole in the fabric of the secret State, a hole we could all see through. I would be able to tell you her side of the story, the child's side of the story. I would be able to tell you every vindictive twist of this saga. And the local authority knows perfectly well how it would look. So silence is maintained.

And very effective it is too. The impotence is the worst thing. The way that perfectly decent individuals are gagged and unable to defend themselves undermines a fundamental principle of British law. I have a court order on my desk that threatens all the main actors in this case with dire consequences if they talk about it to anyone.

Justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done. Or if you prefer, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Or we can put it another way. We hire the State to do the things collectively which we cannot do inividually. Protecting children might well be one of those things: but for us to approve of heir actions, something essential in a democracy, we have to actually know what they are doing. Something, at present, which we don't know.....but ought to.

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