Since I so much agree with the Big Society which David Cameron wants to create rather than the big state which we have got, I should like to enthuse about the Tory manifesto which makes this the central theme. But there is a problem. The document does not really speak to us, the voters. True, it offers us on its front page an ‘invitation to join the government of Britain’. But haven’t we got enough on our plates without having to do politicians’ job for them? We pay them half our income, and still they want more from us! The manifesto does not start from the viewpoint of particular people — first-time voters, pensioners, parents, taxpayers or whoever — and look at the world as they do. Take, for example, the ‘eight clear and transparent benchmarks’ to judge the economic success of the next Conservative government: none even mentions personal taxation. The manifesto enunciates an overall theory, with examples. A good theory, yes, but one which, for all its concern for the local, feels remote from real life. Reading it, I felt as one sometimes feels when attending a charity occasion where the appeal being made is not quite hitting the spot — a guilty sense that although this is a worthy cause one has not quite got the time to help. The document is, in fact, too posh — not at all in being arrogantly selfish, but in being too vaguely benevolent. It sees human society as resembling the improvements committee of a pleasant village. I live in such a village, and love it, and my wife is on such an improvements committee, but we are very lucky, and most people aren’t. In his foreword, David Cameron asks ‘How can we revitalise communities unless people stop asking “Who will fix this?” and start asking “What can I do?”?’ But the answer to the question, ‘What can I do?’ is not really provided.
In last week’s Spectator, Alex Cockburn, in a letter, complained that he had not yet read a comment in the paper which ‘could not be paraphrased as “Yes, we know there were/are paedophiles among the priests, but…”.’ I cannot speak for other bits of The Spectator, but I am guilty as Mr Cockburn charges. I am happy to be so for two reasons. One is that one of the horrible things about accusations of paedophilia is that it is seen as ‘indefensible’ (a word which Mr Cockburn used) to resist them. People calling themselves human rights lawyers now decide that they want to arrest the Pope when he comes to Britain for ‘crimes against humanity’. Such people get so angry that they forget to establish guilt, and they happily accuse others — in this case, bishops — of ‘cover-up’, often on the basis of mangled evidence. For example, the present Pope, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, sent a letter urging a diocese in the United States to proceed with caution before unfrocking a paedophile priest. This is considered damning. But he probably wrote as he did for reasons of which the critics are completely unaware. At that time, the Church was concerned to stop the trend of priests to laicise. It wished to emphasise that the priestly vows are lifelong. Its approach to all cases, therefore, was to slow the process down. The decision not to unfrock a priest (or to delay his unfrocking) does not necessarily mean that his crime was not treated seriously or that he was placed in a position where he could reoffend. I am not saying that Cardinal Ratzinger was right to proceed as he did — I do not know — but his behaviour was not obviously indefensible or evasive.
My second point relates to Mr Cockburn’s suggestion that defences of the Church, such as those made here, are made solely because Christians have to stick up for one another. This is unfair (though of course Christians should help one another). For years, I have attacked the anti-paedophile craze, whether in schools, youth organisations, social services, on the internet, or in churches. Not, it should be needless to mention, because I think paedophile acts are ever justified, but because of the dreadful threat to the innocent of false accusations. Just as there are many alive today whose lives have been blighted by sexual abuse, the same is true of many who have been falsely accused of it. And many, many good people are now inhibited from showing loving care for children because of what they may be accused of. The currently popular ‘solution’ — to call in the police whenever anyone is accused of anything — is no solution at all, and is often advocated by people who are normally extremely sceptical about the ability of the police to sort everything out. Why do people completely forget the procession of false accusations made over the past 30 years (think of ‘ritual satanic abuse’)? Some years ago, for instance, a parliamentary report on the conduct of investigations of abuse in council care homes showed that there were huge problems with the police ‘trawling’ for child abuse evidence, that the Crown Prosecution Service had to reject 79 per cent of the cases brought to it because of poor evidence and that hundreds of care-home workers (510 in Merseyside alone) were questioned by police with very few prosecutions resulting, but much pain and suspicion caused. ‘A significant number of miscarriages of justice occurred,’ the committee concluded. Child abuse is the corruption of innocence. Witch-hunts are attacks on innocence too. Justice demands the insertion of the ‘but…’ of which Mr Cockburn complains.
It is almost incredible ill chance that it should have been on a flight to commemorate the Katyn massacre in Russia that the Polish President and other Polish ministers, senior officers and dignitaries died in a crash. Seventy years ago, over about a month, the Soviet authorities murdered roughly 22,000 Polish officers, professionals and writers. This was denied until the end of the Cold War. It will take huge tact to prevent Poles suspecting Russian foul play today. Britain should mark the new tragedy in a formal manner. Our Foreign Office had a peculiarly inglorious role, opposing any memorial, and upholding the untruth that Germany, not the Soviets, might have been responsible for the murders. The Labour government boycotted the unveiling of the memorial at Gunnersbury cemetery in 1976. Wouldn’t it be a good gesture for our government to hold a service at the memorial to mourn the new horror and the old?
My eye was caught by an advertisement in a Sunday magazine: ‘37% of women feel more attractive than they did ten years ago’, it said. The product advertised was Nivea, not the Labour party. But the message clearly shows the importance of how you put things. I am still worrying about the implied but unmentioned 63 per cent of women who think they are less attractive than ever.
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