Tag: Politics

In which I think about Jimmy Savile and manage to generate two entirely valid and utterly contradictory points of view

I grew up in Scarborough, where Jimmy Savile, British TV and yoof radio God of the 1970s and 80s, had one of his many and various abodes. I believe he also owned houses in Leeds, London and on the south coast. Over the last week Savile’s reputation as a charitable TV eccentric has taken a premier league battering. If you’ve missed out on the story this is as good a introduction as any. In the week since the story broke the allegations have come thick and fast, and the perception seems to be that Savile’s abuse of young girls was something of an open secret for a large part of his career.

Now, like many people who live, or have lived, in Scarborough I have my own Jimmy Savile anecdote. He was (sort of) at my wedding reception. EngineerBoy and myself got married in Scarborough and our reception was at a large hotel on the south cliff, not far from Savile’s flat in the town. Essentially, that meant that the hotel bar was his local, and, on the night of our wedding, there he was resplendent in shell suit and string vest. This was 2002, a good 15 years after the height of his TV fame, but Savile’s presence was still enough to cause some small excitement amongst those guests who’d grown up with “Jim’ll Fix It” as a Saturday tea time fixture. Various people got him to pose for photos, including one in which he cheerfully licked a plant (for reasons known only to himself). I’m told that when invited to come and join our party, Savile declined, commenting that he, “didn’t like being around happy people.” I was also told, by more than one female guest, that Sir Jimmy had taken a vigorous feel of their bottom while posing for pictures. Generally, the women involved shrugged off the fact with a kind of world-weary, “typical, dirty old man,” attitude.

And that seems to be symptomatic of the way that a lot of people over the years responded to Savile, and it’s an attitude that most of us have probably adopted at some point or another. I suspect there’ll be very few women reading this who’ve never had their arse pinched or slapped by a stranger or distant acquaintance, and simply shrugged it off. I certainly have. In the moment it feels more pragmatic and a lot easier than saying something and being accused of being shrill and over-sensitive.

Many of us will also have had situations where we’ve heard rumours of something more sinister going on. For example, a teacher at my former secondary school was jailed last year for sexual relations with students dating back into the 1980s. The shocking point about that story was that it hadn’t happened sooner. There were constant rumours, when I was a pupil, about that particular teacher sleeping with students. Some of those rumours must surely have made it back to the staff room. Maybe not, or maybe, without a clear accusation in front of them staff and governors found it easier not to dig too deeply. No-one wants to be the person who is seen as taking things too seriously and making unnecessary fuss.

And here’s where I manage to generate and hold two potentially contradictory opinions. Firstly, I absolutely applaud anyone  finds the courage to speak out and try to take action when they’ve experienced abuse, whether they do that immediately, a week later, or several years later. It’s completely understandable that young girls don’t speak out about abuse at the time. Part of the psychology of an abuser is in the ability to convince the victim that they’re special or chosen, and that they’re party to secrets that must be held close. It can take years, if it happens at all, to break down the mental and emotional bindings created by an abusive elder.

But secondly, there is one really big difference between the case of Jimmy Savile and the teacher I mentioned. The teacher was still alive when the allegations came to light. He was arrested, charged, tried and found guilty, after the opportunity to defend himself in court. Savile will never have that opportunity, and with no opportunity to defend himself I don’t see how he can fairly be proven guilty. Does that mean he remains innocent? Well, clearly not from the point of view of the women who say they were raped or sexually assaulted by him, but legally it probably does. It may be that there are other people who conspired to assist or hide any abuse that occurred and there may be criminal charges that can be brought against them. That might offer some small very sense of resolution to the women involved.

I don’t think that even Jimmy Savile’s closest friends or (rapidly diminishing group of) defenders would argue that he wasn’t an odd man. But odd isn’t the same as guilty. Eccentric isn’t the same as criminal. Weird isn’t the same as abusive. Any woman who experienced sexual abuse, by Jimmy Savile or anyone else, should always feel able to speak about it. Their stories are important, and they form a, too often ignored, part of our cultural make-up. We need to learn when it’s not ok to turn a blind eye, when the other adults around and about need to be awkward and shrill and make a fuss. But we can’t try a dead man.

This is an almost overwhelmingly sad situation. There’s a group of women who experienced incredible trauma and only felt safe to speak out when the man they believe abused them is cold in the ground. There’s a man whose reputation is comprehensively destroyed with no means to offer a defence. And there’s little hope of justice for anyone.

In which democracy isn’t working

There is a well-known political saying, variously attributed to Joseph De Maistre, George Bernard Shaw and Alexis de Toqueville (if you’re a proper pedant, I *think* Toqueville is right, but feel free to correct me in the comments) that “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” Looking at our current rulers I find this depressing. So just in case any of you were feeling prematurely bouncy with festive cheer, I thought a nice little blog post about the inadequacy of government might bring you all back down to earth.

Here’s how a representative democracy is supposed to work. Some people have ideas about how stuff should be and make those ideas public for the masses to consider. The ideas are scrutinised by other people with different ideas who point out the potential pitfalls. All of these people’s ideas are further scrutinised by an independent and rigorous free press, and by an informed and interested electorate. That electorate then pick the people whose ideas seem least likely to bankrupt the country. The winning people form a government and have a go at putting their ideas into action, all the time having their most foolhardy excesses checked and exposed by the opposing people, the judiciary and that lovely free press we heard about earlier. To break my own rule about never quoting a talking advertising animal in public, “Simples.”

But that whole system seems to have broken down. Rather than having politicians who believe stuff, we have a generation of politicians who see their role as being to identify what voters want and then present an impression that they agree, regardless of whether they do or not. We have no bravery in politics anymore, no willingness to say “I think this. Here’s why it’s a good idea,” and accept that if people don’t agree you won’t win.

We have reached a position where the suggestion that a politician has a definite ideology is seen as a weakness. Ed Milliband, for example, was elected Labour leader largely because he was seen as being willing to move the party back to the left of UK politics. That viewpoint won him considerable support amongst the trade union wing of the party, but he’s spent the months since trying to disassociate himself from the “Red Ed” tag. He hasn’t supported public sector unions on strike action. He’s been largely absent from the debate on cuts in areas like welfare benefits and legal aid. Reading his press coverage it is increasingly difficult to identify what Ed really thinks.

I’ve picked on Ed Milliband here. I could just as easily have gone for Dave or Nick or George or even Tony. None of these are politicians interested in standing out, in looking or sounding different, in making an impassioned case for a particular set of ideas. They’re interested in being elected. They may have passionate ideas about what they’d do if they were elected, but they don’t us to know what those ideas are.  

And that’s not entirely their fault. They are the babies of an informal system of political education that irons out difference and passion at every turn. We have a generation of politicians who attended the same schools, the same universities, worked in the same politics-related consultancies, and entered parliament with little or no work experience outside the Westminster bubble. They sound bland and samey because they are bland and samey.

A generation ago our Prime Minister was a grammar-school scholarship girl, who studied Chemistry and worked as a research chemist in the food industry whilst unsucessfully candidating in Dartford. Somewhere alongside the job and the political campaigning she also managed to qualify as a barrister. Voters also knew where she stood. She was, in my opinion, pretty much as wrong as one can be about most things, but at least you knew what she thought.

But that’s all changed. Telling voters what you think is no longer considered important. Getting the most favourable coverage, causing least offence and not making a gaffe are the new priorities. In political debate, meaning has been the primary casualty of the new media-savvy approach. Politicians are concerned about things like “hard-working families,” “the squeezed middle” and “creating a Big Society.” The broader the brushstrokes, the less specific the message, the less likely it is to offend.

And political reporting isn’t helping. Rather than questioning and scrutinizing politicians, journalists often simply copy and paste the pre-approved quotes from the press release and crack on with the rest of their day. There are reasons for this, ranging from commercial pressures in the newspaper industry to individual networks of friends and contacts too precious to displease, but too little political journalism is currently focussed on scrutinizing policies and ideas. (There are some exceptions – I know I’ve bigged it up before, but please allow me another quick plug for C4’s rather brilliant FactCheck blog). 

Where people outside the mainstream political parties attempt to throw open the discussion, news coverage still tends to engage more with the people and the side-controversies, than with the content of any real debate. Thus, coverage of the Occupy London camp focusses on whether the protestors really are using their tents overnight, which members of the St Paul’s clergy have resigned, and what legal action is being proposed/taken, rather than on what the protestors are asking for and how/if politicians are responding.

There are options to how we fix this inadequate state of affairs. We could jettison the whole democracy thing and just have a dictator. I’m more than happy to volunteer for the role, providing I can be known as Queen Alison, rather than President or Prime Minister. It just sounds so much foxier, and implies ownership of good jewellery, which I like.

However, populaces all over the world are currently rising all up and getting a bit fighty to try to win for themselves the voting rights we have taken for granted for too long, so maybe we should give democracy another shot. To make it work you all need to agree to make yourselves informed voters. It’s tricky but doable. Google will help you. Even mainstream newspapers will help if you teach yourself to read them with a critical eye (Andrew Marr’s book My Trade has a great section on how to sift the content from the fluff in an average newspaper article.) I’d also warmly encourage you to ask questions of your own representatives. We can all do this. Come the revolution I’ll be at my computer sending a tersely worded email to my MP.

At the same time, journalists need to start doing some actual journalism. Between us we might be able to start to pressure our elected representatives into saying what they really think.

Finally, our politicians need to collectively agree that, on balance, they probably ought to get out more and talk to people who don’t look and sound just like them. They could all agree to get jobs for a few years and only stand for future election after a full decade of doing something completely different. That might give them time outside the Westminster pressure cooker to grow a personality and, maybe even decide what they really think.