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Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Editorial matter, introduction and selection © Stephen Wagg and Jane Pilcher 2014 Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2014 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–28154–8 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Contents List of Figures and Table vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction x Acknowledgements xvii 1 ‘Kill a kid and get a house’: Rationality versus Retribution in the Case of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, 1993–2001 1 Julian Petley 2 Citizen Journalists or Cyber Bigots? Child Abuse, the Media and the Possibilities for Public Conversation: The Case of Baby P 27 Bob Franklin 3 The Changing Politics and Practice of Child Protection and Safeguarding in England 45 Nigel Parton 4 Child Trafficking: Known Unknowns and Unknown Knowns 69 Julia O’Connell Davidson 5 ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ Child Poverty and the Legacy of ‘New’ Labour 89 Danny Dorling 6 ‘When I give food to the poor …’ Some Thoughts on Charity, Childhood and the Media 101 Stephen Wagg 7 A Coming or Going of Age? Children’s Literature at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 118 David Rudd 8 Punishment, Populism and Performance Management: ‘New’ Labour, Youth, Crime and Justice 140 Tim Newburn 9 Children’s Rights Since Margaret Thatcher 160 Marc Cornock and Heather Montgomery 10 Whiteboard Jungle: Schooling, Culture War and the Market at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 179 Stephen Wagg v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 vi Contents 11 Troubling Families: Parenting and the Politics of Early Intervention 204 Val Gillies 12 Recolonising the Digital Natives: The Politics of Childhood and Technology from Blair to Gove 225 Keri Facer 13 Kids for Sale? Childhood and Consumer Culture 242 David Buckingham 14 The Politics of Children’s Clothing 258 Jane Pilcher 15 Children’s Rights or Employers’ Rights? The ‘Destigmatisation’ of Child Labour 275 Steve Cunningham and Michael Lavalette 16 Saving the Children? Pornography, Childhood and the Internet 301 David Buckingham and Despina Chronaki Index 318 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 1 ‘Kill a kid and get a house’ Rationality versus Retribution in the Case of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, 1993–2001 Julian Petley Introduction On 24 November 1993, at the conclusion of the trial of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables for the murder of James Bulger, Mr Justice Morland sen- tenced them to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, the child’s equivalent of a mandatory life sentence for murder. He stated that they would ‘be detained for very, very many years until the Home Secretary is satisfied that you have matured and are fully rehabilitated and are no longer a danger to others’. On 29 November he submitted to the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, his assessment of the ‘tariff’ (the proportion of the sentence that reflects retribution and deterrence, as opposed to the protective element of the sentence that reflects the risk posed by the offender to society). This he set at eight years, to be reviewed after five. He sent his recommendation to the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, who ordered that the boys should serve a minimum of ten years, with review at seven. Both agreed that the boys would not serve the latter part of their sentence in an adult prison, mainly to avoid revenge attacks. Under the system then in operation for mandatory adult life sentences, he then passed his recommendation to Howard for a final ruling. In many quarters, not least in large sections of the British press, there was considerable surprise, not to say anger and disappointment, at the length of the original tariff. According to David James Smith (1995: 244), the ranks of the angry and disappointed included Howard himself, who had been considering a tariff of 20 to 25 years. In January 1994 Lord Taylor’s recommendations were passed to the boys in confidence, but they became public, and the Bulger family immediately launched a campaign to persuade Howard that they should never be released. This was supported vociferously by the tabloid press, and in particular by the Sun, which published a cou- pon that read: ‘I agree with Ralph and Denise Bulger that the two boys who killed their son James should stay in jail for LIFE’, and over 21,281 of these were sent by readers to Howard. The Bulger family also organised a petition 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 2 Julian Petley demanding life sentences, and this attracted more than 278,300 signatures. Additionally, Gerald Howarth, the Conservative MP for Knowsley North, handed in a petition, this one demanding a 25-year sentence, which was signed by 5,900 people. In July 1994, Howard announced that the boys would remain in custody for a minimum of 15 years, thus preventing review for 12 years and ensuring that both boys would be in adult prisons by the time any initial assessments took place. He openly admitted that he had taken note of the coupons, emphasising the ‘need to maintain public confidence in the system of crimi- nal justice’. The popular press was duly satisfied, but, appearing the following year on Panorama, Lord Donaldson, a former Master of the Rolls, spoke for the bulk of legal opinion when he accused Howard of ‘institutionalised vengeance’ and complained that ‘one can’t have a politician playing to the gallery at the expense of a convicted person. That’s not justice in my book’ (quoted in The Times, 10 October 1995). This chapter examines the processes which led from here to Thompson’s and Venables’ release on licence in 2001. It is a story from which the English legal system emerges as generally rational and humane; and it also under- lines the fundamental importance of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998. It is a story from which politicians, and especially home secretaries Michael Howard and Jack Straw, emerge with considerably less credit, and the narra- tive needs to be read against the background in which ‘New’ Labour and the Tories contended to see who could out-tough the other on law-and-order issues. Indeed, the Bulger case played a very important role in this process. Just six days after the murder, on 19 February 1993, Tony Blair, then shadow Home Secretary, made a speech in which he warned that: The news bulletins of the last week have been like hammer blows struck against the sleeping conscience of the country, urging us to wake up and look unflinchingly at what we see … Solution to this disintegration doesn’t simply lie in legislation. It must come from the rediscovery of a sense of direction as a country and most of all from being unafraid to start talking again about the values and principles we believe in and what they mean for us, not just as individuals but as a community. We cannot exist in a moral vacuum. If we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos which engulfs us all. (Quoted in Rentoul 2001: 200) As Blair’s biographer John Rentoul put it: ‘His speech was of no direct rele- vance to the Bulger case, but touched a national mood of anxiety over the break-up of morals and families. It was like a Conservative politician’s speech, responding to a moral panic induced by an atypical case by con- demning a general moral decline’ (ibid.). Rentoul notes that Blair’s office Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–28154–8 The Case of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, 1993–2001 3 was subsequently ‘flooded with letters of approval and support’ and argues that it played a major role in his acceding to the leadership of the party after John Smith’s death in 1994.