Weekly Worker April 30)

Socialist Party weekly in crisis here are few things more stom- the existence of a timeless, transcen- ach-churning than watching dental, ahistorical evil which pos- T bourgeois society going sesses certain individuals - and not through one of its moralistic spasms. others. This is the force responsible Over the last week we have been bom- for producing Mary Bell - and Syd- barded by sensationalist stories about ney Cooke, Fred West, Thomas Ham- the “child killer” Mary Bell. The bigot- ilton, Peter Sutcliffe, etc. fuelled tabloids, of course, have had Naturally, anyone who challenges a field day, stoking up prejudice and orthodox reactionary assumptions is all manner of backward ideas. immediately suspect - and risks being Unsurprisingly, tabloid editors stifled. (For example, look at the at- have been working overtime evoking tempts to ban the ‘offensive’ film lurid images which could come from Crash.) The Omen or The Exorcist - watch out The real facts about the grim and for ‘children of Satan’ or armies of tragic life of the young Mary Bell do zombie-like killer-children roaming not fit into the neat and easy catego- your street. As Emma Forest wrote in ries conjured up the salivating tab- The Guardian: “In reporting on mur- loids. Sentenced to life imprisonment der, there is an unspoken tabloid rule: in 1968 at the age of 11 for the man- when men kill it’s bad. When women slaughter of two boys aged four and kill it’s evil. And when children kill it’s three, Mary Bell had suffered appall- satanic” (May 4). ing maltreatment - sexual abuse and Thus, naturally, Mary Bell is sup- general deprivation - at the hands of posed to become a hate figure - so her mother and her ‘male visitors’. But runs the script. This means that the the torture did not end there. At the 41 year-old Mary Bell has to be Red Bank Special Unit, we are just demonised and scapegoated as a learning, she was subjected to sexual “child killer” rather than someone who attacks at the hands of staff and in- killed as a child - for whatever reason. mates. According to one former in- The fact that Mary Bell’s specific case mate, she was “petrified” the whole is being subsumed under a general time as unit workers and residents tabloid-driven hysteria about ‘paedo- “made it plain to her that was the way had to be “a reason”. And therefore - mother and daughter - had to go into Campari. The sound of moral outrage philes’ lurking outside your back door it would be” (quoted in The Guard- that the judicial system has to changed hiding to escape media harrassment. was conspicuous by its absence. But makes the current mood even more ian May 2). so that children can never again be The tabloids claimed the moral high it is very unlikely that Fraser will feel alarming. This obsession with ‘evil’ Still hate her? tried in adult courts or sent to adult ground to the bitter end, piling on the the censor’s hand - he does not pose killers and perverts led to a near-riot The general climate of censorship prisons. It appears that these are ‘bad pressure to suppress Sereny’s book. a threat to establishment values - in Yeovil, when a rumour got out - tab- in Britain can be seen by the reaction ideas’. Perhaps they should not be Yet, with astounding hypocrisy, Mary Bell’s life does. loids again? - that Sydney Cooke was to Gitta Sereny’s book, Cries unheard, said at all. Perhaps it would be better these very same newspapers have As for murderers and killers ‘profit- being held in the local police station. which she ‘co-authored’ with Mary if Cries unheard was not published. been offering far larger sums than ing from crime’, the local bookshop or And, of course, after reading about Bell. Sereny has written a much Thus, when it was discovered that £50,000 to Bell for her ‘exclusive library is full of the memoirs of assorted the ‘evil’ misdeeds of Mary Bell, peo- praised biography of Albert Speer Sereny had given Mary Bell some of story’. Indeed, according to Sereny, wartime politicians, generals, ex-mem- ple are inclined to look to the police which attempted to penetrate the po- the money advanced to her by the £50,000 is “infinitesimal” in compari- bers of the SAS, etc. They will con- and the bourgeois courts for protec- litical psyche of those who master- publishers, all hell broke lose. The tab- son to these offers, which “are still tinue to be published - with impunity. tion. Not to mention censorship. This minded the Third Reich. She has also loids scream about “child killers” prof- continuing to come in”. Who is prof- This should send a clear signal to is the hidden agenda that lies behind written a study of Franz Stangel, com- iting from their crimes, conjuring up iting from crime now? the workers’ movement. Censorship the Mary Bell ‘scandal’. You can be mandant of the Treblinka concentra- the figure of £50,000. Jack Straw in- In other words, to profit or not is and suppression of free speech is a sure that tabloid editors, self-ap- tion/extermination camp. stantly said the payment by Sereny not the real issue at stake here. It is weapon that can be directed against pointed moral guardians and other Sereny was motivated by the con- had “compromised” Mary Bell’s ano- clearly what is being said rather than anyone who one way or the other forces in society do not want us to viction that Mary Bell had been the nymity. He was followed by his mas- who is saying it that is the target. goes against the ruling order. We get a glimpse of the real truth behind victim of an “enormous relative injus- ter, Tony Blair, who sanctimoniously If you want more proof, it was an- must be vigilant and fight all attempts the Mary Bell story. tice”. She is also “absolutely con- pontificated that it was “wrong that nounced last week that the brutal Lon- to deny our democratic right to Instead, though with no logic what- vinced that children do not commit people make money out of crimes they don gangster, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, think l soever, we are supposed to believe in crimes because they are evil”. There have committed”. In the end the Bells will be doing a TV advertisement for Page etters Party notes L I must take issue with one assertion made by comrade Peter Manson in his other- wise most informative article, ‘Capital are organising that campaign. They are backs Mandela’ (Weekly Worker April 30). not trying to do so in a united front way Describing the African National Congress with other left groups. government’s ‘growth, employment and The Colombian Refugee Association redistribution programme’ (Gear), the com- (Coras), one of the most militant organi- rade states: “Based on the overriding de- sations from the exile communities in Lon- mand to limit government borrowing to don with tens of activists, is the main pillar On Thursday May 8, the Social- The internal bulletin cited three percent of the gross domestic prod- of the campaign. WP provides its mail box ist Party is organising a London above features contributions uct, [Gear] necessitates slashing public and its English public leaders. Neverthe- aggregate to discuss the devel- Socialist Party from CWI sections in Germany spending, axing thousands of jobs less, WP does not usually attend the im- oping crisis in its relations with and Sweden expressing through state sector redundancies (re- portant mobilisations that are organised Scottish Militant Labour. A rep- “shock” and counselling trenchments), the introduction of compul- by Coras. resentative of the executive in crisis against “quick decisions” (Ger- sory arbitration in industrial disputes, and On Thursday April 23 around 50 Co- committee of SML will present many, pp24-25); “great con- extensive privatisations” (my emphasis). lombians held a very militant picket the case for the dissolution of cern” and “upset” at the “mix- This argument reminded me of the line against ‘their’ embassy in London. They the organisation into a Scottish ing up” of the strategic need to taken by left groups such as the Socialist assembled in protest at the assassination Socialist Party, explicitly com- build “a revolutionary party” Party, Socialist Outlook and of course of Eduardo Umaña, probably the most mitted to the break-up of the UK with “the need for electoral alli- Arthur Scargill and the Socialist Labour important human rights lawyer in Bogotá. state along national lines. ances” (Sweden pp25-26. A Party leadership on European monetary If WP is so keen on denouncing the However, if the debate so far lone dissident International Ex- union and - in particular - on the paramilitaries in Colombia (and the way in between the SML executive ecutive Committee member of Maastricht treaty. One of the central which BP is financing them), they should committee and the leadership of the CWI, Farooq Tariq of Paki- planks of Maastricht is also a stipulation have supported their Colombian refugee SP is anything to go by, the ex- stan offers “full support to Scot- that budgetary deficits must not exceed partners. Nevertheless, there was not one change could be an extended ex- tish comrades in their tactics” three percent of each European Union single member, supporter or friend of WP ercise in avoiding the issue. (p29). member state’s gross domestic product. at that picket. The same happened some And the issue is the fight Positive or negative, all this The groups mentioned, and others, have months ago when another 50-strong against the infection of nationalism in the workers’ is pretty irrelevant really.

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