Taking the Right Lesson.

One of the leading news issues in Britain at the moment concerns allegations of serious child sexual abuse by leading Establishment figures. There are two separate and apparently unconnected threads to this: one involving the late TV personality Jimmy Savile, and another involving activities at a children’s home back in the 70s and 80s. At the moment, interest is being focussed on celebrities and politicians, but you can’t help feeling that there’s a welter of dark stuff sitting behind a dam that is creaking and fit to burst. The question is, should we let it?

I’m sure there’s enough evidence in the historical record to leave us in no doubt that sexual and other forms of abuse have been prevalent among senior members of the Establishment in all ages and pretty much all cultures. It seems to be one of the perks of power to those so inclined, and we in the modern world need to be sure that we no longer find it acceptable. That’s the point of democracy, isn’t it? Democracy gives us all the right to judge how people behave – whoever they are – when the innocent are getting hurt.

So yes, of course we should let it burst. In fact, we should encourage it to burst, as long as we do so for the right reason. We mustn’t stop at punishing the guilty for past sins, however much we might congratulate ourselves on setting deterrence in place. That would merely encourage us to feel satisfied and go back to sleep. We need to learn the lesson. If this stuff was going on among the Roman aristocracy two thousand years ago, and it was still going on among the great and the good in Britain a mere thirty or forty years ago, why assume it no longer happens? The lesson relates to the layer of slime that has always run under the corridors of wealth and power, and almost certainly still does.