In 1993, two year old James Bulger from Kirkby near Liverpool was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten year olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The horrific case provoked understandable revulsion from the general public. Politicians gleefully seized on it to further their own agendas. Then Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair promised that a Labour government would be \u201ctough on crime, tough on the causes of crime\u201d, marking the beginning of New Labour\u2019s attempts to outflank the Conservatives to the right on \u2018law and order\u2019, which had long been considered the Tory Party\u2019s own territory. John Major responded by declaring that Britain should \u201ccondemn a little more, and understand a little less\u201d. As we know, once in power, Blair focused on the second clause of his soundbite.<\/p>\n
Perhaps for Merseysiders in particular, our horror was not at the killing itself, but that we now lived in a society that could produce such \u2018monsters\u2019 (as they were routinely labelled by the media). I was only ten \u2013 the same as Thompson and Venables \u2013 but I remember that my mum still warned me to be \u201cextra careful\u201d on the streets. Fear stalked the land.<\/p>\n
Eighteen years later, and Venables is in the news again, because he is back in prison accused of an undisclosed crime, and the government is refusing to reveal his new identity. The tabloid press is engaged in a kind of race to the bottom of the profitable hypocrisy pit, whipping up hatred of the twenty-seven year old for what he did as a child, whilst cheering on \u201cour boys\u201d as they slaughter their way through Afghanistan. At the time of writing, emails and texts are flying around, claiming to \u2018out\u2019 Venables, while the \u2018I HOPE JON VENABLES GETS TORTURED IN PRISON THIS TIME ROUND!\u2019 Facebook group had more than ten thousand members.<\/p>\n
In the face of such a right-wing tidal wave, it can be very difficult for communists to make an intervention, even in conversation with friends and co-workers who are of the \u2018hanging is too good for him\u2019 mentality. Many people are very passionate about this issue, and to disagree with them on a reasonable basis can be confused for siding with child abuse.<\/p>\n
Obviously, there is no easy answer to the question: \u2018Why did Robert Thompson and Jon Venables kill James Bulger?\u2019, but then the question has rarely been asked in any seriousness, as something other than a rhetorical device. It is not \u2018making excuses\u2019 to point out that they grew up in a city that was bearing the brunt of Thatcher\u2019s offensive against the working class. This put enormous strain on many poor families. Jon Venables\u2019 parents were separated. His brother and sister attended special needs schools, and his mother suffered psychiatric problems. After his parents\u2019 separation, Jon reportedly became isolated and attention-seeking. At school he would regularly bang his head on walls or slash himself with scissors. Apparently none of this was treated, and the state\u2019s first major intervention into Venables\u2019 life was to lock him away.<\/p>\n
Here, the objection will be raised that similar things could be said about many young children, and yet they don\u2019t commit murder. Again, this is an attempt to derail the argument by setting up a \u2019straw man\u2019 \u2013 a misrepresentation of an opponent\u2019s position. Of course, by themselves, such circumstances don\u2019t automatically produce such dramatically anti-social behaviour, but they greatly increase the risk of it, as well as any number of negative life outcomes. Also, it (in)conveniently ignores the fact that if Jon Venables\u2019 \u2013 and countless other children\u2019s \u2013 childhoods were blighted by a serious lack of various resources, then that is in of itself an indictment of capitalist society.<\/p>\n
Despite the sadism and confusion vented in online forums (a classic on the Daily Mail website reads \u201cWe should have hung them when they were ten. Killing children is wrong and should be punished by death.\u201d), it could certainly be argued that this depth of feeling comes from \u2018a good place\u2019. People generally don\u2019t want horrible things to happen to children, and they want \u2019something\u2019 to be done to stop it. With their \u2018war on terror\u2019 and their full-to-bursting prisons, the rich and powerful have created a climate where sadistic brutality is promoted as a cure for sadistic brutality. This is of a piece with their neoliberal reforms of the last thirty-five years, and the postmodern death of \u2018why?\u2019 as a legitimate socio-political question.<\/p>\n
The reversal of this has to be a priority for a new workers\u2019 movement. We need to put the case for understanding society much more, and condemning individuals a lot less. We need to make clear that this is certainly not the same as believing that atrocities are okay, because that is the counterargument that representatives of the ruling class will throw at us, even as they metaphorically wade through blood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adam Ford of The Commune tackles the media hysteria over the Jon Venables affair In 1993, two year old James Bulger from Kirkby near Liverpool was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten year olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The horrific case provoked understandable revulsion from the general public. Politicians gleefully seized on it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[8844],"class_list":["post-16192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-19","tag-author-adam-ford"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":2335,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16193,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16192\/revisions\/16193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}