In the end, I said “yes” to the BBC World Service, Sky News, Today, Radio 5 Live and Channel 4 News, but turned down requests to speak to The Alan Titchmarsh Show, The One Show, Newsnight, GMTV, Radio 5 Live (again), The Big Question – although not necessarily in that order – and various regional news or radio programmes. In total, I had personally, or through the university’s press office, received 25 requests to do interviews of one kind or another in less than 24 hours. What could people have wanted me to speak about?
Have you been living in a bubble? Jon Venables, of course.
A few months ago, I conducted a seminar at Birmingham City University with Albert Kirby who had been the senior investigating officer on the James Bulger murder case. As a result of having to introduce Albert, I had to do some research about the killing and much of what I had said as an introduction had been press released – which is why I think that so many people wanted me to offer an opinion about the case. Here’s a flavour of what I said by way of introducing Albert.
James Bulger was led on a journey of more than two miles through the town, with Jon Venables and Robert Thompson battering him along the way. They were passed by at least 38 witnesses, none of whom intervened effectively to save James. As darkness fell, Venables and Thompson finally brought James to a railway line where they brutally kicked him to death and hammered him with bricks and an iron bar before leaving his partially stripped body on the tracks, which was later severed by a train.
I also suggested that these simple – if horrifying – details hardly captured how central the murder of James Bulger is in relation to the recent history of criminal justice of this country. It was a turning point in penal sensibilities, which saw prison sentences lengthen and prompted the increase in the numbers being sentenced to prison – not just of children, but also of adults.
This murder was the trigger to the massive numbers that we are currently imprisoning today. We should note that Michael Howard’s “prison works” speech comes after this event – not before – so what prompted the growth in prison numbers was this murder, rather than the right-wing ideology of the then Home Secretary.
James’ death sparked a debate about a range of social and moral issues, including: single mothers, “home alone” children, bad parenting, video “nasties” and violent video games. It shaped the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 – lowering, for example, the age at which a child could receive an indeterminate sentence, and created the Secure Training Order which allowed 12-14 year-old juvenile offenders to be locked up in newly-created and privately-run secure training centres.
Above all, it was a murder that was used for political ends – effectively creating a common claim by both Labour and the Conservatives that each was “the party of law and order” – a consensus which exists to this day.
Crucial here was the fact that Tony Blair was the Shadow Home Secretary at the time. He had been influenced by a recent visit to the United States where he had come under the spell of Bill Clinton – a Democratic President who had nonetheless supported the use of the death penalty.
So, in January 1993, in the month prior to the murder, Blair had insisted that Labour would be “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. Following the murder, he argued that: “Children should be taught the value of what is right and what is wrong”.
More broadly, he told a Labour Party audience in Wellingborough: “The news bulletins of the last week have been like hammer blows struck against the sleeping conscience of the country. A solution to this disintegration doesn’t simply lie in legislation. It must come from the rediscovery of a sense of direction as a country, 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 what is wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos that engulfs us all.”
The news bulletins were hard at it again this month, because the murder of James Bulger feeds into particular political, popular and media cultures. It was then and continues now to be used by those cultures – more is the pity.
I finished my introduction of Albert by telling the audience about the murder of five-year-old Sonje Redergard in Trondheim, Norway in October 1994 – just over a year after James had been murdered. Sonje was killed by three six-year-old boys who had her strip and then took it in turns to hit and beat her with stones and sticks, before finally stamping on her. They left her unconscious in the snow and she would later die of hypothermia.
None of the three boys were punished; there was no outpouring of anger or outrage from the families involved, no cries for vigilante justice and no political manoeuvring by any politician to politicise the incident. Rather, it was treated as a tragic event – a terrible aberration – rather than an incident which was iconic in terms of broader political or moral anxieties. As a result, there were no policy developments related to this incident in Norway and the prison population remained unaltered. A few days after the killing, the three boys returned to their schools.
As they did so there was no community outcry, and so the prison population didn’t rise and Trondheim got on with its life recognising that an awful tragedy had taken place.
In Norway this awful murder represented nothing at all except that tragedy and no one – especially politicans – thought that it could be harnessed to suit their own end.
