Michael White of the Guardian weighs in on the George Bell issue

Michael White of The Guardian is neither my friend nor my ally, and our personal encounters are rare and reasonably frosty. But he is a man of strong principle and respect for truth (it could be his Cornish antecedents) .So I commend to you his blog posting on the George Bell affair.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/blog/2016/feb/08/child-abuse-claims-why-due-process-and-a-fair-hearing-matter

 

Note the contrast between this and Theo Hobson's article at The Spectator blogsite.

I especially like the potent and obviously heartfelt conclusion:

 

'Yet for justice to be done and seen to be done, process matters. Bell may or may not be guilty. But quasi saints do not come along very often and the comments of those who have affected his reputation need to be examined.

Process matters, the right to a proper police investigation and legal defence matters for the guilty as much as the innocent. It is that responsibility which distinguishes us from lynch mobs, be they in dusty Mississippi towns, dustier Iraqi ones ��� or on Twitter.'

 

 

I am beginning to regard this as a small-scale and very English version of the Dreyfus controversy in 19th-century France. the case itself is fascinating in detail, and requires the righting of an injustice which, in one case, left an innocent man confined in vile conditions for many years, while the guilty went unpunished, and in another crams the reputation of a great soul into a dank cage of shame forever and ever.

 

But it is also important because it raises an absolute principle which any free society must confront in each generation. Do we really value our freedom and are we willing to pay the high price in hard coin which its survival demands? Due process is not a dry formula, but our protection not just against the mob (as Michael says) but also against the state.

 

Our reasonable horror at real child abuse may have misled us into neglecting due process, when anyone is accused of it,  and so destroying our freedom in a passion for goodness and against evil. It will be unpopular to point this out. But that does not mean it is wrong. The outcome of the approaching Goddard Inquiry may be crucial to or liberties. That's s why I keep writing about this.