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Post by The Tipsy Broker on Apr 24, 2011 4:24:57 GMT -6
The liberal elite like to think that they have made Britain more civilised by being kinder to bad people  They think that the days of ugly mobs baying round the Tyburn gallows are over for good. Let them examine the scenes in Swindon last week, as a man accused of a rather nasty murder, but not convicted of it, was brought to court. I lived and worked for some years in Swindon and still sometimes visit it. It is not specially worse than anywhere else in the New Britain, reasonably prosperous and certainly far more so than when I first knew it nearly 40 years ago. But the inflamed crowd, with its tattooed faces and furious rage, was as close to a lynch mob as anything we have yet seen in the 21st Century. As I believe in justice rather than vengeance, in the presumption of innocence and the rule of law, I thought the crowd was frightening. I do not think it will be that long before such a mob gets hold of its victim and horrible things follow. I hope not. I will do what I can to prevent it. But I will not be surprised. This scene would have been unthinkable in the early Seventies Swindon I knew. At that time, Britain had only recently begun on Roy Jenkins’s great liberal experiment – divorce on demand, subsidised one-parent families, covert legalisation of drugs, vast ill-disciplined comprehensive schools, abolition of beat policing, abolition of the death penalty, relaxed prison regime, easy bail and the rest. The trouble with this experiment is that the consequences are horrible, but only for the people who live in Swindon and not – yet – for those who still think it was all a jolly good idea. By the time the tattooed mobs are raging in their nice villages and comfy suburbs, it will be too late to put it right. Hitchens Blog |
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They think that the days of ugly mobs baying round the Tyburn gallows are over for good.
