The Decline Of The English Society: The Mothers’ Country
“MOTHERS IN ARMS,” says the Sun’s front-page headline.
“Three grieving women, their lives torn apart by murder. Today, they unite and vow to help heal broken Britain.”
KERRY NICOLE: her daughter Tania was killed by “Suffolk Strangler” Steve Wright
HELEN NEWLOVE: “Widowed when a gang of three kicked her “hero hubby” Gary to death
LINDA BOWMAN: “”trying to rebuild her life” after daughter Sally Anne was murdered by Mark Dixie
The Sun lines up the women as the epitome of today’s violent Britain. Their stories are used to beat out a message:
Helen Newlove: “This country is terrifying, no one’s safe.”
Linda Bowman: “I just can’t smile while killer lives.”
Kerry Nicole: “Politicians don’t; take any notice.”
Ask three women still grieving for their murdered loved ones what they think of the killers. What they think of the world around them. What will they say?
Rod Liddle noted in the Times of George Orwell’s essay for Tribune entitled The Decline of the English Murder.
In the good old days, he lamented, really compelling murders were committed by “intensely respectable” men of the “professional class”, preferably in a semi-detached house “which will allow neighbours to hear suspicious sounds through the wall”.
The perpetrators went astray through a sense of sexual guilt, having harboured a guilty passion for, perhaps, a “secretary”. Murder was less damaging than the sexual disgrace that would otherwise befall the individual — and a good murder always had an element of sexual intrigue and was never about anything so mundane as the theft of a large quantity of money.
In Orwell’s words: “A crime can have dramatic and even tragic qualities which make it memorable and excite pity for both victim and murderer.”
All were victims of the mores of the day.
The appetite for such murders — and the propensity of people to commit such murders — dwindled because mores changed. Within a few years we had reform of the divorce laws and later the sexual revolution. Within two decades you could have sex with whoever you liked. There was no need to murder anyone. All you had to do was ask nicely.
So what is the murder that inflames the public imagination and hogs the front pages today?…What is important is the murder weapon — it should be a sword or an axe or a hammer, anything necessitating considerable and even pointless effort on the part of the murderer and lots of gore.
The victim is important, too: he or she should be vulnerable and weak… Motive is crucial: there should not be one, or at least not a motive that normal people can comprehend.
As in Orwell’s English Murder, society provides the context, or at least the Sun would like it to.
The Sun says local councils are planning to switch off street lights to save electricity, if not the planet. Says Linda: “This will cost lives.”
Says Linda: “I’d love to watch Sally Anne’s killer get the death penalty. I want to see him suffer until he is squealing like a pig.”
Says Kerry of politicians: “They don’t take any real notice of what we say anyway. It’s about time they did.”
Says Helen: “I would be the one to out the noose around his neck or presses the button for the lethal injection.
The Sun then asks them who is to blame for “Broken Britain”?
Linda says discipline has been taken away from parents. Helen says there is no respect for anything. The call is to “name and shame yobs and their families.”
The Sun listens. These are the words of women who have been hurt, who have lost their young, who live in a rotten world scarred by bad memories.
The Sun makes them impossible to ignore. It may even give politicians an imperative to act against social menace…
Posted: 12th, March 2008 | In: Tabloids Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
