| Flowers in Gods Garden
- Articles |
20/02/02 - Political correctness
helped to kill Victoria Climbie
Angela Lambert
Independent
VICTORIA CLIMBIE is dead, killed by political correctness.
The Orwellian think-speak of our age - Orwell actually
called it Newspeak, but think-speak is the term that
took root - is responsible for many crimes. Newspeak
was devised, said Orwell in the appendix to 1984, "to
meet the ideological needs of Engsoc,or English Socialism".
It was a language "constructed for political purposes
and intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon
the person using it".
Today's political correctness is a hybrid that has to
cover many ideologies and initially feminism, though nowadays
it is also required to put a positive spin on ethnic differences
and handicap, mental or physical. As a result, people
who are lame are"physically challenged". As
if that made them any less lame, or ramps any more numerous.
This evasiveness makes it much harder to criticise someone
who is black, even when their actions are manifestly irresponsible
and their capacity to do their job is far short of what's
needed. Suppose Carole Baptiste, the social services supervisor
incharge of Victoria Climbie' s social worker Lisa Arthurworry,
had been white. Suppose she'd been an extreme follower
of a Christian church, given to proselytising at every
opportunity, neglecting her work, frequently away from
the office and reluctant todo more than glance at case
files.
She would have been cautioned, then warned and finally
disciplined. She might even have been sacked, though political
correctness would ensure she was given the comforting
pretext of voluntary redundancy as well as monetary compensation
to ease herdistress and trauma.
But neither Victoria's inexperienced and desperately overworked
young black social worker, nor her so-called supervisor,
the religious fundamentalist, was ever bollocked by their
team leader. If the unthinkable had happened, they'd have
hollered"racism". After a lengthy enquiry, during
which they'd have been suspended on full pay, each would
doubtless have received generous compensation.
I don't want to be too hard on social workers. I know
some marvellous ones who do a thankless job for derisory
pay, work gruelling hours and can't answer back. But if
slavish adherence to political correctness required all
the case-workers in charge ofthe Climbie file to be black,
it was wrong. True political correctness means being blind
to colour.
And so the desperate plight of a tortured small girl was
allowed to continue to the point where she died from her
injuries. Yet many people must have noticed what was happening.
Not perhaps her primary social worker, who could never
gain access to theinfamous flat where she was being kept
in a bath, trussed up in a rubbish bag and scarcely fed;
but when the mad, bad and dangerous aunt took the child
to hospital... what can medical staff there have thought?
Her injuries were plain enough. But one might well imagine
that, remembering political correctness and the risk to
themselves of stirring up the ethnic antheap, they might
have thought: "Not right, but not my problem. I haven't
time to start thepaperwork, launch an inquiry, ask tricky
questions." And who could blame them if they did?
And there's another thing. Social workers are taught -
in the name of ethnic awareness - to treat the customs
of other countries, other races, with respect. Certain
cultures accept violence towards women and children. If
the child had been severelydisciplined, well, maybe it's
the custom in her African village. don't interfere with
cultural norms. Let well alone.
Finally of course, there was that aunt: an aggressive
and deluded figure whom no one challenged with impunity.
It would have taken real courage to ask her why Victoria
was so strangely and persistently injured - particularly
if the child herself,intimidated into silence, were standing
there with that glorious wide smile protesting that really,
it was all her own fault.
In her final court appearance, Victoria's aunt seemed
not only vicious but mad. Her claim to have loved Victoria,
the assurances that she would never have harmed her -
she loved her more than the child's own parents - sounded
as though she had convincedherself that they were true.
The dementedly self-deluding are the hardest people of
all to prove wrong.
But apart from her and her lover, most people in this
sorry saga meant well and were doing the right thing according
to current belief and practice. This is why the beliefs
and practices must be changed. Political correctness is
not the almighty godbefore which even the truth must bow.
It is a temporary phenomenon that may - in a decade or
two - leave the flotsam and jetsam of a few words behind
it - though not, I hope, discourse, or closure, let alone
appropriate behaviour.
I will be called a racist. I am not. I am glad that the
days are long gone when my mother would say to me, as
the black bus conductor approached: "Hold your breath,
darling, till he's passed." But that doesn't stop
me saying that Ms Baptiste was aneglectful religious extremist
who should have been kicked out of her job. Or that political
correctness prevented that. And killed Victoria Climbie.
|
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
|
|
| Flowers in Gods Garden |
|
| Paul Pearson |
|
| Rosie Palmer |
|
| Sophie Hook |
|
| Sarah Payne |
|
| Victoria Climbie |
|
| Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman |
- Documents
- Audio
|
| The Yorkshire Ripper |
- Video
|
|
