After Jimmy Savile… November 8, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
The Jimmy Savile case is one where with each new revelation the questions only increase. The Guardian put it very well in an editorial on the issue and the broader one of child abuse connected to the case when it asked ‘who on earth gave Savile the keys to Broadmoor?’ – the high security mental hospital. These were a set of gold-plated keys, but the bizarre fact that anyone unconnected with the medical or security aspects of an institution like that would be given access, right up to the provision of a bedroom, (and this it would appear in at least three hospitals) makes it all but incredible. Was it in part an aspect of a celebrity culture – a pernicious byproduct of mind sets fixed on the idea that because someone said they were doing good they were there fore above suspicion? There’s talk of a third, fourth and fifth celebrity who were involved in similar behaviours and the implication is that they were operating in concert with Savile.
Clearly there is the institutional aspect – one we know only too well on this island. That the BBC could demonstrate that is dispiriting in the extreme, but the tendency towards a ‘softly softly’ approach is now evident and at all levels and right through to the immediate past.
The Guardian also notes a submerged – to some degree – class aspect of this in the following:
The weekend remarks by the retired head of the Duncroft approved school for troubled girls, in which she dismissed former pupils’ claims about Savile as “wild allegations by well-known delinquents”, tell you everything you need to know about the culture of contempt towards vulnerable youngsters among certain professionals who were supposedly looking after them.
And then in recent days this has taken on an overtly political edge with the latest revelations that David Cameron, no less, is having to initiate public inquries into allegations that ‘senior Conservative politicians and other establishment figures may have been involved in the scandal’ of child abuse in North Wales. The identity of the most senior Tory hasn’t yet been revealed publicly in the UK, though they’re stepping closer to that with comments including the following ‘the potential involvement of a close ally of Lady Thatcher’ from the Guardian. But one imagines it is only a matter of time.
There’s a sort of appalling inevitability to all this – yet more evidence of societies that sleep walked their way through terrible crimes, choosing all too often to ignore or dismiss or conceal those crimes.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
“dispiriting” perhaps.
But not surprising.
I watched Jim’ll fix it when I was a bit younger.
The subliminal (and sometimes not so subliminal) imperialist,royalist, monarchist, unionist, conservative messages were relentless (as I realised later).
The BBC has always pumped out self-serving propaganda about its “impartiality” and “neutrality’ and its “public service” role.
And a lot of middle class lefties (in Ireland as well as in Britain) actually believe it.
But (for all that they provide a decent enough latter-day circus) they have always been the broadcasting arm of British imperialism (and of the British establishment in general).
Abusing kiddies goes with the territory.
By the way, let’s not be too surprised if the scandal crosses the water.
In fact it would be more surprising if some of the Montrose crew hadn’t emulated the BBC in this respect (as part of their general west-Brit political and editorial culture).
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You know, you’re right to put dispiriting in quotations marks. It’s too weak a word, but given the topic it is difficult to write about it given how much we’ve seen of this on this side of the water without becoming enraged – because this isn’t something that happened in the dim and distant past but in relatively recent periods of time when people knew the score about the impacts on children of these crimes.
That’s a very good point re Jim’ll fix it politically. LIttle wonder he got an ‘honour’.
That’s also a good point re this side of the Irish sea.
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Dilettante might be right in saying that BBC TV, including Jim’ll Fix It, was always full of royalist… monarchist.. conservative messages.
But ‘Abusing kiddies goes with the territory’ is an idiotic comment.
You’ll find that ‘abusing kiddies’ as he puts it has occurred, and has been covered up, in all kinds of political contexts and organisations, and not just in ‘the broadcasting arm of British imperialism’ or among Irish ‘west-Brits’. .
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