A family with the wrong members in control
Monday, January 09, 2006

A few years ago, my partner worked in a number of women's refuges across the country, helping women escape domestic violence. It is without a word of exaggeration to say that some of the stories she occasionally brought home could sit uncomfortably alongside the tales of torture and depravity related by Craig Murray of late.

Should Eliza Manningham-Buller ever get the itch for a gulag of her own, she could do worse than infiltrate a refuge and attempt to locate and recruit the women's erstwhile partners. Terrifying creativity worthy of Karimov is not beyond some of these men.

And like ambassadors with consciences, refuge workers tend to wear our quite quickly. I've seen the intelligence and if you'd seen what I'd seen, you'd be terrified. On average, two women are killed every week by their current or former partners. By grim coincidence, that's exactly double the number of people killed in the July 7 bombings.

That's two entirely preventable 7/7s taking place every year. So where's The War On Spousal Abuse?

"Preventable?" I hear you say. Yes, indeed, I say. These monsters live amongst us. Isn't it incumbent on the male community to weed out the extremists in their midst? It's easy to spot the ones preaching their creed of hate: those calling women "it" or "birds", those saying "while you're down there, love" when a woman crouches down to pick something up from the floor, those who buy Nuts or Zoo, and that bloke I saw on the train the other week sitting next to his girlfriend while ogling a double page spread of one of Girls Aloud displaying her giblets. Round them up.

Hear a man raising his voice to his partner? Round him up. A woman, on average, is assaulted 35 times by her partner before she asks for help. See a woman with a black eye? Bang up her old man. Hold him without trial. You might not have the evidence to prosecute but it's a potential atrocity prevented. A plot thwarted. Who knows, he might have associates with similar views. We'll need to find them as well - who knows what they might be plotting. If he won't tell you where they are you might want to give him a smack, or make him think he's drowning or even stick a broken bottle up his arse to get him to tell you. Don't feel too bad: he is, after all, a suspected, possible murderer. Wife beaters are scum and deserve what they get. Sorry if I'm undermining the criminal justice system and conflating "suspects" with "guilty" but the rules of the game have changed.

(The thing is, scrutinising closely what goes on inside families risks undermining the "preferred model" of marriage as defined by our moral guardians, the unpreferred model being living over the brush and/or bumming. You risk furthering "the breakdown of family life" and rebuilding Sodom and Gomorrah. Or something. It's the same with the number of children murdered in the UK each year. "Of the 99 children killed in 2002/03, 55 were killed by their parents and 17 were killed by strangers," according to Home Office figures. Needless to say, whipping up hysterical tabloid campaigns against the biggest group of child murderers - parents - would be wildly impractical.)

In his party conference speech last year, Tony Blair said:

For eight years I have battered the criminal justice system to get it to change.

He of course, unless anybody has seen him punching criminal case lawyers, was speaking metaphorically. It's a colourful metaphor, conjuring evocative mental imagery, and one wonders if he uses it in other contexts.

Since we were married I have battered Cherie to get her to change.

or

Since July 7 I have battered the Muslim community to get it to change.

or

For years I have battered my children to get them to change.

Doesn't have the same resonance does it? You can imagine the roaring silence at dinner with Dame Judy or Sir Bob or Richard and Judy after Tony dropping one of those into polite conversation.

Having said that, a few years back Blair confessed to having slapped his older children. "There is, a clear dividing line between administering discipline on the one hand and violence on the other," he said. Like there's a difference. Whichever way you slice it, whether you be besandaled, progressive mollycoddler or bugger-gripped, rod-of-iron thunderer, slapping a child means one thing: inflicting pain on them to get them to do what you want.

Which makes you wonder why him and his government are so coy on other issues and strive so hard in the quest for euphemisms with which to mask their behaviour. How about:

There is, a clear dividing line between liberating Iraq on the one hand and bombing it to shit on the other.

Or...

There is, a clear dividing line between torture when it's useful on the one hand and torture for shits 'n' giggles on the other.

Which is, when you think about it, remarkably close to:

You say 'Look, it is simply the civil liberties of the suspect, or simply the liberties of freedom from terrorism'. You have to balance those two things.

Anyway. After abusive partners we'll move on to car owners (they caused the equivalent of 62 7/7s in 2004 alone). And then the drinkers (126 7/7s in 2004). Eventually we'll get down to the bastards who let their dogs crap in the street without clearing it up. It's only a matter of time before their actions lead to somebody's death. Or at least they will if I ever manage to catch one of them.


12 Comments:

On January 09, 2006 1:18 PM, Blogger snooo said...

Great post. You've established "7/7" as a barometer of death, which will be a handy tool for reporters and angry types everywhere.

The train disaster? It was a quarter of a 7/7...  


On January 09, 2006 4:55 PM, Anonymous Uponnothing said...

A brilliant piece. It was worth going to work today just to read it.

A ray of light in these dark times.  


On January 09, 2006 5:43 PM, Blogger ejh said...

Curious heading though. (I know where it's from: I'm not sure I see the relevance.)  


On January 09, 2006 6:46 PM, Blogger Justin said...

Yeah, I know what you mean. This was originally a much longer post which went on to wider issues of terrorism and other stuff. It wasn't working so I chopped out the stuff I didn't like and what remained is here - the title isn't now as pertinent as it was.  


On January 09, 2006 7:47 PM, Blogger Disillusioned kid said...

Simply brilliant post. Incisive, intelligent, amusing. I wanna be able to write like this...  


On January 10, 2006 4:42 PM, Blogger ejh said...

If you're an Orwell fan you might like this.  


On January 13, 2006 4:27 PM, Blogger Rachel said...

Justin this is 'kin superb. Why don't you have a column?

whywhywhywhywhy?  


On January 13, 2006 4:38 PM, Blogger Justin said...

Cheers, Rachel.

Why? Because I went on to blow my carefully cultured air of liberal cynicism with this. It still rankles.  


On January 17, 2006 12:09 AM, Blogger Laban said...

"Spousal" abuse ? I presume you're aware that abuse predominates in the non-married setting.

(and I'll provide references for my figures when you provide them for yours !)  


On January 17, 2006 7:41 AM, Blogger Justin said...

Laban, I probably should have been clearer but I didn't mean to intimate that "spousal" abuse was confined exclusively to marriage - hence the use of the word "partner" instead of "husband". This wasn't an attack on the institution of marriage.

Some men will hit the woman they profess to love whether married to them or not (and vice versa, of course).  


On January 17, 2006 8:58 AM, Blogger Laban said...

But statistically the married men are much less likely to do so ...  


On January 17, 2006 9:00 AM, Blogger Justin said...

That's fair enough. I'm not suggesting we discriminate.  


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