Graeme Archer: Ghosts

This is a civilised country, right? I mean, we moan about noisy children on buses, and the celebrity culture, and rubbish football managers, but we’re still a decent country where the vulnerable get a basic level of protection, aren’t we?

Steven Hoskin died on 5 July last year, age 39, after being tortured by Darren Stewart, a drug-dealer, and Stewart’s girlfriend, Sarah Bullock. Steven Hoskin had learning difficulties, so he was a nice easy target for Stewart and Bullock. They moved into his flat, where they dragged him around on a dog lead. After months of degradation – months during which Steven Hoskin contacted the police for help on twelve separate occasions, with no effect whatsoever – they’d had enough of their fun. They forced him to swallow 70 painkillers, marched him to a viaduct and pushed him over. What basic desire for life led Steven Hoskin to cling onto the edge of the viaduct? No matter. The seventeen year-old Bullock stamped on his fingers until he fell thirty metres to his death.

A special report into this horror concluded – surprise! – that the failure to help Steven – despite his repeated attempts to signal his distress to the many agencies which “cared” for him –was a lack of communication between those agencies. The report into his death, by Dr Margaret Flynn of Sheffield Hallam university, concludes that he would have been saved by “better inter-agency working”. Really? Imagine the scene at the police station. “Please help me, I’m being tortured.” “Sorry sir, you’ve got learning difficulties, so I’ll file a memo on that for social services and leave it on this pile here. Now get out”.

I don’t think so. The failure, obviously, is a failure of love. Some terrible failure of love led, first, to the manifestation of evil that is Darren Stewart and Sarah Bullock. That anyone could have come into contact with Steven and failed to move to his assistance is another failure, and I think is what causes that sick feeling in your stomach when you read of his death. What would I have done, if he had been my neighbour?

Are we supposed to believe that the problem would be solved, that no-one else with learning difficulties would be tortured to death, if only another committee writes another protocol for inter-agency communication? What a Labour solution, and how depressing in its poverty of insight. When are we going to learn that systems and processes do not prevent error, that the more you build up a machine to deliver care, the less humane will be the outcome. What is needed is not a Standard Operating Procedure: what we need is more space for humanity to flourish. I can see a connection with the social responsibility agenda, though it would be too crass to spell it out. We have to destroy these machines which bind us down and force us apart, the machines to which we’ve devolved our responsibility to care and our duty to act. Remember Iris Murdoch again: in the end, all our failures are failures of love.

*
I took Monday off work to do some Christmas shopping. Up West! Going Up West is an expedition and a half for me, not entered into lightly. Mr Keith tucked a tenner into my jacket pocket before leaving for work. Treat yourself to something nice, love. Get a cab ‘ome. I passed from the safety of Hackney to the wilds of Oxford Circus on the upper deck of the 55 bus, from which eyrie I inspected the seething mass on the streets below. Deep breath. Forced my way out into the throng … and straight into John Lewis. Of course! I have reached that decade of existence where, frankly, you can keep your interesting little artisan-crafted bits of knick ‘n knack ‘n bric ‘n brac ‘n stuff. Just take me to the third floor Christmas Shop where I can defy the expectations of my twenty year-old Naomi Klein reading self (“No Labels! No Labels! The horror!”), and stock up on reasonably-priced, professionally-produced giftware. (Giftware. My twentysomething self is hanging his head. That it should come to this, Graeme.) Then up to the 5th floor for lunch.

So I’m eating an eggy sandwich (which will shortly make me feel sick: is there such a thing as an eggy sandwich which doesn’t do this?), looking at the array of Hertfordshire matrons around me, the air thick with hair lacquer and that quiet hum of satisfaction which is the hallmark of John Lewis, and I’m wondering, no, really, what happened to me to make John Lewis my default destination in the west end?

To see off the egg-induced nausea I wander down into Soho. There isn’t a pub here that twentysomething Graeme didn’t frequent at some point or another (at a time when I couldn’t have told you what John Lewis was), and passing them now brings clutches of recognition, variously of embarrassment or rueful amusement. The streets are a palimpsest, and just under the surface of today the ghosts of a past life shimmer, briefly, before heading back down to their black depths. That unique, overly-sweet, rancid Soho smell. Passing a restaurant brings a particularly futile date back into sharp relief. A coffee shop reminds me of a solitary, but contented, sunny Sunday morning. The pubs remind me of the determination, the sheer energy, that is required by the single man, in order to screw his optimism up for another Friday night out, another Saturday morning alone. I pause on the threshold of an old haunt, half-minded to go in, but two much younger men push past me on their way out, and the spell is broken. I’m glad that I have these memories, but much more glad that my tenancy is ended. Nostalgia suffices. Cab ‘ome.

*
Just heard the wretched Diane Abbott on Today, demanding more black teachers in inner London schools, because of a need for cultural diversity. Another metric to be recorded, completely independent of anything required to make a good teacher. Correct me if I’m wrong – I’m slow on the uptake – but isn’t a demand to look for, respond to, and act on perceived inter-racial differences what you might call racism? Abbott would use discrimination to displace white teachers in inner London in order to implement her manifesto. Would she also, I wonder, support a ban on black teachers in, say, Plymouth? What made me spit most about this interview was the inadequate preparation of the Today interviewer. The correct response to Abbott, as she mumbled, breathily, through  her inadequate little diatribe about multiculturalism, would have been: why should anyone be lectured about cultural diversity by you, a woman who sends her son to an elite public school, in order to save him from the schools which you force others to use? Now get out, you hypocritical abomination.

Comments

[sjm]

The Steven Hoskins tragedy - I'm not going to slag off all the agencies involved, I wonder how many hundreds of cases they were all trying to juggle and make sense of.

What pains me is the family breakdown, where like it or not we shoulder much of the responsibility for weaker members (I speak from first-hand experience for the last 40 years).

When homes are built so tiny that they have no surplus room to home (even temporarily) the occasional waif or stray, when mothers are forced to go out to work instead of being available to help cope with family and community problems, when the notion of loyalty and fidelity are commonly mocked by the entertainment industry - what hope is there for the Steven Hoskins of this world?

[Tony Makara]

Though provoking article Graeme. Human life and human dignity have become diminished currency these days. I am reminded of the case of a 15 year old white boy Kriss Donald who was snatched at random off the streets by three Asian men, taken 200 miles, stabbed 13 times and set on fire while still alive. The boy was tortured and murdered in revenge for a racial attack that had happened on one of the Asian men earlier even though Kriss Donald was completely unconnected with that attack. This attack was particularly shocking not only for the level of violence but the fact that the three men just snatched anyone off the street, they were prepared to attack any person, so long as he was white. In this instance the violence was racial, but similar acts of violence and murder occur that have no racial origin. What matters is the scant regard for human life that the three men had towards 15 year old Kriss Donald. Most troubling is that the three men were just on an ordinary night out, got involved in a racial scuffle, then went out to look for a white victim by act of revenge.

How could three men, not one, but three, go from having a night out to torturing and murdering a child? How could they make that leap of mind set? The fact three seemingly ordinary men could turn into killers in the space of a few hours should be a concern for us all. The fact that three ordinary men could regard life so cheaply is a reflection of the society that we live in today. This could easily happen again because we as a society have lost the respect and value for life that we once had.

[Ben L]

Brilliant column again, Graeme. You're depressingly right about "the machines to which we’ve devolved our responsibility to care and our duty to act". It's to those machines we've also devolved our duty to take personal responsibility for our individual failings and shortcomings.

Which brings me nicely to my local MP, Diane Abbott, whose behaviour makes my eyes boil with rage. The simple hypocrisy is bad enough - this is a woman who criticised the Blairs and Harriet Harman for sending their children to selective schools. But what bothers me more are these two factors:

1) Her present argument that black pupils (especially boys) need black teachers. This, to me, suggests that Abbott seems to have a simplistic (and arguably racist) group concept of black children and a dogmatic view about what they need/what is good for them. It is also an argument that is completely undermined by her decision to send her child to the City of London School: she clearly thinks that, unlike other black boys, he needs to be in an environment where he is taught mostly by white teachers.

2) Her sheer contempt for the people who elected her. With one of the safest Labour seats in the country, she can do and say pretty much what she likes. She says to her voters that she is entitled to pay for a type of education that she has previously denounced - and which is beyond the means of almost all her constituents - because she thinks the schools the rest of us have to use aren't any good. I doubt she would have made the same decision if her majority was a slender one.

My argument is that, if you want to improve state secondary schools in Hackney, one of the things you must do is attract families whose parents are going to get involved in the life of the school, fight its corner, enthuse others, care for it and so on. The sort of parents, in fact, who often have the means to either pay up for a private education or move house so they're nearer a better state school. But that's a different story...

[Sally Roberts]

Thank you again, Graeme for another brilliant article - It's becoming a Sunday morning tradition for me to look for your writings and you certainly didn't disappoint today! The Hoskins tragedy shows the depth to which human beings can sink - and the total abject failure of the State to deal with the aftermath - THIS is what makes Socialism so iniquitous!!
On a lighter note - next time you go Christmas shopping to John Lewis, don't bother with the "eggy sandwiches" - nip round the corner to nearest Pret and have one of their soups - they are much nicer and won't make you feel sick!

[activist]

It is disgusting that he called the police and they didn't do anything.

Why aren't people being fired over this?

Another great column Graeme.

[Tony Makara]

It seems that with all the political pressure on police to meet targets and deal with specific duties, the police force itself is unsure of what its function should be.

[Scotty]

Another excellent thought provoking article Graeme.
Reading about the horrific Stephen Hoskins case again still makes me sick to my stomach, yet even more shocking is the fact that everyone of us who reads it will immediately think of a similar case that they have heard about in their local area.
What has gone wrong with our country when a case like this has becomes a monotonously regular feature in the news? It is like we have become so used to it all, that it does not stir up the shock and outrage that it should.
I want my country back, the one I grew up in where communities didn't need task forces or over paid zealots to teach them how to suck eggs, it all came naturally and was based on a common decency and bucket loads of common sense. Maybe 20-30 years ago in some area's it would not have even needed the police or the social services to be doing their jobs properly for someone to have realised that something was wrong and intervened?

[Tony Makara]

Scotty, good points. The fact that we have become used to this sort of vile behaviour the more we have become indifferent to it. Nothing shocks most people anymore and that means there is no longer an outraged reaction. Very sad.

[David Sergeant]

Having over many years been responsible for dealing with Social Services foulups I can tell you that the vast majority of reasons for the foulups are bad administration. In this case communications. Most public sector administration is a wasteful mess. This is because most public sector organisations are run by "professionals", teachers, social workers, doctors etc. who are not interested in organisation unless it affects them. This leads to reports on the foulups being expensive, ages after the event and merely saying fatuous thoughts which would usually mean a pay rise for the "professionals".

As for the Abbott interview. Par for the course, interviewers usually have not bothered to gen up on any interview. Labour did, and still, exploit this when they use any old rubbish to get off a hook with the interviewer being unable to pick off the lies because of their ignorance.

[sjm]

Labour insider told me that despite being lazy and thick, Abbott is kept on because she is a)female, b)black.

Which does a serious disservice to all intelligent and diligent females and blacks.

[Dale]

That never happened sjm so I don't know why you have insulted our intelligence by saying that it did.

[Laban Tall]

Steven Hoskin is by no means a unique case. In the last two years there have been five murder trials involving the killing of "vulnerable individuals".

Have a google for Brent Martin, Stephen Gale, David Atherton and Kevin Davies.

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-non-stop-torture-in-community.html

Other vulnerable individuals are driven to suicide - like the Pilkington family - or are abused and urinated on as they lie dying in the street - like Christine Lakinski.

Then there's Colin Greenwood, kicked to death by two 14 year olds :

"Their victim Colin Greenwood, 45, was registered blind but refused to carry a white stick because he had been attacked before and feared it would attract the attention of yobs."