Speaking ill of the dead: Dreyfus, Guildford Four Maguire Seven, and Jimmy Saville

Amy writes:

Some time after WWII my grand-mother said to my sister: "That Dreyfus man, really, he was guilty.  Wasn't he?" I would not say that my grand-mother was anti-Semitic or racist.  But I would say that the fact that the great-grand-son-in-law who lives in her house is Malagashi, and two of her descendants' families are half-Jewish feels like some kind of divine retribution.  My grand-father was a career officer. His wife must have thought something like this: "There is no way this little Alsatian Jew, of no consequence whatsoever, can be right and the French army wrong." 

But at least the Dreyfus Affair provoked a hurricane in France.

For a long time a dull mist hanged over the 1977 conviction of the Guildford four and Maguire seven. They were only little Irish people of no consequence and everybody needed badly to find culprits 3 years after the Guildford pub bombings.  The way their convictions were obtained and sustained does not make for pleasant reading.  They were acquitted only in 1989 in the case of the Guildford four, and 1991 in that of the Maguires.  I do not know how long it took before the Irish establishment listened to and was convinced by the evidence given by children abused by their priests.  It was more important for the bishops to protect the reputation of the Church than to protect the children and they were good at it. 

We know how long it took for the abuses of Jimmy Saville to come to light.  But it seems to me that, in every case, the greatest guilt belongs not so much to the French army, the English police, the forcibly celibate priests, the addicted Saville as to the establishment, and possibly ourselves, always prepared to give more credence to the mighty and powerful than to the little people.

Let us not renew this error.  Let us leave the police and judiciary to do their job in peace (and hope for the best!) while looking out for any sign of a witch-hunt incited by the powerful and mighty media.

Fairness vs Justice

Everybody knows: Life is unfair. Some were born rich, some poor; some intelligent, some not; some beautiful, some plain; some healthy and strong, some weak and sickly. It’s the luck of the draw. What can we do about it? If everybody was born equal, then the world would lack any diversity or variety as we know it. Life is unpredictable. You win some and you lose some. We need to be philosophical. That’s the raison d’être for our café-philo.

Nevertheless, inequality has always been the main culprit of turmoil and conflicts. Gross social injustice causes havoc in the world, uprisings, riots, revolutions, wars… No earth-shattering revelations here.

In an attempt to prevent social upheavals, governments adopted a series of measures to deliver “fairness” and minimise “inequality” among different classes so as to alleviate these growing social tensions between the very rich and the very poor. We are impressed by these slogans or promises: “democracy”, “meritocracy”, “equal opportunity”, “political correctness”, “multiculturalism”, “racial and gender equality”, “gay lesbian rights”.

Result: the tip of the balance has tilted towards the other end. Democracy has not given any real power to people but only make the power more concentrated on the top. Jurisprudence has been all but lost as lawyers act in favour of special interest groups. Social welfare systems created opportunities for fraudsters to rob society. Employment policy over-corrected itself by turning the formerly advantageous into disadvantageous. Tax system is controlled by accountants who favour the rich and rip off the salary-earning class.

During the recent two years, we have witnessed the decline and fall of many investment banks and high-street banks found lacking in any self-restraint by speculating in high-risk “investment” futures options. Massive funds have been usurped by hedge fund managers who design new vehicles for their instant gratification. Their bonuses redirected to offshore accounts in Cayman Island and the British Virgin Islands. Government has to rely on the taxpayers’ contribution to rescue banks to maintain their profligacy.

We ask is it “unfair” to pay illegal immigrants social welfare on arrival? Or is it “fairer” to pay bankers unrestricted bonuses by using the tax-payer?