An obsession with victims leads to bad policy, dire politics and more pain
When four grooming-gang victims resigned from an inquiry on the topic, they called for Jess Phillips, the minister whose portfolio includes safeguarding women and girls, to quit. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, joined in. Nigel Farage even held a press conference alongside Ellie Reynolds, one of the four, calling both for Ms Phillips’s exit and a parliamentary inquiry. One factor helped keep Ms Phillips in place: other victims who in turn promised to quit if Ms Phillips were removed. It took a victim to stop a victim.
There is no better summary of the increasingly dominant role victims play in British politics. Since the start of 2020 “victims” have been mentioned in Parliament 16,515 times, more than “Brexit” (10,797 times), “welfare” (9,978), “immigration” (8,644), “pensioners” (3,438) and “voters” (2,540).
It was not always like this. Once, the British state cared little about the victims of its failures. In 1966 a coal tip collapsed at Aberfan, a Welsh village, sending 150,000 tonnes of spoil onto a school. It killed 144 people, including 116 children. The National Coal Board, the state body responsible, denied any wrongdoing before offering £50 ($66) compensation for each dead child. Eventually it gave £500, or about the price of an Austin Mini, a car.
Until well into the 1970s and 1980s it was the norm, rather than the exception, for the state to treat people with casual contempt or outright brutality. Whether it was police lying about how 97 Liverpool football fans died due to a crush at Hillsborough stadium, or the National Health Service carelessly infecting patients with hiv and other diseases via tainted blood, the British state mixed cruelty, incompetence and impunity. Only in the late 1990s and 2000s did this attitude begin to shift. Victims could fight back. The Human Rights Act made it simpler to challenge government failure. And so began the ascent of the victim in political life.
Now, victims dominate. A victims’ commissioner (the current one a victim herself) was created in 2010. Inquiries, once a rarity, became an instinctive reaction to any government mistake. Laws named after victims pass Parliament with ease, dealing with everything from mould in flats to terrorism. A victims and courts bill, which will give victims more rights in their dealings with the police, is weaving its way into law.
If any man personifies the rise of the victim it is Sir Keir Starmer. The prime minister has few fully formed political beliefs beyond a vague idea that human rights are good because the state can be very bad. Victims are mentioned 24 times in Labour’s most recent manifesto. For comparison, “pensioners” appear twice. At the party’s annual conference in Liverpool the Labour leader was introduced on stage by Margaret Aspinall, whose son died at Hillsborough. “This party was founded to hear working-class people like that,” said Sir Keir. “To look directly into the eyes of their suffering.” Labour once advanced their economic interests, now it manages their emotional needs.
It is, however, a hollow politics that leads to bad policy. Victims petrify politicians. They are apex stakeholders. Normal rules for decisions—risk, cost, proportionality—are thrown away when they are involved. What if a headline suggests ministers snubbed victims? Write the cheque. Civil servants, always cautious, become cowards. Campaigners know this. The unedifying spectacle of a grieving parent wheeled in front of cameras to push a particular policy, whether limits on smartphones or ninja swords, has become a political trump card.
Trade-offs are ignored when victims campaign. Martyn’s law, named after a victim of a suicide-bombing at a concert in Manchester in 2017, requires any venue that can hold more than 200 people to have an anti-terror plan, even if it is a village hall. It is likely to cost businesses about £170m ($225m) a year to comply and bring about £2m of benefits, mainly from lower crime. A careful balancing of interests is close to impossible if a victim’s mother is involved. “This would not have happened without your campaigning,” said Sir Keir at a meeting with Martyn’s mother, rightly.
Justice is often delayed in the name of victims. Inquiries are now sprawling affairs, with victims involved at every step. The result is a less nimble and more costly process (which the state will soon finance for any victim, thanks to a bill named after the Hillsborough disaster). Short, sharp inquiries have become impossible. One on covid-19 is in its third year, with costs projected to be over £200m. Yet victims rarely leave the process happy. Anyone responsible has probably left office; any advice is dangerously late. Placating victims potentially creates more. The state can harm when it is callous, and it can harm when it is trying to be kind.
From stiff upper lips to blubbering Blighty
Allowing victims a hallowed status in British politics ignores the fact that state failures are collective scandals. Hillsborough could easily have happened at another stadium to other fans. Grenfell was not the only tower caked in flammable material. Grooming gangs were so widespread that any vulnerable girl could have been dragged in. When victims play such a large role, what should be society’s problem becomes an individual one. What is left is a mangled Thatcherite philosophy: there is no such thing as society, only victims and their families.
In this way British politics becomes an autocracy of lived experience, in which politicians advise and victims decide. For a politician as vapid as Sir Keir or as cynical as Mr Farage perhaps this is no bad thing. A world in which rape victims are compelled to argue with each other over the future of a government minister, cheered on by elected politicians, is a depressing one. But it is the one Britain inhabits. It is a final dereliction of duty to people the state has already failed once and now does again.
