Crimes Against Restorative Justice: A review of Jimmy McGovern's 'Time'.

Jimmy McGovern's latest TV series, Time, recently came to the end of its three-part run in BBC1's Sunday evening Drama slot. For those of you who missed it, it is available on the iPlayer. The series attracted rave reviews from critics and ex-inmates for its depiction of our brutalizing prison system. Writing in The i, John Crilly, the former prisoner who drove Usman Khan out of Fishmongers' Hall with a fire extinguisher in 2019, remarks that all that was missing from this 'real, no holds barred' depiction of prison life were the smells. 'Prison', continues Crilly, 'is a jungle' where 'all hope is driven out of prisoners everyday', leading one prisoner to take their own life every five days.

Crilly puts forward an alternative to how we currently deal with those who offend and that is Restorative Justice. Apparently, in researching 'Time', Jimmy McGovern spent some time himself observing the Prison Fellowship's Sycamore Tree programme. This is a volunteer-led victim awareness programme that teaches prisoners the principles of restorative justice. As a restorative justice practitioner, I was pleased that McGovern included restorative practices in the series if only because it helped me explain to family and friends what it is that I do. But, for reasons that I am struggling to understand, the restorative practices depicted in Time are object lessons in what NOT to do.

In the second episode, a young prisoner, Daniel, is told that the parents of the man whom he murdered would like to meet him. He is unsure how to respond but is told by his older cell mate that, in his particular circumstances, it's what he owes them. As in most things in life, failing to plan in restorative work is planning to fail and, seemingly, no prepartion takes place leading up to the meeting. The prison officer facilitating the meeting introduces himself as an accredited restorative justice practitioner which is something of a surprise as what follows totally discredits the value of restorative justice. The prison chaplain who is co-facilitating the meeting asks Daniel what he hopes to get from the meeting. This question ought to have been asked weeks before any meeting took place but, regardless, Daniel is prompted to say that he is seeking forgiveness. We don't learn of the other participants' expectations but it is clear that the parents of the man murdered by Daniel are still in a period of deep grief. Daniel explains to them, as best he can, the reason he had for murdering their son. They declare his actions 'unforgiveable' and the meeting ends. The grieving parents are seen weeping uncontrollably and Daniel is depicted returning to the prison wing and immediately scoring heroin from the prison's Mr. Big. Rather than helping to heal the trauma caused by the murder, the restorative meeting has only served to re-traumatise both parties. It is the ineptitude of the facilitators that I find truly unforgiveable.

In episode one, the older prison, Mark, is encouraged to write a restorative letter to the family of the man he has killed. The resulting letter is not wanted but the accredited restorative justice practitioner declares it to be the best restorative letter he has ever read. In the final scene of the series, we, the viewers, get to see this exceptional restorative letter. It reads, 'I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry...', the repeated word filling both sides of a page. It is a comfort to harmed people to know that those who caused them harm are remorseful. And, in my experience of supporting people write restorative letters, the expression of remorse is a good place to start. But harmed people need much more from a restorative letter. Amongst other things, they need to know what was in the other person's head at the time, what have they learnt from the experience and how they intend to prevent themselves from causing further harm in the future. 

In the final scene of the series, Mark meets up with the wife of the man he killed. He presents her with his letter. 

She reads it and asks, 'Who did it help, me reading it? You or me?'

Mark honestly responds, 'Me'. 

Graciously, she writes her address on the envelope and tells Mark that, if he sends her another letter, she will read it. 

In this case, a competent restorative justice practitioner would never have allowed the letter to be seen by the harmed person but, as in the final scene, would have encouraged and supported Mark to have another go.

Restorative practices rarely make it onto our screen, so it is very frustrating that when they do, they appear to cause further harm. Not only does this undermine the view of John Crilly and others that restorative justice can provide an alternative to our brutalizing penal system but may discourage people from participating in a restorative process. There is talk of another series of 'Time'. If this gets commissioned, Jimmy McGovern will hopefully depict the evidence-based power of restorative justice to help heal the trauma caused by crime and convince my family and friends that what I do doesn't actually make things worse.

The Wise and the Weakened Teacher

It’s Epiphany and I have been re-reading Matthew 2. In this chapter, the author contrasts the paranoia of the puppet monarch Herod to the dignified authority of the Magi. This made me reflect on the differences between the figure of the wise teacher and teachers like me whose status has been systematically weakened by the Imperial power of Ofsted and the DfE.

The Wise and the Weakened

The wise teacher follows the light of truth
The weakened teacher can no longer see it
The wise teacher exercises judgement
The weakened teacher thinks only of being judged
The wise teacher makes a gift of that which she teaches
The weakened teacher uses it to bolster her status
The wise teacher asks questions
The weakened teacher is only concerned with pre-determined answers
The wise teacher is her own person
The weakened teacher is the puppet of an alien empire
The wise teacher is open to Revelation
The weakened teacher hears only the voices in her head
The wise teacher performs real magic
The weakened teacher merely deceives
The wise teacher knows who her students are
The weakened teacher knows them only as numbers
The wise teacher is not afraid to travel an unfamiliar route
The weakened teacher finds herself stuck in a rut of cruel monotony
The wise teacher honours those she teaches
The weakened teacher fears them

Increasing numbers of wise teachers do not tarry long in the promised land of 21st century English education. They journey to countries afar where they know their gifts will be treasured. Or, they renounce their calling to teach and return to their former jobs as – innkeepers or shepherds or carpenters or full-time mothers, relieved to have escaped the slaughter of innocence and idealism 

Failure, Femicide and the bodies in the Fen

In the late 1980s, I got a job with the Theatre in Education company attached to The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit. This was back in the days when public services had sufficient cash to do something creative rather than having to think of creative ways of doing stuff without any cash. The company's mission was to create plays and workshops for school children inspired by things that our bearded colleagues (applicable to archaeologists of all genders) happened to dig up. 

Something, or rather, someone whom they had dug up earlier in the '80s was Peter Marsh a.k.a Lindow Man. The GMAU didn't actually dig up Pete. That was the work of commercial peat cutters on Lindow Moss in Cheshire. (I know, not technically a fen but what you gonna do?) True to their calling, they had succeeded in cutting Pete into several pieces during his accidental exhumation. Nevertheless, the GMAU claimed Pete as their own. There followed a bit of a turf (or peat) war with the neighbouring Cheshire Archaeological Service in which sharpened trowels were drawn but the family resemblance to the GMAU Director at that time was irrefutable and Pete was claimed for Manchester. As a result, we band of strolling players were commissioned to devise a play and related workshops, suitable for primary schools, on the life and death of Pete Marsh (RIP, not that any would let him)

Looking back, this seems like a very tough ask. When archaeologists had hosed all the peat off all of Pete, they noticed that, in common with many other bog bodies, Pete had been 'thrice slain'. That's to say, he'd been stabbed, strangled and banged on the head before he was cast face down into the bog. Recounting such violent acts to primary-aged children seems inappropriate now but, in the late '80s, Manchester was a brutal place in which to live. This was before some of my fellow Irishmen had kick-started the city's regeneration by obliterating its commercial centre. Prior to this, on a night in October 1987, in my first few weeks in Manchester, Elsa Hannaway, aged 37 and a mother of six, had been kicked, beaten and raped in the park opposite where I was living. She died in hospital a few hours after she was found, lying naked on the ground, by an early morning jogger. The gruesome details of Elsa's murder were well known by everyone, both young and old, in Manchester, so talking about another killing at least 2000 years earlier seemed okay.

Although Elsa's killer has never been apprehended, ('Unsurprisingly,' say some.) her death is easily explained. Every three days in the UK, between 2009-2018, a woman was killed by a man. 'Patterns of male violence are persistent and enduring,' according to the recently published Femicide Census. Femicide, both ancient and modern, also features in the story of Pete Marsh. A year after cutting up and digging up Pete, the same peat cutter, discovered what at first he thought to be a dinosaur egg was, in fact, a decomposing human head complete with brain matter and an eye. The police were called and they immediately linked the discovery to the on-going investigation into the disappearance a few years earler of local woman, Malika de Fernandez. Her husband had been suspected of her murder but her body had not been found. When confronted with news of the pete cutter's find, Malika's husband confessed to her murder and the illegal disposal of her dismembered body around Lindow Moss. He later attempted to retract his confession when carbon dating revealed that the head had not belonged to Malika but to another woman who had been very much attached to it for approximately forty years around 210 AD. This woman became known, rather unimaginatively, as 'Lindow Woman' but, until now, has not been granted humorous and humanizing first and surnames. Therefore, hereafter, let Lindow Woman be known as Lindy Marsh or Marsha Moss. 

Whilst male violence towards women may be all too familiar and explicable in terms of deep-seated misogny, the circumstances around the murder of Pete Marsh (and all the other thrice-slain bog people) have been the subject of academic dispute. The most widely supported current theory posits that Pete was a leader whose people had judged him to have failed. As leader he may have been held responsible for a failed harvest or a sudden change in the weather. Or, if we accept that he lived around 100 AD, his leadership may have started to look rather fragile as Roman legions marching between Diva and Muncunia stopped off in the Cheshire countryside for a picnic. Such a sight may have prompted his subjects to think, 'There's a new power in town. Better bump of the old king to show where our loyalties lie'.

In 21st century Britain, our leaders face no consequences, fatal or otherwise, for failing. Instead failure appears to be rewarded. Let us consider the case of Gideon Oliver Osborne, heir apparent to the baronetcy of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon in County Waterford and former Member of Parliament for Tatton, the consituency that includes Lindow Moss. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016, a position gifted to him by close friend, David Cameron, Gideon (aka George) failed to meet every target that he set himself. Under his leadership, UK national debt increased more than in the previous thirteen years. But, rather than being frog marched to Lindow Moss from his 'flipped' constituency home, George landed a nice little number working as a part-time advisor to the world's largest fund manager. Salary: £650,000 for one day a week. In the same year, and whilst still representing the good people of Tatton, George was also appointed editor of the Evening Standard. Straight out of Oxford, George had failed to get onto a trainee scheme with the Times and the Spectator, but, mercifully the Evening Standard was owned by a friend of a friend who conveniently overlooked George's record of failure and total lack of any journalistic experience. True to form, within George's first year as editor, the Standard reported a loss of £10 million. Losses increased each year that George was in the job, prompting him to be 'moved upstairs' in mid 2020. Once again, George has been rewarded for failure. 

Some readers of this blog (and also of the Standard, should there be any readers of that publication left following George's tenure as editor) may believe that I am picking on George unfairly. It is true. I have singled him out due to the fact he was the MP for the constituency in which Pete Marsh and Lindy Moss were unearthed. He is merely representative of our professional ruling elite who, due to their wealth and privilege, have nothing to fear from failure. This allows them to act egregiously in their own self-interest and in pursuit of their own ideological fantasies. They care nothing about the damage their greed and recklessness will cause to millions of those they represent because they will experience none of the resulting pain. They may be forced to resign from office but only obscenely paid non-exec. jobs, lecture tours and book deals await. They will not have to face justice either in an open prison or on open moorland, neither Belmarsh nor marshland will be their fate. Their crimes and failures will go unpunished and will therefore be perpetuated by those of the same background who will inevitably succeed them. 

Beyond the unaccountable Oxbridge-educated 'chumocracy' that constitutes our ruling class, there is another group of individuals whose 'crimes' are invariably punished with violence and death. Their crimes include: walking through a park alone at night, getting drunk, saying 'no', ending a relationship, wearing certain clothes, having friends or merely being a woman. The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens. For centuries, our leaders, including Pete Marsh perhaps, have failed to protect half the population from the fatal violence of the other half. This, above everything else, has been their greatest failure. 

A review of Game of Thrones: Series 8

The final series, and especially the final episode, of Game of Thrones was excellent. I know this view puts me in a minuscule minority of GOT fans and I risk being stripped of my reproduction, feather-trimmed Night's Watch cloak but, I'll say it again. The final series, and especially the final episode, of Game of Thrones was excellent. And here's why I take this view. But first, a necessary bit of preamble.

I grew up in Northern Ireland - the state that offered the blueprint for apartheid in South Africa. From its ill-conceived foundation in 1921, Northern Ireland has witnessed its fair share of violence and bloodshed. Going back even further in the annals of myth, the province of Ulster was forever at war. Five years after my birth in 1964, things really started to take off what with the Catholic minority outrageously demanding the right to vote and the opportunity to apply for jobs within the Civil Service and subsidised industries. The Troubles ran from 1969 to 1998 and, living in North Belfast, I got a front-seat view of most seasons, 1972 being a particular gore-fest.  So, I know about violence and its glorification. I know how power ( the fear of losing it and the desire for it) can make people conspire to murder their neighbours and seek vengeance for wrongs suffered in the past by their tribe. I've seen bits of people shovelled into bin bags for the crime of drinking in the wrong pub or queuing up at the wrong shop. And perhaps worse than this, I've known and loved people whose spirits danced when they heard about such events and called for more. So I know about violence and its glorification. 

But, fortunately, I also know full well the wearisome nature of violence. I know about crying in bed at night wanting it to stop, wanting not to feel in danger all the bloody time, wanting not having to be outraged by the latest massacre. Even better, I also know what it feels like when the violence stops as it did in Northern Ireland in 1998. (Punishment beatings and sectarian killings still continue but it's more of a minority sport these days, although hatred for 'the other' ('them uns' in the local parlance) still thrives in the province.) I know what trying to build a post-conflict society is like and it's boring and mundane and petty and unspectacular. 

It's no coincidence, in my view, that a great deal of GOT was filmed in post-conflict Northern Ireland (and post-conflict Croatia) because everything that I've written above can be applied to the eight seasons of the show. Let's be honest we enjoyed the violence (and nakedness) of seasons 1-7 but, by the time season 8 arrived, we were all a bit sickened by it. I couldn't revel in the gore with quite the same abandon after Stannis burnt his daughter at the stake to appease his god in Series 5. (Bonfires feature prominently in the iconography of Northern Irish sectarianism).

So what were fans expecting in Series 8 and on which the makers did not deliver? I suspect that, having lapped up the violence in previous series and now feeling a little 'icky' about that, they wanted their faith in violence restored. Like George W Bush in his reaction to the horror of 9/11, they wanted to believe that the world could be redeemed through violence. But you don't need to watch all five parts of the documentary series 'Once Upon a Time in Iraq' (even though you should) to know that violence has no redemptive power. 

I mention 9/11 because clearly the penultimate episode of season 8 wanted to evoke it. Towers tumbled and dust-covered survivors wandered aimlessly amongst the senseless devastation wrought upon their city from the air. It also called to my mind Black Friday, an episode in the 1972 season of The Troubles when the IRA set off 22 car bombs in Belfast within a period of 30 minutes. All those who visit terror upon civilian populations, Bush and Blair, Bin Laden and Stalin, the IRA and LRA, Daesh and Daenerys, all do it in the name of freedom but it never works out. Violence begets only more violence until eventually everyone gets weary of it. And then what do they do? They have a meeting. And that's where all eight seasons of GOT ended - in a meeting of the newly restored Small Council. That's where 19 seasons of The Troubles ended - an imperfect, barely-functioning assembly of former combatants where they get to talk about transport policy and hospital budgets. It's all very dull and probably not how they thought it would feel to seize the reins of power but that's how it is in post-conflict societies. 

Such a denouement doesn't make for great drama. Hence the near-universal disappointment with season 8 amongst GOT fans. They wanted fantasy and magic but they got reality because, like violence, fantasy and magic have no part in a post-conflict society. In fact, magic and fantasy, in the shape of the last surviving dragon, literally flew away in the final episode of GOT after obliterating the show's eponymous totem. Granted, Bran the Broken still has his eye-rolling supernatural powers but these have taken on a workaday nature, enhanced by (and I'm being very generous here) Issac Hempstead Wright's understated performance.  In doing away with magic at the end of the narrative, the writers of GOT followed in the tradition of Britain's highest paid and highest regarded writers. In the final scene of Harry Potter, the Vanishing Spell has been performed on magic itself. The world has become normal. The main characters see their kids off to school before getting themselves off to work. In the final act of 'The Tempest', Shakespeare's final play, Prospero gives up 'rough magic' and promises to break and bury his magic staff deep in the earth and to chuck his book of spells in the sea. Not a bad way for the greatest playwright in history to sign off and likewise the author of the world's most profitable series of books. So the writers of GOT are in good company and, I, seemingly alone in the world, applaud them for it. Violence, myth and magic have not won. The awkward, unexciting business of living one's life and getting on with one's family and colleagues - that's what's won. The Game of Thrones has yielded to the Stuff of Life.

Running Adventures in Yorkshire (Episode 2)

I won. This is not something I get to say very often, if at all, in any area of my life. I share my home with a woman who missed out on her true calling to be a Crown Court prosecutor and against whom I have not won a single argument in thirty years. In what some people might humorously describe as my ‘career’, I have a couple of jobs but I don’t pay tax. This could be because either I earn so much that I can afford to pay a firm of accountants who filter my millions back to me through a complex series of offshore tax avoidance schemes OR because I currently earn less than I did thirty years ago. The latter proposition applies.  In my sporting life, until now, I’ve never won a damn thing. A winner, I am not, but nor am I a loser. I normally finish mid-pack with the other slightly overweight grey-haired veterans. Mid-pack is not a bad place to be. In terms of our shared evolutionary history, being mid-pack meant that you may not get to sample the tastiest bits of what the front-running beasts had killed but it also meant that the hyenas would not get to feast on your innards whilst you lay looking up nonchalantly into the East African skies. Mid-pack was safe. Okay, you had to eat a nostril or an anus but at least you were alive. In the 21^st century, mid-pack translates as mediocre and I am happy to admit that I excel at mediocrity not only as a writer (self-evidently) but also as a husband and father, an employee and a runner. Recent events, however, have challenged my belief in my own running mediocrity because I WON.

The thing that I won was the Thortle-in-Mossdale Annual Village Fun Run and I won it by a country mile even though the course was only 3k or six times around the village recreation ground. The Whippet, the 11 year old local lad whom disgruntled villagers muttered would end my domination of the local Run in the Park, was a no show. Apparently, post-SATs, he had been hitting Fortnite very hard and had been unable to raise himself from a heavy night of murder and larceny in virtual reality. Therefore the victory was all mine although I shared some of the glory with my 25 year old daughter who trailed behind me in second place. Third place was a septuagenarian in jeans. The temperature on the day reached almost 30 degrees Celsius but the jeans stayed on all morning even during his free post-race massage. Besides my daughter and the denim-clad grandad, the field over which I triumphed also included several adult club runners. Fortunately for me though, they were all tethered to their tottering offspring. As I lapped them, I felt their looks of resentment burning into my sweaty back and heard them having to agree with their drooling progeny through gritted teeth, ‘Yes, that man is running very fast.’

Apart from the glory, winning the Throttle-in-Mossdale Annual Fun Run earned me nothing other than the cheap medal and the ‘goody’ bag of health-promoting literature that all competitors received. The organizers erroneously thought that the adults in the field would concede defeat to the children and had only acquired child-appropriate prizes. I would have happily accepted a Peppa Pig effigy bearing a trophy but it wasn’t offered to me. I also would have been very pleased with the Rising Star award, featuring a plastic rainbow with a grinning star face at its zenith but this too was not forthcoming neither to me or to my daughter who legitimately finished in the position of 'First Girl' in her first competitive race. Instead we were promised free Magnums (or Magna) but in a travesty of justice(cream), we never got them.

However, I did quit the field a winner. I had emerged from the middle of the pack and had come first, for the first time ever and probably never again, until next year's Throtle-in-Mossdale Annual Fun Run.

Running Adventures in Yorkshire (Episode 1)

For those who have been asking (and the majority of you who haven’t)I notched up another win at the Throttle-in-Mossdale Run in the Park on Saturday. This time I beat 5 adults (two of whom were octogenarians) and 4 kids who were admittedly distracted by the addition to the race of an 'obstacle option'. One of them had to be cut out of the agility ladder at the end by a passing volunteer fire officer. Though welcoming on the whole, the village runners haven't taken too kindly to being beaten by a barefoot incomer and, during the cool-down on the newly-installed outdoor gym, there were dark mutterings by the sit-up benches. It would seem that in a fortnight's time at the Annual Village Fun Run, I am to face my nemesis in the shape of a 12 year old, known locally as ‘The Whippet’, so called as he is rumoured to possess the speed of a whippet, the height of a whippet (stood up on its hind legs) and the stamina of a...whippet. (So hopefully, he might struggle over 3k). Incidentally, it might interest readers to know that in Yorkshire, a whippet is a standard measure of speed, length, weight and time. Hence in God’s own county, national speed limit signs show the silhouettes of two whippets rather than the familiar black diagonal line. Yorkshire people talk of their children as having grown ‘as tall as three whippets’ and Yorkshire weight-watchers are happy to announce that this week they’ve lost ‘a whippet and a half’ from around their waist.

My show-down against ‘The Whippet’ promises to be like the climactic final scene in the classic western, High Noon, except the race starts at 11, there won't be any guns involved (though there is an archery display afterwards) and, at 54, I'm older than Gary Cooper was in the film and, even to my eyes, he looks well past his best and totally incapable of defeating the younger, more accomplished Miller gang. “They’re making me run,” says Cooper’s character in the film, “and I’ve never run from anyone before.” In contrast, people have never made me run and, in fact, quite a number of people, including close family members, would be very happy if I stopped. Furthermore, having grown up in Belfast during what is euphemistically referred to as ‘The Troubles’, I became very adept at running away from all those who wished me harm due to my involuntary religious convictions and how I pronounced the letter ‘H’. (Differences over the latter and the ‘substance’ of the Eucharist after consecration combine to form the source of the conflict in Northern Ireland.) Even beyond the contested confines of Northern Ireland, running away has been a tactic that has served me well over the years when disaster, humiliation or a promotion seemed headed my way. I shall, therefore, not follow Gary Cooper’s advice and, in two weeks time, will hopefully look over my shoulder to see The Whippet and his youthful posse struggling to catch me as I turn for home just after the newly-refurbished children’s play area. 

Jesus Died for Me

Hanging on a tree
Jesus died for me
So I could be free
To live eternally.

Sweet Jesus, if you don't mind
I care not for your kind
Who would damn most of mankind
To a Hell whose depths defy the human mind.

Gentle Jesus, I no longer wish to number
amongst them that are saved
But shall  remain  with the depraved
And live out my days in sinful slumber.

Having dinner with sinners
Breaking bread with the broken
Making friends with the condemned
And forging bonds with the forsaken.

Like you did.

You cursed the elect
Those pains in the neck
And affronted the powerful, the great and the good
You rejected the in-crowd, the up-themselves, the oh so-proud
And for that, yes just for that,
They hung you on a cross of wood.

Hanging on a tree
Jesus died for me
So that I could learn be
A revolutionary.