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| Winnie Mandela - flawed heroine |
One of the questions they ask in the Guardian Saturday profile is “Which person do you most despise?” Just in case I am asked to take part (not yet) I have my answer ready: “I try not to despise individuals but there is something ugly about a mob.” Everyone has a few redeeming features – even Donald Trump is a good father to his children – but something about a group of people whipped up into hatred is particularly ugly and frightening. Individually they can be decent people; collectively they descend into the depths.
Lynching is probably the clearest example of this. There was a powerful piece in the same paper today about the subject and it showed the memorial to nearly 5,000 people killed by mobs in this way in the USA (https://eji.org/national-lynching-memorial). Almost invariably this was white on black killing, often accompanied by the most gruesome torture, including burning and skinning alive. The victims could be women or children accused of the most minor crime – basically forgetting their place in society – and never with the bother of any kind of a trial.
Sometimes a song can express these feelings better than a statement. Listen to Billy Holliday singing Strange Fruit (youtube.com/watch?v=Web007rzSOI) to feel that shudder down your spine.
Before we start feeling superior about how we are better than the Americans, think about the people who were surrounding Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool where Alfie Evans lived out his final days. You have to admire his parents who were determined to keep their son alive even when he is obviously nearing the end, but not the mob who surround the hospital and abuse the hard-working and often badly-paid staff who have kept him going this long. No-one has been killed yet, but plenty have been threatened with death by people who would never abuse doctors and other health professionals if they were acting alone but whip themselves up to it when in a group.
This is one of the main downsides of the internet. It is a place where mobs can be formed easily, where people go online and start goading each other into ever more aggressive attitudes. Mark Twain said that lies are half way around the world before the truth has got its boots on. Now lies are out there before the truth has booted up. The superficial becomes the serious with the bogus respectability of the web. We even have a word now for someone who sows misinformation on the web – he (usually) is a troll.
But it is trials not trolls which establish the truth. I have just finished re-reading Bleak House with all its powerful satire on the law and its workings. The book begins with a fog descending on London, the image of how lawyers line their pockets by obscuring the issues in a fog of detail and deliberation. Nobody does this better than Dickens. For him the law is a kind of mob with everyone involved in it putting their own professional interests above common decency until the entire Jarndyce estate is exhausted in the payment of endless legal fees.
But, for all its faults, no civilised society can live without the law. The reason that it is surrounded by ritual is so that it is not drowned in emotion and clear decisions can be taken on the basis of verifiable facts. I have often thought that the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence are the most important of the differences between a democracy and a dictatorship. In dictatorships they just lock up troublemakers and throw away the key. In democracies it is necessary to prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone is guilty of a crime before they are punished. This is why Amnesty International, for all its faults, is such an important organisation. They do not advocate releasing everybody locked up for political activities but of giving them a fair, open and honest trial by an independent court, not one controlled by the government which wants the accused out of the way.
This is also why I could not regard Winnie Mandela, who died recently, as an unalloyed heroine. It is funny how you can change your mind just by watching someone in action. I had regarded her as a pretty good egg, a bit strident but understandably so in the light of what she had to put up with from the upholders of apartheid. Then I saw a video of her saying to a crowd how they would achieve freedom through the use of 'necklaces'. These are burning tyres put around the necks of victims which suffocate and burn them alive simultaneously - a particularly nasty way to go and one reserved for those who are deemed to be collaborators or traitors - without, obviously, the benefit of any kind of fair trial. Say what you like, but all the perfumes of Araby cannot wash that particular stain off Winnie Mandela's memory.
This is also why I could not regard Winnie Mandela, who died recently, as an unalloyed heroine. It is funny how you can change your mind just by watching someone in action. I had regarded her as a pretty good egg, a bit strident but understandably so in the light of what she had to put up with from the upholders of apartheid. Then I saw a video of her saying to a crowd how they would achieve freedom through the use of 'necklaces'. These are burning tyres put around the necks of victims which suffocate and burn them alive simultaneously - a particularly nasty way to go and one reserved for those who are deemed to be collaborators or traitors - without, obviously, the benefit of any kind of fair trial. Say what you like, but all the perfumes of Araby cannot wash that particular stain off Winnie Mandela's memory.
The worst thing about necklaces is that they were used on black victims. In most cases to be accused was to be convicted. To be convicted was to be condemned. And to be condemned was to be executed often in the most brutal and horrible fashion. And don't talk to me about revolutionary justice. Lynching is lynching whether it is done by a racists or by revolutionaries.
This is not the way to achieve a fairer world in which everyone can expect to be treated fairly. Lynching does not suddenly become ok when it is practiced on people who would otherwise be regarded as victims. In fact, it is in a way worse because you expect better of people who want to create a fairer world. So, let’s stick to trials with all their absurdities and ignore - if not silence - the trolls. As for the lynch mobs, let us remember their victims and condemn the perpetrators - racists or revolutionaries.
