It seems whenever there’s a prominent appointment to be made, a “progressive” comes to fill the post, advancing politicised minority agendas that the majority of the British public has no interest in.
In the case of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, it’s become clear over her year and a third in office that she is a shining example of this trend.
Perhaps it’s because unless one is a fully paid-up member of the politically correct, their time in whatever position they hold is going to be marred by the usual wailers who scream at any perceived deviation from the PC line. When appointing Greg Dyke as head of the Football Association, it was probably thought he’d be a safe bet, as while Director General of the BBC he infamously criticised the organisation for being “hideously white”.
He’s broadly been a success for cultural Marxists, with actions such as pushing for more representation of Asians in football, but putting one foot wrong in an interview led to feminists declaring him a rape apologist. In actual fact, he’d been invited on to Newsnight to discuss corruption in Fifa when he was questioned about Ched Evans’ potential return to football. He’d responded, “It’s not an important issue. It is an important issue but not in terms of what we, we’re here, and what you asked me to come on and talk about.”
As the Guardian reported, “Those comments provoked condemnation on social media sites, with a tweet from the official account of the End Violence Against Women Coalition saying: “Greg Dyke: football corruption is an important issue, rape isn’t”.”
This possibly sums up why everyone appointed to prominent public positions is now so politically correct. If they step out of line, it’s common knowledge that niche groups of loudmouths who are no more representative of ordinary people and their concerns than someone pacing the high street with “The End is Nigh” placards, will clog up Twitter and Facebook with accusations that their target is “sexist”, “racist”, “homophobic” or any of the other words that have come to replace “heretic” in the secular society of modern Britain.
Perhaps the powers that be are increasingly thinking it’s not worth fighting these battles and so with each new appointment come public figures seemingly more interested in pushing “social justice” agendas than doing whatever job they were employed to do in a non-partisan capacity.
Alison Saunders, the new Director of Public Prosecutions, fits this bill perfectly.
A particularly disturbing cause Saunders champions is her crusade to secure more rape convictions, proclaiming that the current conviction rate of 49% is “too low” compared to other crimes. If there’s been a murder, a stabbing, an assault or a theft, there is usually concrete evidence to bring to court, but with alleged rapes, it’s usually just one person’s words against another’s, so the lower conviction rate is understandable.
With “more convictions” as the aim, it’s clearly politically motivated, as it does not take into account the fact that many accused men may be innocent. A number of things she’s said, alarmingly, suggest she takes for granted the status of accused man as guilty, and that our legal system’s role should be to secure as many convictions as possible. She has expressed wishes that it be up to men to “prove” that the woman consented, putting the onus on the defendant. She has called for victims be “coached” before trial, which also makes a mockery of our legal system as it gives giving the “correct” answers precedence over ascertaining truth.
These proposed moves are said to be part of a “toolkit” to “bring rape investigations into the 21st century”. Maybe so, but it is a vision of a dystopian 21st century where men must seriously consider getting written consent before engaging in sexual activity – a climate where previously normal human interactions should be a constant source of suspicion.
Alison Saunders seems to be working as the political arm of vocal, extreme campaign groups that claim to be “anti-rape” but could more accurately described as anti-men. These campaigners are everywhere, waiting to slam anyone who pokes their head above the parapet to give non “approved” views. Away from the chattering classes and the “campaigners”, a huge proportion of the British public don’t think in terms of men = bad, women = good, where all accusers must be believed, uncritically and all accused must be jailed.
The usual chorus of SJW voices recently howled at the fact a judge said, in a case where a teacher had engaged in unlawful sex with a girl of sixteen, that if any grooming had gone on, it was that she had “groomed” him. The usual crusading campaign groups emerged to cry this was impossible, as girls of sixteen are incapable of grooming anyone, and that the judge had clearly not had the “correct” judicial training. But these “easily led” girls who supposedly don’t know their own minds cannot possibly be the same sixteen year olds that the left wing establishment assure us are more than ready for the vote… Can they?
Richard Dawkins found himself in hot water with campaigners when he said that a man should not be convicted of rape on merely the strength of the complainant getting to court and saying they can’t remember anything.
He’d previously been in trouble, again with the EVAW Coalition, for saying that some rapes were worse than others, for example being seized by a stranger, at knifepoint. His critics, enraged, spinning themselves into a vortical frenzy of fury reminiscent of Taz the Tasmanian Devil, could do little to say why Dawkins’ words were so wrong, just that they were, and that this should somehow be self-evident. A typical comment read, “Dawkins has lost his mind. Plain and simple.”
Perhaps I can make it easier for these relativists – an event in which one is fearful for one’s life is likely worse than one where the complainant can’t remember what happened. I imagine people suffering from PTSD after serving in a war would prefer that they were not able to have any recollection of traumatic events. But this point seems to be beyond the limits of feminist thinking, where anything short of pronouncing any negative action on women’s bodies as the worst thing imaginable, whether it’s a radio DJ grabbing a breast almost twenty years ago or a violent rape at knifepoint.
In the case of the former, where DJ Dave Lee Travis was convicted of this crime, the woman outright admitted that her motive for “coming forward” all these years later was political. As the Derby Telegraph put it, “She decided to speak up years later because she wanted her daughter to know how to fight against sexism.”
Perhaps, but in the crossfire was Dave Lee Travis’ wife of 43 years, in treatment for breast cancer after having lost her house as a result of the legal fees after a steady stream of unsuccessful allegations against her husband. The accuser’s “girl power” impetus for pursuing the complaint look rather hollow when considering the way she has measurably made one woman’s life far worse. What a lovely message to send to her progeny.
The politicisation of crime and punishment, and the use by the elite of all high profile positions as vehicles for the grossly misnomered “social justice” movement, is a grave mistake that seems better at causing more suffering for unwitting victims, like Mr Travis’ wife than it is at securing anything resembling justice. The media, too, must stop pretending that extremist groups of campaigners like End Violence Against Women Coalition, who seem more interested in jailing any men who have sex with drunk women than they do violence, represent some great push forward for women and justice.
Many women are the mothers of boys and young men, and will not be cheering the current push for consent to be liable to be withdrawn. And for young women and men in the age group this is most likely to affect, such a mindset has real, destructive repercussions on gender relations. Future appointments to such important and influential jobs as Director of Public Prosecutions should refrain from using their position to forward political agendas, lest more long term damage be done to society.
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