David Jackson - Destroying the Baby in Themselves: Why Did the Two Boys Kill James Bulger?

by David Jackson

Destroying the Baby in Themselves:

why did the two boys kill James Bulger?

by David Jackson

First published in 1995 by Mushroom Bookshop.

This ebook version is published in 2015 by

Five Leaves Publications

14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 2DH

www.fiveleaves.co.uk

Copyright David Jackson, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-910170-15-1

Destroying the Baby in Themselves was first published in 1995 by Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham, whose list was moved to Five Leaves in 1996. This short book has been unavailable for some years and is now being made available again as an ebook. The story of what happened to the two boys who killed James Bulger subsequent to this book is well known and, save for some minor editorial amendments, this edition remains the same as when first published.

That blurred, foggy frame of the security video has become engraved on the public conscience. The video shows one of the boys holding James Bulgers hand as the other boy moves away, a little ahead of them. They seem to be heading for Mothercare. But we know that the two boys are really taking James out of the Strand Shopping Centre at Bootle, Liverpool and are walking him away from his mother and safety.

What hurts about that video frame is the seeming relationship of trust implied by the holding of hands, and the way that trust is savagely undermined by the wider knowledge of the two-and-a-half-miles walk towards the railway line. Its that contradictory tension at the heart of the security video that creates such a desperate feeling of powerlessness in the onlooker. If only we could have reached out and intervened at that moment, the onlooker thinks. Its probably a similar hopeless yearning that poisons the imaginings of the thirty-eight witnesses who actually saw James with bruises and grazing to his forehead but did nothing. It has certainly troubled me in reading the various accounts of the case.

If we are ever going to act in a way that loosens that paralysing grip of guilt and helplessness, we need to understand why the two boys did what they did. Im not talking here of the whole truth. We can never know that. And Im certainly not looking for a single cause. But a critical re-focussing on some of the ignored or misunderstood elements of the case is urgently needed, to give us some further ideas about how to prevent child/child killings like this from happening.

But before we do that we need to clear away some of the confusing rumours, myths and simplistic judgements about the case that have begun to mask the full complexity of what might have happened. First, the James Bulger murder wasnt an evil freak of nature as the police described it. (Daily Express, November 25, 1993) It didnt express unparalleled evil and barbarity as Mr. Justice Morland remarked in his summing-up of the case. (Guardian, November 25, 1993) Nor is it true, as Lord Denning suggested in the Sun on November 25, 1993, that the killing has to be viewed as a freak incident for such terrible wickedness to come out in two young lads.

These suggestions that the killing was a freak happening, an aberration or a dreadful extreme deepens our sense of powerlessness to do anything about what happened. It erodes our personal responsibility for understanding and challenging the individual and social forces that have precipitated such a numbing event. To demonise the two boys removes the causes for what they did from the realm of social action, and leaves us in a greater state of despair.

Its important to stress that although the boys showed signs of severe emotional disturbance, they had no abnormality of mind, were of average intelligence, and attended a Church of England primary school where they were taught the difference between right and wrong. (Thomas, 1993, p266) The psychiatric report on Jon Venables made it clear that he could understand the concept and permanence of death, and could distinguish between fantasy and reality. (Smith, 1994, pp176-177) The report on Robert Thompson said that he was fully oriented in time and space, with no signs of any formal mental illness such as psychosis or a major depressive order. (Smith, 1994, p188)

My argument is that, although the boys killing of James Bulger was exceptional in degree and intensity, they werent one-off, devilish, freaks of nature. They share many of the learned tendencies of aggressive, heterosexual manliness that todays insecure young boys often desperately strive. Although they represent a heightened, extremely unusual form of these tendencies, both boys exist firmly within the common continuum of male sexual violence. And, as David James Smith has shown, there is a hidden history in Britain of roughly similar killings. Some have been disguised. Some have been hushed up. But the evidence is there that similar cases have happened in Britain in recent times, in not so recent times, and long, long ago. (Smith, 1994, p188)

Even as recently as 1988, in Borehamwood, a twelve- year-old boy abducted a two-year-old girl from a playground and walked her just over a mile to a railway embankment where he pushed her face into soft ground until she suffocated. They had been seen by a total of 17 people during the 40-minute walk following the abduction. The boy had no history of violence and no previous convictions. (Smith, 1994, p7)

Another similar incident was cited by Elizabeth Newson in her paper, Video Violence and the Protection of Children: Two schoolboys were today expected to appear in court accused of torturing a six-year-old on a railway line. The youngsters, aged ten and eleven, allegedly tried to force the boy to electrocute himself on a track in Newcastle-upon-Tyne last week. They are also accused of stabbing him in the arm with a knife. They will appear before Gosforth Youth Court in Newcastle-upon-Tyne charged with making threats to kill and three offences of indecently assaulting the youngster and his two brothers aged seven and ten. (Newson, 1994)

The populist myths that fogged any possibility of critical understanding from emerging bawled at you from the banner headlines of the tabloid newspapers. They mainly centred on broken homes Break-up of Family Leads Kids to Crime, the Sun screamed. (Sun, November 25 1993) Then there were the other themes of video nasties, boys running wild (particularly in our inner cities), truancy and single parents.

The two major political parties came up with predictable responses that mystified the case even further. The Labour Partys approach was that economic recession and social deprivation result in acts of law-breaking and violence. Tony Blair, Labours Shadow Home Secretary at that time, commented in a Daily Mirror article that criminals of ten or eleven did not just happen. Broken homes, bad housing, poor education, no job or training, and a lack of hope or opportunity all affected the way a child developed, he argued. (Daily Mirror, February 22 1993)

The New Rights authoritarian populism (the phrase is from Hall (1988)) combined with their emphasis on traditional family values to scapegoat single parents, especially mothers. Indeed, on the day after the legal sentencing, the tabloid press read like a media trial of the two single mothers. How far had neglect of their sons, or inadequacy as parents, contributed to the killing of James Bulger? On being interviewed, Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Venables sounded justificatory and defensive, intent on absolving themselves from blame rather than explaining anything.