17.05.2011
– Brendan O'Neill
Cameron
has been slated for his foray into the Madeleine McCann case, but
he's not the only politician who sees opportunity in bereavement.
It’s
hard to know who comes out worst in David Cameron’s great clumsy
intervention into the Madeleine McCann affair, where he has
instructed the Metropolitan Police to review the investigation into
the British toddler’s disappearance. Is it the Cameron government
itself, which has been positively Pavlovian in its kneejerk political
opportunism, and which in the process has turned policing from a
practical initiative into a highly ritualised performance of supposed
political grit? Or is it his critics, who mock this Maddie thing as a
Rupert Murdoch-inspired Tory stunt, yet who themselves have loudly
championed the politicisation, even the weaponisation, of other
instances of individual grief?
On
balance, it is probably Cameron’s critics, since their approach -
critical of kowtowing to grief in this case, supportive of it in
others - not only offers implicit backing to the broader problematic
trend of empowering the bereaved. It also suggests that some people’s
grief should be more valued than others’, that there should be a
grief hierarchy, where politicians are encouraged to act on the
demands of worthy grievers (Doreen Lawrence, antiwar military mums)
but to brush aside the wishes of unworthy grievers (Kate McCann,
Denise Fergus). This offers us the worst of both worlds: the
undemocratic, emotionalist politics of grief, but indulged
selectively, depending on whether the mum-in-mourning measures up to
a liberal elite standard.
Cameron’s
Maddie venture undoubtedly confirms how powerful is the PR impulse in
his government. On the very day that Kate and Gerry McCann wrote an
open letter to his government on the front page of the Sun (12 May),
in which they implored him to devote more resources to finding out
what happened to Madeleine in Portugal in 2007, Cameron got his home
secretary, Theresa May, to write to Scotland Yard asking its officers
to ‘do more’. It rather confirmed the sensitivity to media
pressure of a government as flimsy as Cameron’s. Unanchored by
political vision, detached from any meaningful constituency, this is
a government easily swayed by the vagaries of PR and image promotion.
Cameron seems to have instantly seen in the McCanns’ letter, not a
moment of potential awkwardness that might require behind-the-scenes
diplomacy with the family, but a shining opportunity to advertise his
alleged skills of political leadership and commitment to British
citizens.
As
in all cases of PR politics, where the imperative is to send a speedy
message about oneself rather than enact a thought-through policy, no
one in the Cameron camp seems to have given a second thought to the
small matter of consequences, of blowback. If they had - if they had
behaved like actual political rulers, who must maintain good
relations with the police and also avoid being seen as flighty - they
would surely have deduced that their actions would rattle numerous
cages. Predictably, the Metropolitan Police are annoyed, issuing both
public and underhand statements critical of Cameron. And equally
predictably, the parents of other disappeared toddlers are also
annoyed, with one, whose 21-month-old son went missing on the Greek
island of Kos in 1991, saying: ‘I look forward to the government
offering the same support to all families with loved ones missing
abroad.’
It
confirms the detachment of PR politics from the world of the real
that no one in government saw fit to put a brake on the prime
minister or the home secretary’s actions. And it speaks to the
immaturity and inexperience of our current rulers, to their lack of
historical nous, that they are willing to use the police for narrowly
PR purposes. Once a jealously guarded ‘body of armed men’, the
final guarantors of political stability, now the police appear as
little more than a body of press men to a government desperate to
indulge in some political posturing in lieu of having any political
convictions. The government has effectively asked Scotland Yard, not
to carry out real policing (after all, what more can be uncovered
about the McCann case, and from here in Britain?), but rather to act
for the sake of being seen to act, to shuffle papers, perhaps, and
make statements, all as publicly as possible. This is policing as
ritual, where the aim is not to find something out but to make a PR
parade of political seriousness. (And for all the police’s
complaints about this political pressure, their own recent forays
into PR and even celebrity policing rather undermine their current
rage at Cameron.)
Must-reads
from the past week
The
mistake made by Cameron’s critics is to talk up the influence of
external forces in this debacle. He has given in to the Murdoch
media, we are told, or he has had his arm twisted by those alleged
masters of political manipulation, the McCanns. A Guardian writer
says Cameron has surrendered to ‘a newspaper belonging to News
International, whose vast array of illegal hacking activities is
already tying up some of our most diligent detectives’. (This is a
bit rich, seeing as it is the Guardian‘s own new role as the
supergrass of the modern media, constantly ratting on tabloid
phone-hackers, which has led to all this time-consuming ‘diligent
detective work’.)
Yet
the truth is that it is the weakness of the Cameron government, the
political emptiness of it, which draws it to PR stunts such as this
Maddie intervention. In flagging up the allegedly awesome power of
Murdoch and/or the McCanns, the critics miss the extent to which
politicians of all persuasion in our ideologically anaemic times
cherish an opportunity to partake in speedy, short-termist moral
crusades. The key factor in this debacle is the wide openness of the
government to PR manipulation, rather than the strength of the
manipulators.
Indeed,
one important fact that is overlooked by the liberal-leaning
journalists who have slated Cameron for his Maddie mission is that
the politics of emotionalism, the intervention into and the
exploitation of family grief, is indulged by politicians on all sides
today - often with the backing of those currently attacking Cameron.
It makes no sense to describe this as a Tory stunt when everyone from
Tony Blair to Ken Livingstone to the Guardian itself has in recent
years elevated the bereaved as paragons of wisdom who have the
authority to inform and shape the political realm. It’s just that -
rather shamelessly and more than a little bit stomach-turningly -
these liberal promoters of the political power of grief believe that
only some suffering people are worth heeding while the rest can be
written off as nutjobs.
So
an editorial in the Observer says ‘Mr Cameron needs to be careful
about presenting himself as some benevolent tsar, bestowing favours
on petitioning subjects’. Others have counselled against further
empowering the already media-savvy McCanns. Yet in recent years, a
figure such as Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered black teenager
Stephen Lawrence, has been empowered to an extraordinary degree by
left-leaning politicians and commentators. By virtue of the fact that
she suffered a terrible loss, she has been turned into a spokeswoman
for everything from authoritarian clampdowns on the so-called knife
culture to the supposed superiority of Ken Livingstone over Boris
Johnson for London mayor. Indeed, Livingstone’s exhaustive
exploitation of Mrs Lawrence for political gain makes Cameron’s
Maddie moment seem almost civilised by comparison.
Likewise,
some of the media currently attacking Cameron have been more than
happy to weaponise grief. So during the Iraq War the Guardian
described military mums who had turned antiwar after losing their
sons as ‘the grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down’. ‘No
one questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has
just lost a son’, it said, explicitly revelling in the
democracy-squishing, debate-neutering power of the politics of grief.
In essence, it seems that some grief is good and thus worth
exploiting, while other forms of grief are considered cheap and
nasty. So where Denise Fergus, mother of murdered Liverpudlian
toddler James Bulger, is referred to by respectable journalists as
the embodiment of ‘hatred and vengeance’, with a grief that is
‘anachronistic, even threatening’, someone like Mrs Lawrence is
treated as beyond reproach. Kate McCann was once seen as being of the
Lawrence mould, but as a consequence of her outstaying her welcome in
the media, and getting too cosy with the tabloids over the
broadsheets, she is now seen as more like Fergus: another mad,
moaning Scouse mum.
This
grotesque hierarchy of grief, this elitist handpicking between good
mourners and bad mourners, sums up the entire problem with the modern
politics of grief. What we have here, in every tragic case from
Fergus to Lawrence to McCann, is political and media actors hiding
behind mourning mums for the purpose of pushing narrow political
agendas - whether it’s anti-crime initiatives, the dogma of
multiculturalism or just PR self-promotion. What attracts the
political elite to the publicly bereaved is that in the absence of
any moral certainty or confidence of their own, they can push the
implacable grief of an individual as a justification for their
actions. It also has the effect of dampening down political criticism
and agitation - in the words of the Guardian, ‘no one questions’
those chosen as reputable political mourners. In one fell (and foul)
swoop, politicians can morally justify their agendas and
simultaneously silence their opponents.
The
end result is that the McCanns and others never achieve closure,
while political discourse gets closed down.
Was Madeleine abducted?
06.2011 - Enid O’Dowd
Four years after she disappeared in Portugal, Madeleine McCann has not been found. Kate McCann has written her account of her daughter’s disappearance and the aftermath
You’re meeting seven neighbours, with eight children under four between you, in one of Ranelagh’s many restaurants, only 120 metres or so from your home which you can’t see from the restaurant, what do you do about childcare?
That was the ‘almost’ equivalent dilemma faced by Kate and Gerry McCann and their friends on their holiday in Praia da Luz in May 2007 – except they were not on their home patch as you were in Ranelagh. The group, which became known as the Tapas nine and six of whom were doctors,decided to make 30 minute checks. This system, Kate claims, had worked on previous evenings but when she checked at 10 pm on Thursday May 3rd, Madeleine was not there and, despite an international search involving the Portuguese and UK police and private detectives, she has still not been found.
Last month Kate McCann published “Madeleine - our daughter’s disappearance and the continuing search for her”. In the foreword of the book she states that her “reason for writing the book is to give an account of the truth”. Isn’t that odd phraseology - surely there can only be one version of the truth? All kinds of tales have circulated about Madeleine’s disappearance according to Kate, and indeed they have; the publication of this “truthful” book seems to have accelerated the internet debates on the discrepancies in the McCanns’ story.
The book is actually the story of Kate’s life to date. It covers her childhood, her education, her meeting and marriage to Gerry McCann and the births of their three children. The McCanns needed a series of IVF treatments to become parents which makes it all the more odd that they would leave three children under four in an unlocked apartment on the ground floor in a foreign country. According to Kate, all three children were good sleepers. She did not want to use the evening crèche provided by the holiday company; understandable as her children had a routine and were in bed by the time the crèche opened at 7.30 pm.
She argues on p. 54 that it would have been unwise to leave the children with someone neither they nor themselves knew. Yet her children were happy in the day childcare facilities and had come to know the staff who were available, at extra cost, to babysit for clients in the evening.
She states “we felt so secure we simply didn’t think it was necessary (to hire a babysitter) and our own apartment was only 30-45 seconds away”.
An astonishing statement.
Surely security concerns are not the main reason parents organise babysitters? As a GP, she more than anyone, would appreciate that the risks of leaving children alone at night do not relate to “security” but to other factors, like vomiting and choking, waking up from a nightmare, wetting the bed, and febrile convulsions which affect one in twenty children under five.
Kate does not mention a witness statement by Pamela Fenn who lived in the apartment above stating that she heard a child crying for 75 minutes on Tuesday May 1st calling for “daddy”. This contradicts Kate’s statement of 30 minute checks.
The book cover proclaims that all royalties are donated to the Madeleine Fund. A company called Madeleine Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd was incorporated on 15 May 2007. According to Kate, over the weekend of 11th, 12th and 13th May she and Gerry had meetings in Praia da Luz with a paralegal from the International Family Law Group and a barrister. The barrister told them “our behaviour (in leaving the children unattended) could not be deemed negligent” and was “well within the bounds of reasonable parenting”.
The legal pair suggested the McCanns use London solicitors Bates Wells and Braithwaite to set up a company to manage the funds that would be donated. On p.137 she records that this firm drew up articles of association for the fighting fund (limited company) and talked to the Charity Commission who ruled that the proposed company did not meet the requirements for charity status as it focussed on one child and did not meet the public benefit test. Hence Kate says, the decision was that “it would be a ‘not for profit’ private limited company. It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field”.
From the dates Kate gives, it would appear that Bates Wells and Braithwaite could not have had instructions to act until Monday May 14th, yet they were able to incorporate the company the very next day.
A day is very little time for the solicitors to have drafted company documents for this proposed company which was not an ordinary trading company, to have agreed the documents with their clients the McCanns who were in Portugal and also to have obtained a ruling from the Charity Commission.
And what was the hurry given that Madeleine could have been found at this early stage of the investigation?
On p.138 Kate says “everyone agreed that despite the costs involved it (the company) must be run to the highest standards of transparency”.
To date, three sets of accounts have been filed with the UK Company’s office. In the first set going to March 2008 an analysis of expenditure is given though this is not a statutory requirement under UK law. However the accounts filed for the years to March 2009 and to March 2010 give no expenditure analysis. Now this is perfectly legal but not the “transparency” to which Kate referred. In 2009 for example the only expenditure information filed gives the merchandising and campaign costs as £974,786 and the administration expenses as £30,865. Not very informative!
When the McCanns were made arguidos (suspects) in September 2007 Kate refused on legal advice to answer the 48 questions put to her. This was her legal right but the refusal fuelled the doubts about her story. It is understandable why she might not want to answer questions in a foreign country with the possibility of mistranslations complicating her difficult situation but surely there is no reason now not to put the record straight by answering the questions in her book. She doesn’t do so.
British sniffer dogs Eddie and Keela and their handler Martin Grime were used by the Portuguese authorities. These dogs had a 100% accuracy rate in 200 cases and found both blood and cadaver (dead body) traces in various places in the holiday apartment and in the boot of the car rented after the disappearance. Kate says that research Gerry conducted after the Portuguese police showed them the video of the dogs’ search revealed that dog evidence is unreliable. She quotes Gerry as dismissing the sniffer dog video as “the most subjective piece of evidence gathering imaginable”. She claims that the dogs had merely been trying to please their instructor.
If you read this book without having read the other material available which questions the abduction theory, you could not fail to have the greatest of sympathy for the McCanns. However, it is a statistical fact that in the majority of missing children cases, a family member, a neighbour or someone known to the child, is involved. The Portuguese police would have been negligent if they did not consider this possibility. They did not find any forensic evidence of an intruder in the apartment which had been to some extent contaminated by the Tapas group searching the apartment when Kate raised the alarm.
Since the book was published last month, Scotland Yard has agreed to conduct a review. A reconstruction of that evening which the Tapas nine initially agreed to do but which never happened would help. Hopefully the review will be independent with the co-operation of all and with no possibilities excluded.
06.2011 - Enid O’Dowd
Four years after she disappeared in Portugal, Madeleine McCann has not been found. Kate McCann has written her account of her daughter’s disappearance and the aftermath
You’re meeting seven neighbours, with eight children under four between you, in one of Ranelagh’s many restaurants, only 120 metres or so from your home which you can’t see from the restaurant, what do you do about childcare?
That was the ‘almost’ equivalent dilemma faced by Kate and Gerry McCann and their friends on their holiday in Praia da Luz in May 2007 – except they were not on their home patch as you were in Ranelagh. The group, which became known as the Tapas nine and six of whom were doctors,decided to make 30 minute checks. This system, Kate claims, had worked on previous evenings but when she checked at 10 pm on Thursday May 3rd, Madeleine was not there and, despite an international search involving the Portuguese and UK police and private detectives, she has still not been found.
Last month Kate McCann published “Madeleine - our daughter’s disappearance and the continuing search for her”. In the foreword of the book she states that her “reason for writing the book is to give an account of the truth”. Isn’t that odd phraseology - surely there can only be one version of the truth? All kinds of tales have circulated about Madeleine’s disappearance according to Kate, and indeed they have; the publication of this “truthful” book seems to have accelerated the internet debates on the discrepancies in the McCanns’ story.
The book is actually the story of Kate’s life to date. It covers her childhood, her education, her meeting and marriage to Gerry McCann and the births of their three children. The McCanns needed a series of IVF treatments to become parents which makes it all the more odd that they would leave three children under four in an unlocked apartment on the ground floor in a foreign country. According to Kate, all three children were good sleepers. She did not want to use the evening crèche provided by the holiday company; understandable as her children had a routine and were in bed by the time the crèche opened at 7.30 pm.
She argues on p. 54 that it would have been unwise to leave the children with someone neither they nor themselves knew. Yet her children were happy in the day childcare facilities and had come to know the staff who were available, at extra cost, to babysit for clients in the evening.
She states “we felt so secure we simply didn’t think it was necessary (to hire a babysitter) and our own apartment was only 30-45 seconds away”.
An astonishing statement.
Surely security concerns are not the main reason parents organise babysitters? As a GP, she more than anyone, would appreciate that the risks of leaving children alone at night do not relate to “security” but to other factors, like vomiting and choking, waking up from a nightmare, wetting the bed, and febrile convulsions which affect one in twenty children under five.
Kate does not mention a witness statement by Pamela Fenn who lived in the apartment above stating that she heard a child crying for 75 minutes on Tuesday May 1st calling for “daddy”. This contradicts Kate’s statement of 30 minute checks.
The book cover proclaims that all royalties are donated to the Madeleine Fund. A company called Madeleine Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd was incorporated on 15 May 2007. According to Kate, over the weekend of 11th, 12th and 13th May she and Gerry had meetings in Praia da Luz with a paralegal from the International Family Law Group and a barrister. The barrister told them “our behaviour (in leaving the children unattended) could not be deemed negligent” and was “well within the bounds of reasonable parenting”.
The legal pair suggested the McCanns use London solicitors Bates Wells and Braithwaite to set up a company to manage the funds that would be donated. On p.137 she records that this firm drew up articles of association for the fighting fund (limited company) and talked to the Charity Commission who ruled that the proposed company did not meet the requirements for charity status as it focussed on one child and did not meet the public benefit test. Hence Kate says, the decision was that “it would be a ‘not for profit’ private limited company. It was set up with great care and due diligence by experts in the field”.
From the dates Kate gives, it would appear that Bates Wells and Braithwaite could not have had instructions to act until Monday May 14th, yet they were able to incorporate the company the very next day.
A day is very little time for the solicitors to have drafted company documents for this proposed company which was not an ordinary trading company, to have agreed the documents with their clients the McCanns who were in Portugal and also to have obtained a ruling from the Charity Commission.
And what was the hurry given that Madeleine could have been found at this early stage of the investigation?
On p.138 Kate says “everyone agreed that despite the costs involved it (the company) must be run to the highest standards of transparency”.
To date, three sets of accounts have been filed with the UK Company’s office. In the first set going to March 2008 an analysis of expenditure is given though this is not a statutory requirement under UK law. However the accounts filed for the years to March 2009 and to March 2010 give no expenditure analysis. Now this is perfectly legal but not the “transparency” to which Kate referred. In 2009 for example the only expenditure information filed gives the merchandising and campaign costs as £974,786 and the administration expenses as £30,865. Not very informative!
When the McCanns were made arguidos (suspects) in September 2007 Kate refused on legal advice to answer the 48 questions put to her. This was her legal right but the refusal fuelled the doubts about her story. It is understandable why she might not want to answer questions in a foreign country with the possibility of mistranslations complicating her difficult situation but surely there is no reason now not to put the record straight by answering the questions in her book. She doesn’t do so.
British sniffer dogs Eddie and Keela and their handler Martin Grime were used by the Portuguese authorities. These dogs had a 100% accuracy rate in 200 cases and found both blood and cadaver (dead body) traces in various places in the holiday apartment and in the boot of the car rented after the disappearance. Kate says that research Gerry conducted after the Portuguese police showed them the video of the dogs’ search revealed that dog evidence is unreliable. She quotes Gerry as dismissing the sniffer dog video as “the most subjective piece of evidence gathering imaginable”. She claims that the dogs had merely been trying to please their instructor.
If you read this book without having read the other material available which questions the abduction theory, you could not fail to have the greatest of sympathy for the McCanns. However, it is a statistical fact that in the majority of missing children cases, a family member, a neighbour or someone known to the child, is involved. The Portuguese police would have been negligent if they did not consider this possibility. They did not find any forensic evidence of an intruder in the apartment which had been to some extent contaminated by the Tapas group searching the apartment when Kate raised the alarm.
Since the book was published last month, Scotland Yard has agreed to conduct a review. A reconstruction of that evening which the Tapas nine initially agreed to do but which never happened would help. Hopefully the review will be independent with the co-operation of all and with no possibilities excluded.
