Myra Hindley and justice

Submitted by AWL on 25 November, 2002 - 3:20

By Gerry Bates

Someone once said that free speech is for the person whose views you despise. The question of whether you are for or against free speech only arises acutely when you loathe the "speech" whose freedom you are called upon to defend. So also with justice. Justice is for the person you hate and feel like nailing to the wall. If you are not prepared to give justice to someone you would like to see in hell, then you do not believe in justice.

Myra Hindley proves the point. She has just died after spending 37 years in jail. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were Nazi-worshippers, sexually excited by images of the Nazi death camps and the horrors which Hitler inflicted on millions of helpless people. They murdered children and adolescents for pleasure and the sense of power it gave them.

The hatred and loathing Hindley and Brady attract is well deserved, even if it is fomented and kept alive by the tabloid press.

Brady was long ago declared insane. Hindley who was 23 years old when she was arrested, had repented and reformed, or so a lot of eminent people, who took up and championed her cause though. She wanted her freedom.

According to the guidelines laid down by the judge who pronounced her sentence, she should in justice have been released after serving 20 years. She was not released. The sentence was open-ended, so the decision to release her or keep her in jail until she died rested with politicians. They bowed to the tabloid press and the popular loathing of Myra Hindley. She was kept in jail until she died there.

Hindley's crimes erect an impenetrable barrier between this child-murderer and the sympathy one would normally feel for a human being held in the trap nearly all her life, from the age of 23 to 60.

That is where justice, applicable to everyone impartially, should have played its part. It did not. Cold, implacable, demonising revenge took its place.

Many of us who, had we been asked to vote on it, would have felt obliged to vote to release her, just couldn't bring ourselves to care. This child-killer was too alien, too disgusting. Yes, she was. Even so, she should have had justice.

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 29/12/2005 - 12:02

Justice was seen to be done, though of course Myra Hindley is still mightily unpopular

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