Britannia Radio

22 May 2010 6:31 PM

Scum: Yes, it's a nasty word but Britain's a nasty place

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

When is it all right to call anybody ‘scum’? For those of us who still try not to swear, it is quite a strong word, but in an age when another much nastier s-word is allowed in Parliament, the expression ‘scum’ is hardly shocking.

So when Austin Malloy, a Blackburn magistrate, used ‘scum’ in court to describe two youths who had done disgusting things in a church, nobody can really have been upset.

The pair scribbled racialist and sexually abusive graffiti, including the words ‘I will kill all Jews’, in prayer books and bent a valuable cross out of shape.

Mr Malloy, right, was obviously trying to explain to these oafs how others were genuinely distressed by this desecration. So he said: ‘This court is disgusted by the mindless destruction you have caused. Normal people would consider you absolute scum. If it was in our power, we would have you both stand in front of the congregation at 10am on Sunday and explain your words and actions to them to see if they could understand it, because we can’t.’

Christine Dean, clerk of the court, then stood and told the magistrate: ‘It is totally inappropriate and unjust for you to use the term "absolute scum" in the youth court.’

It is Christine Dean I am interested in. She doesn’t seem to be in any trouble. But Mr Malloy is. Why is that? When I used to report magistrates court cases, clerks were discreet. I never saw one dare to publicly rebuke a JP for anything.

Ms Dean plainly thought that the politically correct establishment were behind her when she spoke. That ugly word ‘inappropriate’ is usually a sign of political correctness – because PC people can’t ever bring themselves to say the word ‘wrong’. As for ‘unjust’, I should have thought the comment entirely just.

But then I believe that wrong actions should be punished, and those who do them should be made to feel shame. This is not because I am cruel. On the contrary, I think swift, harsh punishment is kind.

It is more likely to change a bad person’s life for the better than the dreary horrors of ‘rehabilitation’, with its anger-management courses and amateur psycho analysis. There’s also the little matter of letting the rest of us know that justice has been done, as it almost never is.

But Ms Dean, it is clear to me, speaks for the Liberal-Conser vative future, and Mr Malloy speaks for the British past. And even if the publicity given to this case eventually saves Mr Malloy’s place on the bench, others will in future be afraid to speak in this way.

And the darkness will continue to fall on our civilisation.