The Guardian View on Theresa May's Problems with the Establishment

The Guardian
July 14, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/14/child-abuse-butler-sloss-theresa-may

Lady Butler-Sloss: the wrong choice. Photograph: Dan Chung

The decision by Lady Butler-Sloss to stand down from the inquiry into historical child sex abuse was too slow coming. It is welcome, but by derailing the inquiry before it started the government has lurched from seeming at sea in the face of a possible establishment cover-up to appearing both at sea and incompetent. And when the process does finally get going at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future, persuading the survivors of abuse to place their faith in it will be the harder. For a home secretary more sure-footed than most in her perilous office, this has been an uncharacteristic lapse. To get this important inquiry back on track, she must act with less haste this time round.

The Home Office response to the swirl of allegations of abuse going back as much as 50 years has been damagingly uncertain, betraying an ingrained reluctance to take seriously such notoriously difficult questions even under pressure from politicians of all parties. Having repeatedly said an investigation was unnecessary, right up until the moment when it became necessary after all, there was then a rush to appoint someone distinguished to chair it. In the complex context of offences under laws that no longer exist, or did not exist then but do now, and the analysis of failures to protect children that had to be considered, Lady Butler-Sloss was an obvious choice. She has a universal reputation for integrity, long legal experience and a distinguished record conducting child abuse inquires. Equally, because of her personal circumstances – not what she knew, but who she knew – she should just as obviously have been rejected. That neither she nor Theresa May seem to have been aware of the impossibility of her appointment is evidence of a worrying insensitivity.

It also shows a troubling uncertainty about the inquiry's scope. Survivors – who, as one said yesterday, have now met the pope but not the home secretary – may be hoping for too much from it: its remit will not be agreed until the chair is appointed, but yesterday, Mrs May stressed it would not examine individual allegations. Its focus will be on learning lessons from other inquiries, from the churches to the BBC, where children were failed by institutions. The Hillsborough review, chaired by the bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, showed how a narrowly drawn inquiry can play a critical role in revising the official version of events. But this inquiry has a more complex task. The issues it will address took place not on a single devastating afternoon but over decades, involving many agencies and institutions, embedded in a self-perpetuating patriarchal culture dismissive of both children and women. Unravelling what happened and learning the lessons of the widespread failure to stop it will be a daunting task indeed.