PETER HITCHENS: Does Archbishop Welby’s pride matter more than an elderly lady’s pain? 

This Christmas I would like you to think of the plight of a 94-year-old woman, who has been atrociously mistreated by the Archbishop of Canterbury 

This Christmas I would like you to think of the plight of a 94-year-old woman, who has been atrociously mistreated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Her name is Mrs Barbara Whitley. More than three years ago, the Church of England publicly accused her beloved long-dead uncle of the filthy crime of child sex abuse.

The charge was based on the word of a single accuser, more than half a century after the supposed offence. The Church had presumed his guilt and made no serious effort to discover the truth. Key living witnesses were neither sought, found nor interviewed. A senior bishop admitted soon afterwards that they were actually not convinced the claim was true. Yet by some mysterious process, a number of newspapers and BBC stations, all on the same day, felt safe in confidently pronouncing that Barbara’s uncle had been a disgusting paedophile. No ifs or buts. Who told them?

A later inquiry would show that this miserable episode was based on nothing more than a chaotic, sloppy kangaroo court. One of this country’s most distinguished lawyers, Lord Carlile, tore the case against Barbara’s uncle to shreds. He said there would have been no chance of a conviction on the evidence available, and made mincemeat of the shambolic committee that had published the original allegation.

After delaying the release of this inquiry for weeks, Justin Welby’s church eventually published it. But did it admit its mistake and restore the reputation of Barbara Whitley’s wrongly defamed uncle?

Nope. Mr Welby, in defiance of all the rules of British justice, sulkily insisted that a ‘significant cloud’ still hung over the name of Barbara’s uncle. Thus, just as she might have been able to rejoice that her relative’s name had at last been cleared, the Head of the Established Church made it his personal business to prevent this.

And then, a few weeks later, another supposed allegation against her uncle was said to have been made. Why then? What was it? Who had made it? Nobody would say, but it served to stifle potential criticism of Mr Welby at the General Synod of the Church of England, which was about to begin. Details of the second allegation remain a secret. After nearly a year, Mr Welby’s church (which has a bad record of sitting on reports that it doesn’t like) still hasn’t come up with its conclusions. Yet Sussex Police, given the same information, dropped their investigations into the matter after a few short weeks.

It all looks a bit as if someone is trying to save someone’s face. But the cruelty to Barbara Whitley, who was 91 when this horrible saga began, is appalling. Who cares about some prelate’s pride (a sin in any case) when Mrs Whitley could be spared any more pain?

Because the cruelty to Mrs Whitley seems to me to be so shocking in a supposedly Christian organisation, I have deliberately left till last that the object of these accusations is the late Bishop of Chichester, George Bell. Bell was, as people who knew him have told me, a kind, scrupulously honest, courageous man. He was, most notably, a beloved friend of the German Christians who fought against Hitler and a brave critic of the cruelty of war. I sometimes wonder if modern bishops and archbishops are afraid of being compared with him. They have reason to be. In the meantime, Mr Welby’s church should end Mrs Whitley’s agony.

Does anyone really doubt that, if the archbishop wanted to, he could end the whole business today?

Now that there’s a new Mary Poppins film coming along, I feel it is time to confess that I have never seen the first one (pictured). No, nor The Sound Of Music either. All those references to Dick Van Dyke, or the Von Trapps, or whatever it is, are Chinese to me. Am I alone? I often think I must be

Now that there’s a new Mary Poppins film coming along, I feel it is time to confess that I have never seen the first one (pictured). No, nor The Sound Of Music either. All those references to Dick Van Dyke, or the Von Trapps, or whatever it is, are Chinese to me. Am I alone? I often think I must be

I’ve just one word to say about the EU problem. I’ll keep saying it until someone listens. Norway.

Those flapping liberals get it wrong AGAIN 

People with flapping mouths and flapping minds are much given to calling for the ‘decriminalisation’ of evil things, in the fanciful belief that this will make them go away. All they do is let evil off the leash, and make its purveyors rich.

We were told in the 1960s that taking the restrictions off pornography would end repression and make us all healthier. That didn’t quite work out. The full, terrible consequences of going soft on drugs are still only just beginning to show. But will anyone learn anything from this or from the total, horrific failure of a ‘legal’ red-light district in Leeds, reported last week?

The Holbeck experiment has been acknowledged as a disaster even by some of its own champions.

The creation of a semi-legal zone of prostitution has been followed by one especially brutal murder, and by a great increase in the number of women selling their bodies, plus what is known locally as ‘an amnesty on scumbags’. There have been at least 67 violent and sexual offences inside the experimental area in two years. There are reports of distressed women wandering barefooted and barely clothed in the snow, others injured and another injecting herself in the groin, not far from the supposedly enlightened sector.

Those who govern us, in this and so many other things, are scared of following any firm moral rule, and scared of using the power they seek. Why then do they want to govern at all? We need an entirely new political class.

More victims of the great terror myth 

Why do we still report sordid crime as if it was a political threat? I think it’s because governments like to pose as grandiose defenders of the West against Islamist terror, but lack the courage or resolve to fight against real crime, and the mass drug abuse that causes so much of it.

Take the supposed ‘terrorist’ of Strasbourg, Chérif Chekatt. He had 27 convictions (including, of course, for the drugs he took and sold). He couldn’t have cared less about Islam, as he was just a violent, crooked slob. Neighbours said he was no Islamist but ‘a cornered criminal who’d lost his marbles’.

And a taxi driver whose colleague had been held hostage by the gunman said: ‘I’m a practising Muslim and have never seen him at any of the mosques around here. He smoked too much pot. Friends saw him drinking beer the other day. But there’s nothing religious or radicalised about him.’

I know some twerp will accuse me of apologising for Islamists when I say this, but forget that twerp. Look how useless the ‘security’ approach has been for all these years. Try it my way. Arrest and prosecute drug possession properly again, and you’ll soon see the streets safer in every way.

Many women, including my colleague Tina Weaver, have felt personally attacked by the BBC’s Christmas film showing how the stresses of modern life come between mothers and their children. They’ve got it wrong. 

Nobody with any sense thinks mothers are to blame. It’s the militant ultra-feminists who believe full-time motherhood is a crime, the greedy businessmen hungry for female wageslaves, and the governments who have succumbed to these horrible lobbies, who have made women’s lives impossible contests between what they would like to do – and what they have to do. 

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