When I was at school, we all knew
that the most unjust type of sanction was collective punishment – you know the
sort: when the whole class is kept in detention for one person’s misdemeanour.
It’s the last resort of the ineffective teacher. “I know someone’s been smoking
in here, and if they don’t own up in the next minute, I shall keep the whole
class back after school until I get the name.”
I remember well the first time I
was on the receiving end of this sort of sanction. I have no idea what the
offence was. I was still in junior school and I remember the class being lined
up at the top of the basement stairs, prior to being marched down to have the
cane administered by the ex-army-captain headmaster. In fact, I’m ashamed to
say, I was so scared I feigned sickness and avoided my fate and so was launched
into a propensity to intelligent deceit. I did later get my fair share of rapped knuckles from Fido, the length of quadrant wielded by my moustachioed Maths teacher.
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| Graphic showing estimated civilian casualties in WW2, Memorial Civiles |
When we were away on holiday in
France this summer, we visited the moving Memorial des Civils museum in Falaise which records the civilian cost of World War 2. There was an exhibit there which listed something like 20 men from a
village, taken to concentration camp, after German military trains had twice
been blown up nearby by the resistance. One man came back. A pattern repeated
thousands of time in war, no doubt. The museum reminded us that our Soviet allies lost 36 million civilians in the defeat of Nazism, far more than the rest of Europe put together. Which is, by the way, one reason why I consider our officially sponsored populist anti-Russian narrative so misconceived.
You may surmise from this that I
rate collective punishment as a very low form of life. And I was sorry when the
Olympic authorities, almost, and the Paralympic totally imposed a blanket ban
on athletes from the Russian federation. It seemed to me a denial of natural
justice. Whatever the rights and wrong of the McLaren report on state sponsored
doping in Russia, it’s clear that some innocent athletes were barred from
competing by the bans, and I suspect guilty ones from elsewhere competed,
perhaps making intelligently deceitful use of TUEs (Therapeutic Use Exemptions).
Whatever the case, it seems that
the whole affair was hurriedly and clumsily mismanaged – which of course worked
to GB’s advantage. True, GB did wonderfully well in both Olympics and Paralympics in Rio, and
their medal haul exceeded even the London Games. But then they would have won
more, wouldn’t they, with their main competitor for second, third or fourth
place removed from the picture? I wouldn’t want in any way to rain on their
parades. They deserve our very great admiration, but let’s keep it in
perspective and hope that by 2020 Russia will be back in the mix.
