The Crucible: Lessons for today too.

Last night my wife and I attended a performance of Arthur Miller's famous play "The Crucible" at Cardiff's New Theatre. It tells the terrifying story of the Salem witch trials in America's New England in the 1690s. An impressionable young girl starts accusing various members of her community of indulging in witchcraft, a hanging offence at the time, and she is believed by the authorities, driven by a fierce Puritanism and and an underlying agenda to keep the people, especially women, in their place. Eventually, a man is accused, even though it is clear he has nothing to do with witchcraft, but is thought to be a lapsed Christian: he doesn't go to church very often and has even been seen working on the Sabbath!
          Miller's play was quickly seen for what it was: a devastating attack on the hypocrisy of HUAC- the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the paranoid atmosphere of post war America, when everyone could see a red under the bed, ready to subvert American society and turn the US into a Soviet satellite state, anyone with any leftist tendency in their background could be hauled before the committee and interrogated about their beliefs. If they came clean about it and, preferably, implicated others in the "plot", they got off relatively lightly. If they denied, or refused to answer they could be sent to prison, lose their jobs and be blacklisted. This is the heart of Miller's play. People suspected of being witches (or wizards) could receive mercy form the courts if they confessed- if not they hanged.
          Arthur Miller's courageous stand against the new "witch hunts" nearly landed him in jail, though now he is seen as a hero of freedom of speech and a champion of diversity. But there is a new witch hunt going on today, in Britain, and as I was watching the play last night I realized the lessons of Arthur Miller's play will have to be learned all over again.
          Today it is possible for someone to accuse others of historical sexual abuse, for the police, acting on guidelines issued from the very top of law enforcement, to believe these accusations unquestioningly, arrest the accused and interrogate them for hours or days at a time.
          The police then hand the results of their investigation to the CPS, who are likewise admonished from the top to believe the accuser, and in most cases, prefer charges against the accused. The usual "better than 50% chance of conviction" rule is waived in such cases: nearly all cases are simply put to the jury, Pontus Pilate style, for them to decide. The accused will then have to spend their life savings defending themselves in court, though the damage to their reputations is impossible to put right.
           There are genuine cases of historical sexual abuse, and the perpetrators should be brought to book. But there is a growing band of innocent people who are being placed in "the crucible" on a minimum of evidence in this new witch hunt. This doesn't happen in the US or in mainland Europe. It is a British obsession, and is the result, primarily, of the guilt surrounding Jimmy Savile and the fact he was never brought to account in his lifetime. But there is a solution. The police should certainly investigate allegations of abuse, but do so in an objective and impartial way, not starting from a point of view of unquestioning belief as they seem to do now. And the CPS should behave likewise.