At the beginning of last
week I read in the paper that a large pancake race that has taken place in a
certain village every year for donkey’s years wasn’t going to take place
this year because the cost of insurance had rise so much that it was too
expensive – presumably the insurers might have to pay out if someone tripped
in the race and got bashed on the head by a frying pan.
Gillian Beckingham a 45
year old mother of three has just been charged with the manslaughter of 7
people. She risks maybe 7 years in prison – she isn’t a reckless drunken
driver who after a night out ploughed into a bus queue – no, she’s a
middling council official from Barrow-in-Furness charged with responsibility in
connection with the air-conditioning unit in the council’s Forum 28 leisure
centre, the alleged source of legionnaire’s disease that infected 140 people
last year. The case turns, apparently, on who was responsible in what chain of
command. It’s the first time that a council official has faced such a criminal
prosecution and follows on from new corporate manslaughter legislation that has
responded to public clamour for accountability after fatal rail crashes
where no senior heads rolled.
As I reflected on these
incidents it made me feel very concerned about the kind of society and world we
live in. There’s a tremendous appetite around for blame: scapegoats must be
sort for everything that goes wrong. There is a mindset rapidly developing,
possibly a transatlantic import, that demands compensation for everything. There
are advertisements for no-win-no-fee solicitors saying “Was it an accident
– or could someone be to blame?” I’m not sure that no-win-no-fee has
improved the availability of justice, just increased the number of petty claims.
Ever increasing
percentages of council tax and NHS funds are being spent dealing with
compensation claims of all sorts when some might think the money would be better
spent on our schools and our hospitals.
Having good systems in
place, and tracking down where things went wrong and doing the best we can to
avoid tragedies is necessary – but whether suing people always is, is another
matter. Accidents do happen and its madness to think that we could ever live in
a risk-free world – and to remove risk is so much of the time to remove any
fun at all.
A culture that is always
looking for someone else to blame when something goes wrong is spiritually and
psychologically worrying. One of the strong themes of Lent is self-examination
and repentance – that’s extremely difficult if the immediate reaction is ‘it
wasn’t my fault’ – if we’re not careful more and more gets blamed on
our upbringing, our genetic makeup or whatever and we fail to take
responsibility for our actions.
Self-examination and
repentance recognise that ‘yes’ what I did then, the way I behaved,
the attitude I exhibited was something I was responsible for – there may be
contributing circumstances but I didn’t have to do it. I am blameworthy.
This isn’t about heaping guilt on our heads and making ourselves feel miserable, it’s about growing up and accepting responsibility. Passing the buck is what children do – go into any playroom and ask who made the mess and it will always be the brother or sister of the one you asked. Passing the buck is, after all what Adam did in the garden – it wasn’t me, it was the woman – she made me do it. Perhaps we should all retrospectively sue Adam for the results of his sin.