- 7 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00I think there is some use of corporal punishment. Are you in favor of this?
00:22Yes, now and again, I think it is what this thing is.
00:26Corporal punishment, the infliction of pain to punish, was once part of everyday life.
00:33Can we have a show of hands? How many of you have never ever hit your children?
00:43Well, strangely enough, belting works.
00:46It makes a good child better.
00:48This is not only the story of punishment in schools. Corporal punishment has been part
00:53of religious life and of the law.
00:56Well, on the 18th one, I don't think I could have stood any more.
01:02It has been used in the nursery and in the bedroom.
01:06All we are saying here is that there is a sadomasochistic element running throughout society.
01:12Corporal punishment has been used and advocated by reasonable people who have argued forcefully
01:18for its merits.
01:19This is over in a few seconds and it's a salutary lesson. It's a short, sharp lesson.
01:25It connects with strong human instincts.
01:29We hear of an elderly lady taking her pension from the local post office, knocked to the
01:36ground and kicked about the head. I think we all have a visceral reaction. Why doesn't
01:40somebody punch this person? I think that that is almost a human instinct.
01:45Well, why can't we have a deterrent to protect ourselves?
01:49Corporal punishment has deep roots in British culture and its slow decline reflects a battle
01:55that has raged for over 200 years.
01:58Those debates about what is legitimate, how much force can you put into it, who is entitled
02:03to inflict it, who are the victims, have actually been going on for a very, very long time.
02:08Corporal punishment is often associated with the schoolmaster and the cane, but it once had
02:21a role throughout society.
02:23If we went back to the 18th century, I think we would be pretty horrified by attitudes to
02:33other people's pain.
02:37The 18th century public could both witness and join in with the infliction of pain, such as
02:43the pillory, the most unpredictable of punishments.
02:46Give it what it works!
02:48In London, the pillory, or one of the pillories, was at Charing Cross where the statue of Charles
02:53I is now, and it was the sight of great excitement.
03:02There was this poor man or woman in the pillory, abused by crowds of common people.
03:08This was the common people of sport, because they were expected to come along with dead cats
03:14and oranges and eggs and such rotten fruit from covered gardeners they could collect from
03:20the gutters and pelt the poor victim.
03:24And the polite people would be in their coaches and they kind of watch the sensation and congratulate
03:29themselves on their refinement that they didn't indulge in this.
03:33But there was never a sense of pity for the poor wretch being stoned.
03:39Even women were not spared the indignity of public punishment.
03:45For petty thefts, petty larcenies, a woman was tied to the cart and she had to follow it like this,
03:54bare-breasted and bare-backed, through the market square, being humiliatingly beaten.
04:01One way of explaining all these violent attacks in past times is through realizing that the state
04:12in early modern times, in the 16th, 17th, even 18th century, was relatively weak.
04:19We have to remember that it was defended by a few thousand soldiers and by a few thousand parish constables.
04:27And the wonder is that it all held together.
04:30And one reason it held together was because of the violence that could be deployed by this minimalist state.
04:37The humiliation and the pain were a necessary part of punishment.
04:42The mere deprivation of liberty was not enough.
04:46Prisons were seen really as places where offenders were held awaiting trial.
04:51And when the trial had been conducted, the expectation was that they would be subjected to corporal or capital punishment
04:58in the vast majority of cases.
05:00The violence meted out by the state found its justification in the teachings of religion.
05:07The idea of a physical hell had always been used to underpin the idea of corporal punishment.
05:18That if one accepts that God inflicts pain on people, then by analogy it's perfectly possible for people with power
05:28to inflict pain on those they want to bring into line.
05:32So once you have this model of pain as something inflicted by a judgmental God,
05:40a God who punishes, who exerts retribution for sins, then of course pain becomes something even acceptable.
05:49It's something that God inflicts on sinning mankind and therefore we can inflict on those beneath us.
05:58Children, women, our slaves, so-called savage races.
06:03So there is that sort of hierarchy of infliction of pain.
06:07Corporal punishment was not only about retribution, it could also benefit the soul.
06:14Is pain a way of imitating Christ?
06:18Of, if you like, getting rid of your evil, the evil nature, your sins here on this earth,
06:24so that you don't have to sort of suffer in the next life?
06:29But in the course of the 19th century, such views began to change.
06:33The infliction of pain in public disappeared.
06:36One reason was that the growing state could draw on other forms of punishment.
06:41Prisons were coming into favour.
06:44Machinery of control was becoming more sophisticated.
06:48The whippings and the chastisings, the burnings and the blandings,
06:52and the hangings were no longer necessary,
06:54because of a world which now was being better policed.
07:00Whipping moved indoors, but it didn't disappear.
07:05Criminals could still be flogged.
07:07And in English prisons, it was a punishment for mutiny or violence used until 1962.
07:14A doctor would come to your cell and would certify that you were fit for the punishment.
07:20You would then be escorted to the flogging room, where there existed an apparatus called the triangle.
07:26And your legs were spread-eagled, your arms were spread-eagled above your head.
07:33A protective device was fitted around just above your buttocks to protect your kidneys.
07:40And a prescribed number of lashes were laid on.
07:47Well, you're strapped to the triangle by your legs,
07:50and then they pull you up as tight as ever they can pull you on the triangle.
07:55And then they fix the ropes up.
07:58And then the government says,
08:00All set?
08:01One.
08:02And then it comes like a ton of bricks.
08:10It nearly knocked all your ankles through you.
08:14Knocked all the wind right clean out of you.
08:17It's just like a house falling on you.
08:20People say you can't feel the next one, but I tell you, feel every one.
08:26Well, on the 18th one, I don't think I could have stood any more.
08:35Your back's just like a bullock's liver.
08:40It may sound brutal, but with no cheering crowds,
08:43no revelling in the humiliation, this punishment was seen as progress.
08:48As the 19th century went on, a driving force behind reform
08:52was a new evangelical Christianity.
08:55Once you start getting this increased notion of a benevolent God,
09:00who actually is a loving father who wants to nurture his children,
09:06then, of course, it's a very different model.
09:08Just like God wants to nurture and look after you,
09:12you, therefore, have to do the same thing with those beneath you.
09:16Campaigners targeted uses of corporal punishment in private.
09:21Wife beating became increasingly unacceptable.
09:24The scandal that had most impact was somebody beaten to death by her husband in 1854,
09:31which caused a big furore and a campaign against wife torture.
09:37And the idea that you could beat your wife legitimately became less and less acceptable.
09:43Wives may have had less to fear, but children weren't off the hook.
09:48Corporal punishment was thought particularly suitable for young criminals.
09:52Punishment of youth by caning or birching as a sentence of the court
10:00was actually regarded as quite progressive for the time.
10:03Because the great fear was that a young person would go to prison
10:07and become contaminated.
10:09It was regarded as a more rational option to take a young person
10:14and to cane them rather than send them to prison.
10:18There's still, until very, very late in the century,
10:21this notion that, you know, there is some evil in all of us.
10:26And in order to reap the benefits of the afterlife,
10:29we actually have to have that sinning nature, if you like,
10:33beaten out of us as a child.
10:36It was a view that was to remain prevalent for years to come.
10:41I think there's something to be said for original sins.
10:46No, I think they have to be trained to follow them in the ways of our society.
10:49Most children respond, but there are a few, rebels if you like,
10:53or misfits who do not respond very readily,
10:55and some special attention has to be paid to them.
10:59In the late 19th century,
11:01as other forms of corporal punishment were being banned,
11:04its use in schools actually increased.
11:08The 1870 Education Act introduces public elementary schooling
11:14for the first time, and ten years later, in 1880,
11:17it becomes compulsory for all.
11:19And that period was a very dramatic one,
11:23where school attendance officers literally were dragging children into school.
11:29In elementary schools you have very large classes,
11:33and discipline was a problem for many teachers.
11:38With conflict in the classroom,
11:40and growing pressure on teachers from humanitarian campaigners,
11:44new and powerful justifications grew up for their use of the cane.
11:49The National Union of Teachers in 1900 explicitly forced the government
11:54to retain their right to inflict punishment.
11:58Corporal punishment is necessary, according to lots of these teachers,
12:02for working class children, because they are already brutalised,
12:07that they are used to corporal punishment in their own homes,
12:10and therefore if teachers don't do it, they will be regarded as a soft touch.
12:15It wasn't just about the classroom, this was about the future of the country.
12:21At the beginning of the 20th century,
12:24people are particularly exercised about the question of Britain's place in the world.
12:29They start commenting about the unflogged French,
12:33and the way in which their criminal malpractices reflect their not beating their children.
12:39They talk about the Boers as a worthy opponent in the South African wars,
12:45because they flogged their children in the proper British way.
12:49So it gets tied in with the idea of a training in imperial masculinity.
12:54Corporal punishment is required for people in public schools,
12:59because you have to harden them for the empire,
13:02you have to harden them for public service.
13:04It teaches them these vital traits that they are supposed to,
13:09they require, if they are to lead.
13:13Where better to see this training in practice than at Eton College,
13:18training ground for the leaders of empire.
13:20The 4th of June at Eton.
13:22On this great day, the college presents itself to its own world
13:25as its own world likes best to think of it,
13:27as the preserve of the English ruling class
13:29and the source of most of their virtues.
13:31This is what used to be called the top drawer.
13:34To most of these people,
13:36it would be unthinkable to send their son anywhere else.
13:44When Eton opened its doors to the cameras for the first time in 1964,
13:48corporal punishment was still central to the school's ethos.
13:52The ultimate sanctions of this society are, of course, punishments of one sort or another.
13:58Members of library can give lines,
14:01and the captain of the house can beat boys,
14:03but nowadays only by permission of his housemaster.
14:05Private schools educated large numbers of the elite,
14:10and it's that sentiment of what I had experienced was good for me
14:19because it made me the man I am today
14:21that has helped to sustain the belief in corporal punishment
14:24and therefore support for the practice.
14:27The only useful thing I ever learnt at Eton was to take a beating.
14:31We didn't feel degraded at all by it.
14:34We took it as a natural course of events.
14:50At Eton, as in the rest of society,
14:52corporal punishment went hand-in-hand with a strict hierarchy.
14:56Eight tins of peaches and a pound of sugar, please?
14:58Yes.
14:59Right, thank you.
15:00OK.
15:01These two sixth formers, one an opiton and one a colleger,
15:05act as the headmaster's representatives for one week.
15:08They're called preposteres.
15:10During their week of duty, they do no school work.
15:13What they're concerned with now is the bill,
15:15the list of boys who are summoned to see the headmaster.
15:22The preposteres are very much aware
15:24that they're the chief magistrates' representatives.
15:26No knocking on doors.
15:27No knocking on doors.
15:31This road to this division, sir,
15:34you can see the headmaster at four to past twelve.
15:39The masters beat people.
15:41In addition to that, the boys beat each other.
15:44People fag for each other.
15:45They start as servants and end up as masters.
15:48They start off by being beaten for their own good
15:50and then beating people for their good.
15:53So there's a kind of self-replicating notion
15:57that beating is great and beating goes on.
16:00What kind of life you have at Eton depends very largely
16:02on the kind of boys you have at the top of your house.
16:05Under an enlightened captain of the house,
16:07life can be very pleasant.
16:09But with an unenlightened boy and a bad housemaster,
16:12it could be a misery.
16:14What went for Eton went for other public schools.
16:17The usefulness of corporal punishment was rarely questioned.
16:21Yes?
16:22Can I beat Dormitory Four for pillow fighting after a light, sir?
16:25Who caught them?
16:26I did, sir.
16:27Have they had a warning?
16:28Yes, several times for talking, sir.
16:30And they've been warned for riding as well?
16:31Yes, sir.
16:32Right, carry on. You'd better beat them.
16:34Thank you, sir.
16:35These schools are closed societies.
16:38You pay a large amount of money to send your children there,
16:41and as a consequence of being there,
16:43they become part of a sort of club or social order.
16:46So the inclination of everyone connected to the school
16:49is that the school should run itself as it pleases,
16:53and no-one should interfere.
16:55Outside the public school tradition,
16:57quite different ideas were circulating
16:59about the correct way to train a child.
17:02Oh, Lindsay! Come on, Sophie!
17:07From the early 20th century,
17:09child psychologists had been arguing against corporal punishment.
17:13They were eager to spread the word.
17:15The vast majority of parenthood books argued
17:19if you hurt a child as part of your educational process,
17:25you gave the child a belief
17:27that hurting was what you did to other people
17:30when they had done something wrong.
17:32You thus created cruelty and violence
17:35rather than preventing it.
17:37What about children, though?
17:39If you had them, and when they were naughty,
17:41what would you do with them?
17:43Oh, just give them a scrub.
17:46From psychology studies to parenting books,
17:51the dominant message was that corporal punishment was wrong.
17:54It wasn't a deterrent,
17:56and it could confuse the child.
17:58By the 1960s, those keen to educate parents
18:01had a voice on television.
18:03We tell them all sorts of things,
18:05lots of things, don't do this, don't do that,
18:07and they have to try and make sense
18:09of everything we tell them.
18:11And what does your mummy do
18:12when she sees all these bed covers all over the place
18:15and all the bed turned upside down?
18:17What does she do?
18:18Give us a smack.
18:19She does?
18:20Yeah.
18:21And does it stop you doing it again?
18:23No.
18:24No?
18:25Yes, it does.
18:26It stops you?
18:27Does it stop you, John?
18:28No, not so much.
18:30It doesn't stop you so much?
18:32He gets two smacks if he does it again.
18:35Supposing your mummy were to explain to you why it's wrong.
18:38Do you think that would help?
18:40Yes.
18:41Why?
18:42I don't know why.
18:43You don't know why?
18:44Don't you think smacking us is good?
18:46Or do you think it's better to explain to you?
18:49I think explaining would be a good way.
18:52Why do you think it would be a good way?
18:55Well, it would show why you shouldn't do it.
19:00Maybe it would stop you from doing it.
19:03You think so?
19:04Yes.
19:07But the methods advocated on TV and in the books did not always find favour with the parents.
19:14Even though the evidence put forward by child psychologists in particular very, very strongly suggest that corporal punishment is ineffective and probably is counterproductive, actually a lot of parents are not taking that on board.
19:29What's the worst thing that can happen to any of you if you've done something wrong?
19:34A daddy smack.
19:35Yeah.
19:36A daddy smack?
19:37Yeah, not the mummy smack.
19:38Well, mummy smack's quite hard, but guess what a daddy's like?
19:42There's this hostility or anxiety about, well, who are they to tell me what to do?
19:48This is the way my mother did it. This is the way my father did it. That this is passed down through the generations and somehow these child psychologists are intervening into the domestic sphere in a way that they do not have the right to do.
20:03John Ladbury and his wife have four young children, beat the children when they misbehave.
20:12Children, it's bath time.
20:15Caning is an effective deterrent. The gentle approach, they believe, is a useless one. But do the Ladburys admit to being the strictest?
20:25Oh, I think so. Yes, we are very strict. In as much as, well, I should think we come under the heading of the older discipline.
20:34Oh, I don't know.
20:35Well, we do use the cane.
20:37Oh, yes, indeed.
20:38We do cane.
20:39Yes, yes, yes.
20:40Or what sort of thing?
20:41Well, when they get, hooliganism is a thing we can't tolerate. I mean, when they start leaping about on furniture and that sort of thing, I mean, we'll warn them several times.
20:52And if they continue, we'll then bend over. And we cane them.
20:56How hard do you cane them?
20:58Well, it stings, but, you know, it's not, you know, it hurts me more than it does then, I'm sure.
21:06But they have a little weep, and then they're quiet, and they sleep, and the next morning it's all forgotten.
21:12Are you sure it's all forgotten the next morning?
21:15Well, they don't seem to, they never mention it, they never seem to...
21:20Well, even if it isn't, so what?
21:24Mother and father are the head of the household. What right do these outsiders have to come and tell us what we should be doing within our four walls?
21:34Is there anything your mummy and daddy do that you don't like?
21:38Yeah, something what I really don't like, when they smack me. Mmm, naughty boy.
21:46Corporal punishment remains such a normal part of life, that in popular culture, it took on a distinctly humorous flavour.
21:55In its comic representations, corporal punishment is kind of the risk that a high-spirited boy runs.
22:05So, Dennis the Menace always gets the slipper because he's a menace, but, you know, we love him for being so.
22:12Only creeps don't get beaten.
22:15In the 1950s, there's no doubt that corporal punishment was associated with jokes.
22:20I mean, in writing, there's Molesworth, you know, Down With School, 1953, which I can still remember had a page, Canes I Have Known.
22:28And they've all got different names, they're different types, and they're all drawn for you.
22:33And it was hilarious, you know, there's Old Faithful, which is the standard cane, there's the one with the swishy end, there's the one with the telescopic sight on it,
22:41there's the one that's like a sort of wonderful carbon fibre fishing rod, and those are canes I have known.
22:46And it goes with torches and grips of the masters, you turn over, and there's the clipping someone with a ruler, or a punch that the numbskull hit, and all this other thing.
22:54And it was thought to be hilarious, you know, with lots of cartoons by Ronald Searle.
22:58And that coincides with, well, a little bit later, Wacko on television.
23:02I'll hear no more of it! Don't argue with me, boy!
23:05In this school, I am the law.
23:08Le loi, c'est moi.
23:11C'est Jim, le loi.
23:14Yes, and I am not only the judge, I'm also the jury, and I'll tell you something else I am.
23:19I heard you say that!
23:21All right, fat pig or not, my boy.
23:25I will not stand for insubordination.
23:27You will all report to my study immediately after prep for a dose of Jim's immaculate magical cure-all.
23:36Looks like we've only made things worse.
23:38Billy Bunter, whose beatings at the end of almost every story at the hands of Mr. Quelch, are regarded by the storyteller as jolly good comeuppance.
23:51You know, we're not supposed to think, I fear, poor Billy Bunter, what an awful school.
23:57Somebody give him some psychotherapy.
23:59We're supposed to think, what a coward!
24:02Just typical of him.
24:04Just hold on!
24:05You're wasting time, Bunter, turn round!
24:08The laughter seemed to precede a change of mood.
24:10In the 1960s, the anti-corporal punishment message suddenly reached a new audience.
24:15Turn round!
24:16In the funny way that popular culture reflects things, there's something going on that creates anxiety around corporal punishment.
24:22Well, the film Spare the Rod, 1961, is about a supply teacher, played by Max Bygrave, Mr. Saunders, who arrives in a school in the east end of London.
24:31Worrell Street School, difficult school.
24:33There's a scene at the beginning of the film where Saunders comes in and is first introduced to the headmaster.
24:38The hard-bitten, cynical Donald Pleasance, the chain-smoking and coughing Donald Pleasance, who's under great pressure to hold this school together.
24:46And the idealism of the new man, the supply teacher, is completely contrasted with this guy who's been in the business all his life.
24:53He sees it almost as a battle to keep discipline.
24:56Always cane on the left hand, then need the other for righting.
24:59Unless, of course, you have to give two strokes, then it can't be helped.
25:01Yes, I see.
25:02And make sure the arm is held out horizontally, then if you miss the hand, there's no risk of catching them across the body.
25:06You can't be too careful.
25:08Oh, by the way, when you cane them, you have to enter it in the punishment book.
25:13Thank you. If you don't mind, I'd like to try a few other methods first.
25:16Well, that's up to you, of course. If you can get along without it, so much the better.
25:19But with Class 2, I don't think you've got very much chance.
25:23Most school films are on the side of tradition.
25:27This completely reverses that from the word go.
25:29Newfangled is good, and old traditional is bad, because actually it's got sour and cynical, doesn't believe in themselves, no self-esteem, and doesn't believe in the children either.
25:39There's a boy in class, played by Richard O'Sullivan, called Harkness, who begins to understand and identify with the Max Bygraves character.
25:48But there's a riot in the classroom, and the perpetrators of the riot say, why isn't Harkness getting beaten as well?
25:54What about Harkness, then? Yeah, what about Harkness? He was shouting, too.
25:58Yeah, what about Harkness? He was making more noise than anybody.
26:01Bet you don't cane him. Seat is fit. Blue eyes. Yes.
26:05Be quiet!
26:07All right, come on, you too, Harkness.
26:10Actually, Harkness was trying to stop the others from rioting, but Bygraves doesn't know that, so he whacks him as well as the others.
26:27Sit down.
26:32So you haven't just got resorting to the cane, you've got injustice as well.
26:36All the gains that have been made in the first half of the film of getting this boy's confidence are completely shattered in that moment.
26:42And the injustice of it, the resorting to the cane, the fact that Bygraves didn't believe him, all those things come through and it's snapped.
26:50There's no trust between teacher and student anymore. It's a very important moment.
26:54Why did you join him with them? Against me?
26:57I didn't know. I was trying to shut him up.
27:02Should have known that, shouldn't I?
27:06You should, shouldn't you?
27:10The film's moral is clear. The use of the cane is destructive, embittering. It creates rebellion.
27:16It was a view that would be represented even more vividly in the 1968 film If.
27:22You three have become a danger to the morale of the whole house.
27:26By the time of If, it's a State of the Nation movie almost. It's not just about the school. It's about the establishment. It's about rebellion. It's about how the establishment sustains itself through violence.
27:37You should be prepared to set an example of responsibility.
27:40You're a nuisance.
27:41You're pathetic.
27:42And as such, you must be punished.
27:43And my goodness, they really go for it. It is a terrifying scene. In fact, at the time, I remember reviewers actually compared it with the Gestapo, that scene.
27:54You know, it's like a scene in a concentration camp movie. Not just because of the thrashing, but because you've got the horizontal bars in the gym.
28:03You've got the boys going in. And when Travis goes in, Malcolm McDowell, he puts out his hands on the horizontal. It's clearly a crucifixion that's going on.
28:10I mean, that's, you know, very clear. So it's much more than just a flogging.
28:14Wait till I'll turn. Sit down.
28:38Sit down.
28:44Sit down.
28:51This is a ritual humiliation, and it's going to sew the scenes in revolve. So you get the beating, and then dissolve resistance is the next chapter heading. That is the last straw.
29:04In the 60s, they did talk about collapse into disorder if it disappeared. But then there were films like Lindsay Anderson's If,
29:13that indicated the opposite, that it actually caused a collapse into disorder.
29:18If's final scene was always meant to be a fantasy. Travis, the revolutionary, fighting the massed forces of the establishment with their obsession with tradition and discipline. But the potential for corporal punishment to lead to rebellion was beginning to be played out in reality.
29:37In 1972, school children took to the streets.
29:44At Trafalgar Square, May 17th, the forces of law and order on standby for trouble, ready to turn away a march of London school children organised by the school's action union. Among those demonstrating are many who say they're angry at being treated by teachers as though they were less than human. Some young people here see the movement as a way of bringing the class struggle into the classroom.
30:06The school strikes were initially about, they were very much issue based and had some very specific aims which were very relevant to all children in schools really.
30:18It's just not the uniform, it's the caning that matters.
30:22Corporal punishment was very significant to the campaign. In public schools there was always the history of children should get six of the best. But I'm actually not sure it happened as much there as it did in a lot of the state schools, particularly in secondary moderns.
30:35Children from all over London just kept on arriving and there were hundreds upon hundreds of children. So what they did was they split us into groups and they kept herding us all over the place. And the main idea seemed to be to stop us getting into Trafalgar Square.
30:51The demonstration should have taken place here in Trafalgar Square at 11 o'clock, but it didn't because the police cordoned off the square and refused to allow any of the children in. A crowd gathered on the steps at the far side of the square decided to go to Hyde Park.
31:06The demonstration attracted plenty of media interest. From her parents' house in London, Liza Dresner acted as a representative for the school's Action Union.
31:21I can remember a very funny moment when I was asked how many members of the school's Action Union had.
31:27How many members do you have?
31:29We never give out membership figures. It's policy that we don't give out membership figures.
31:32Why not?
31:33We just never have done and we never will do. It's part of our tactics.
31:36And I cobbled together some kind of answer and the fact was we have no idea.
31:39Now if people are never aware how many of us there are, they never know if they've smashed us or not.
31:43But isn't it true that there are grown-ups, not school children in the organisation, who are influencing it all?
31:48No.
31:49Giving their advice?
31:50No, certainly not. I mean obviously we accept advice from everybody. People who respect us, we respect.
31:55All of us got deeply frustrated by the fact that everybody seemed to be looking for these hidden adults.
32:00Because it just carried on this myth that children cannot think.
32:04There's nobody pulling strings, there's no sort of person paying us.
32:08I wish somebody was, we haven't got any money.
32:10But there's no one individual who's paying us and saying, you do our views and we'll give you so much money.
32:17We're just working with school students and teachers fighting for revolutionary change.
32:21We were thinking for ourselves, we were making our own decisions. I'm very proud of the way we reacted during that time.
32:28I think what the SAU did and what the strikes did was bring corporate punishment as an issue to the forefront of discussion.
32:36I think it was extraordinary. I think a lot of the children who came out were extraordinary. They took amazing risks.
32:42Just a year later, inner London schools did abolish the cane, but only in primary schools.
32:51In the judicial system, by contrast, corporal punishment had been banned since 1948.
32:56In the reforming mood of the 1960s, young offenders who might once have been budged were now described as victims of society.
33:04All this created a backlash.
33:07Let Mr Butler get his head out of the fluffy clouds of idealism.
33:12And I say this very seriously. Let him be a man and let him reintroduce corporal punishment to these young offenders.
33:28This is the instrument of punishment and deterrence that people here on Clydeside, many of them, want to see brought back.
33:35Pressing the button.
33:38With growing fears about violent crime and delinquency, calls for a return to the short, sharp shock were frequent.
33:45In Glasgow, a society was formed to bring back the birch.
33:50The members of the society, working actively in the campaign, defended their attitude vigorously.
33:55Let me quote to you what one of those boys said. He said,
33:58Nine times I felt this thing coming down on me and I just screamed and screamed and screamed.
34:03And what a cud he must have been. Because think what he must have done to merit that.
34:08Think of it. And think of some of the people like the policeman who was blinded in the course of his duty.
34:15That's a life sentence that he's got. There's another person I spoke to who has ended in a mental home for life.
34:22When we hear of an atrocious crime, I mean, we hear of an elderly lady taking her pension from the local post office,
34:30knocked to the ground and kicked about the head, a little bit of money stolen.
34:35I think we all have a visceral reaction. Why doesn't somebody punch this person?
34:40Why doesn't this person be subjected to some of the indignities that they have imposed on this innocent person?
34:46I think that that is almost a human instinct.
34:49Why do you want to see the Birch brought back?
34:52Well, I would say my reasons are because at the moment I feel the penalties being imposed for crimes of vicious assault
35:04are not really bringing these assaults to an end. They're not having the desired effect.
35:10It's against this background of increasing crimes of violence that the movement is growing for the reintroduction of the Birch.
35:18It gathered momentum last July after an incident in the Isle of Man when four Glasgow youths of 19 were convicted of assaulting two sunbathers.
35:28And it was a serious assault. One of the sunbathers had his jaw broken and had to have five stitches put in his head.
35:34The youths from Glasgow were fined a total of 80 pounds, but that was not all.
35:39They were taken downstairs and each given nine strokes of the Birch.
35:43This led to enormous publicity here in Scotland and many letters to the newspapers welcoming this use of the Birch.
35:51I think in a case like that, the Birch would be a more effective deterrent than probation.
35:59Birching may have gone from UK courts, but in the Isle of Man,
36:03its use for young offenders increased in the 60s. Many on the mainland looked on with envy.
36:09The Isle of Man is the last place in Europe which allows corporal punishment by the state.
36:14The last place where a policeman can cane a child of eight or birch a boy of 14.
36:20And the reason that birching was retained in the Isle of Man was the Isle of Man wanted to maintain its distinctive image of itself.
36:30Small towns, small communities, offenders come from the outside.
36:35It was a very big holiday resort until quite modern times.
36:39Such disorder as there was came from those ruffians in Liverpool and Merseyside who descended on the island and misbehaved.
36:50The majority of Manx men support the laws on corporal punishment because they fear that the tourists who travel the population during attractions like the TT races bring hooliganism with them.
37:01They see Britain, which they call the adjacent island, as a thug ridden country where no one is safe to walk the streets at night.
37:09They think the birch helps to preserve the Isle of Man as a safe and civilized haven.
37:14And the birching issue is just part of their bid to run the island the way they want without any interference from Britain.
37:21I think people do see it as a feature. I think when I've been across, on many occasions, one of the first things people greet me with,
37:28Oh, you live in the Isle of Man. You've got the birch. You're one of the few civilized places that are left.
37:34But by the late 1970s, the tide was turning against the Isle of Man, at least in Europe.
37:42The European Court of Human Rights was to pass judgment on the birching of a boy for assault.
37:47The Manx people took to the streets to defend the birch.
37:51The big political story comes to a climax tomorrow in Strasbourg, where the Manx birching laws go on trial before the European Court of Human Rights.
37:59And the outcome of this depends future relations between the Manx and British governments.
38:04Do you think it's a civilizing thing that you have corporal punishment, that you inflict pain on other human beings?
38:08Do you think that's civilized?
38:09It's very deserved punishment, and I think it's an excellent idea.
38:13And I think the removal of it will be absolutely disastrous.
38:18Turn around, Rita.
38:20Sorry.
38:24Do you feel that?
38:27Of course you don't.
38:29Enough, enough.
38:30I mean, there's nothing...
38:31There is...
38:32I don't know what all the person bothers about.
38:34This is over in a few seconds, and it's a salutary lesson.
38:38It's a short, sharp lesson, instead of a short, sharp prison sentence, which is costing the country so much money, the prisons are overflowing from Britain.
38:46The Isle of Man's birch rod was actually made of hazel twigs, soaked in salt water to increase their flexibility and strength.
38:54This is a birch rod.
38:57They must not be longer than 40 inches.
39:00The overall weight must not exceed nine ounces, and the open end, when splayed, must not exceed six inches.
39:09The person who is to be punished is brought into this room through this door, and he stands by this table.
39:18He's instructed to unfasten his trousers and drop them to the ground, and he's to lean across the table.
39:28I understand in recent weeks you have changed the rules so that a person may now be birched wearing his trousers. Previously it had to be on the naked buttocks.
39:37Yes, that's quite correct. The rules by the governor have been changed recently to that effect.
39:43But all the people actually birched on the Isle of Man in history were all birched on the naked buttocks.
39:48That's quite true.
39:51Nonetheless, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that birching was degrading.
39:57There were no more birchings on the Isle of Man after 1976.
40:01Meanwhile, in mainland Britain, the attack on school corporal punishment continued.
40:07Anti-caning pressure group STOP has led the campaign to banish all forms of physical punishment from the classroom.
40:14Its secretary is Tom Scott, and he's with us now in our central London studio.
40:18Tom Scott was one of a minority of school teachers who came out against corporal punishment.
40:23I think we started with a moral objection to it. We felt it was a barbaric form of punishment.
40:31There is some evidence to suggest that discipline in the classroom has got much worse.
40:36Is there not, do you think, a case for us to retain it in some circumstances?
40:41No.
40:42Stop was founded in 1968, and to begin with, it struggled to find support.
40:48The teaching unions fought tooth and nail against abolition of corporal punishment.
40:54And the whole atmosphere would be one of, you're a crank if you don't believe in hitting children.
41:00You're a do-gooder. It was very difficult to sort of find any common ground.
41:05By the late 70s, some of the unions were changing their line, but some continued to fight to keep corporal punishment.
41:13Belting works with your youngster, what I would call your reasonably well behaved youngster who perhaps has stepped out of line on a few issues and needs to be brought up sharp.
41:27It's effective with these youngsters.
41:29The whole language was kind of, you know, corporal punishment is administered as a last resort in a reasonable and moderate way.
41:37And then you'd find that this was absolute nonsense.
41:41And I felt we had to make this evident to everyone.
41:45A six-year-old, who had his trousers pulled down by his teacher, in front of the rest of the class, she didn't even use the belt in him.
41:54She took his own sand shoe and walloped his backside with his sand shoe.
41:58And the director of education said, the father complained, the director of education said, the integrity of that teacher cannot be questioned.
42:14From the beginnings of compulsory education, the cane, in Scotland, the belt or Taws, had become tied up with the teacher's professional identity, protection against disorder in the classroom.
42:26We don't need no education.
42:32There is this permanent fear, I experienced it myself as a young teacher, of perhaps losing control over a class.
42:40This was the most dreadful thing that could happen to a teacher, the idea of a class moving out of control.
42:48We don't need no thought control.
42:52It's difficult to explain to anybody that's not been a teacher just how uncomfortable this is.
42:57The knowledge that this group of children is out of control and that other teachers may hear and that people will see that you are failing.
43:07It would almost be like you were in the trenches and teachers would sometimes say, right, once more, answer the breach.
43:18And they would think of it as being that sort of battle, a battle where they'd have to survive.
43:25The cane, rather like a field marshal's battle, in some kind of way, symbolised authority.
43:36Caning depended partly on the compliance of pupils themselves in submitting to it.
43:42Many were actually in favour of its use.
43:44I think they should use the cane for people who've been warned before.
43:48They've had other punishments, detention or suspension or lines, and it just doesn't have any effect on them.
43:54When I went into teaching myself, certainly there was no thought of corporal punishment on my part.
44:01But there was a 15-year-old boy that I was teaching in my first year of teaching and having a lot of trouble with.
44:09He was disruptive, noisy, difficult to teach.
44:14I said, why are you like this? Why are you behaving so badly?
44:17Why are you making the class so difficult for everybody else?
44:20And he said, you should hit us. You ought to hit me.
44:25And I was absolutely stunned. I said, what do you mean?
44:29He said, if you don't hit us, you're not going to get anywhere.
44:33And he made it very clear to me that I look weak.
44:37And that if I didn't do something to rectify the situation, I was never going to get his respect.
44:44Most children want discipline, want authority, want structures.
44:50I'd hate to be suspended. My mum would kill me.
44:52You know, everybody would know you'd been suspended because you weren't in school.
44:57But if you had the cane, it's so quick and sharp that it's over a few seconds.
45:01It wouldn't make an imprint on my memory anyways.
45:05I think you have to keep violent and violent in some cases.
45:07You have to be a bullying in the school.
45:09I think the only way to stop it is through caning.
45:11And if then it doesn't stop it in any set of the school's hands,
45:14I don't think anything else would really act as a deterrent other than caning.
45:18Many pupils, parents and teachers may have defended the cane.
45:24But increasingly, the media was airing the views of the abolitionists.
45:30Why were you called killer?
45:32Well, I was the gentlest of men.
45:33Actually, I never laid a hand on a pupil unless I stumbled in the aisle.
45:38And do you think that schoolmasters, most of them, believe in corporal punishment?
45:41When asked to vote, they vote always to retain the taus and the cane. Why?
45:45Because when you are actually thrashing a child, you don't have to be teaching him.
45:48There you are. You see, you know the ropes too well.
45:52Do you think you have any right to morally dictate to the child its course of conduct?
45:56Do you think you have any right to teach its religion?
45:58Do you think you have to keep on dinning into its head the Christian ethics
46:01when you don't believe in them or subscribe to them yourself?
46:04But of course we have the right to do this.
46:06After all, we are faced with a formless mass of more or less social nuisances.
46:11I mean, you are giving to the child a dignity, an intelligence,
46:14a genius that the child does not have.
46:18Anti-corporal punishment campaigners stop or even given their own program.
46:23Four out of five British schools still use corporal punishment.
46:26In many schools, it is an everyday event.
46:29In most parts of Britain, teachers contain infants, girls and boys of all ages up to 18,
46:34and even the mentally and physically handicapped.
46:37The open door film was kind of one of the first things I got involved in.
46:41It was quite a good opportunity because the whole idea of the open door
46:44was to give editorial control to campaigns.
46:48It was a great way of publicising one's cause.
46:54Is this professional, Mr Jarvis? Or this?
46:57One argument highlighted in the open door film was the possible sexual element in corporal punishment.
47:02It's this common knowledge that there can be a sexual element.
47:06And one sees the sort of spate of pornographic magazines you can buy in Soho.
47:12They make this quite explicit.
47:14And the fact that you can make a lot of money selling these magazines,
47:17and a lot of them are to do with beating in a school context.
47:22If you look at these magazines as all these bare buttocks,
47:25and people are generally enjoying themselves supposed to be.
47:29Now, all we're saying here is that there is a sadomasochistic element running throughout society,
47:36and if you want to develop that sadomasochistic element,
47:40the best way of doing it is by beating children.
47:43Which was one that the adherents of beating hated it whenever we made that argument.
47:50The idea that punishing children could affect their sexual instincts was nothing new.
47:57Particularly influential were the ideas of a 19th century psychiatrist working in Austria,
48:02who had written a best-selling book about sexual behaviour.
48:05Richard von Krafthebing was an Austrian psychiatrist,
48:10and in the 1880s he started to write a book called Psychopathia Sexualis,
48:16because he had become interested in the subject of what were then known as sexual perversions.
48:24And there were obviously reasons why people are beginning to start theorising
48:30why people have these sexual interests which don't seem to have anything to do with marriage and reproduction
48:37and kind of normal heterosexuality.
48:41And he creates the term sadism based on the name of the Marquis de Sade,
48:47whose writings were of course well known by that time,
48:50and masochism which is based on the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacha Masoch,
48:56who had written the famous Venus in Furs,
49:00which is a novel about a man who becomes a sex slave of a woman in furs with a whip.
49:07SHINY SHINY SHINY SHINY SHINY
49:11SHINY BOOTS OF LEATHER
49:13WITH PLANCHED GIRL CHILD IN THE DARK
49:19Sadomasochistic practices existed well, well before the invention of the term.
49:26So, you know, you get pornography, for example, of the 18th century in England,
49:31is very, very sadomasochistic.
49:34Craft Abing collected not only tales of sadomasochistic fantasies, but also images.
49:41This is, you've got here, you've got a man who's on all fours.
49:46I guess it's what they would call pony play, where he's being a horse for her.
49:51Well, there is a long, long history of the idea that some people get off on flagellation.
49:58One of the restoration comedies, there's a character who goes to a prostitute who is essentially a dominatrix
50:05to get his kind of erotic flogging.
50:08And she kind of says, well, you know, how did you get to have this rather peculiar taste?
50:14And he says, oh, I learnt it at Westminster School.
50:17So that connection between corporal punishment in the school context and the later kind of fetish,
50:27was established clearly quite early on.
50:29But the theories of the late 19th century added another dimension to all this,
50:36and were quickly taken up by the early campaigners against corporal punishment.
50:41There's this argument that, well, you're getting pleasure from cruelty,
50:46but of course you may not be aware of it consciously.
50:48So this makes people very, very uneasy.
50:51There's this notion also that sexuality is not something necessarily innate,
50:55that sexuality can change.
50:57It can be confused.
50:59It can be perverted by outside forces.
51:02And corporal punishment is one of the ways that you can actually pervert a child's sexuality.
51:11Ideas about the effect of corporal punishment on psychological make-up
51:15may have been part of some of the earliest abolitionist campaigns,
51:18but it took until the late 20th century for such ideas to really take hold.
51:24One very important reason why corporal punishment went out of fashion was the link
51:29that's increasingly being made between physical pain and psychological pain.
51:34And increasingly those two things are tied together.
51:39So in other words, the infliction of physical pain is not only bad in and of itself,
51:45but it is also bad because it creates psychological pain.
51:49And that notion of the psychological self, the inner self,
51:53that can be harmed by these external things impacting or happening to it,
51:59is a very, very modern phenomenon.
52:02By the late 70s, there were well-publicised cases of children refusing punishment,
52:07often with intimations of psychological harm.
52:10I've been away from school four weeks nearly, nearly four weeks.
52:17I was meant to go to a detention, but I kept on avoiding it,
52:22because I knew that I'd already done it.
52:24But they wouldn't have that, so they was going to give me the cane.
52:28So I told them no.
52:30Because every time I do have it, I get ill and I end up taking tablets and that.
52:35It feels I'm taking valium to calm me down because of my nerves.
52:40I kept getting nerve rashes.
52:42Then I'm asking, oh, I've lost two stones since June.
52:45I always know when Susan's been caned, when she comes home from school,
52:49because she's in a very distressed condition.
52:52A medical view of pain had come to dominate.
52:55Something to be cured and alleviated.
52:58The notion that a little pain might help form the character seemed outdated.
53:05Once the underpinning of corporal punishment,
53:09with the idea that it does good to the person who suffers, passes away,
53:13it is very hard to find a clear rationale for beating children in schools.
53:19It begins to look simply like sadistry when one person beats another.
53:25Corporal punishment would finally be brought to an end in British state schools
53:31by a case that emerged in Scotland.
53:34In Edinburgh, a few years ago, they tried to keep a record
53:37of how many times the strap was used in a term.
53:40They got to 10,000 and after that they stopped counting.
53:44With the staggering frequency of beating in Scottish schools,
53:47unjust excesses inevitably occur.
53:50Mass beltings of whole classrooms.
53:52A seven-year-old strapped for opening a door for a teacher,
53:55something only monitors were supposed to do.
53:58When two boys refused to be beaten and were suspended from school,
54:02their parents took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
54:06The judges at Strasbourg ruled that to allow any form of physical punishment
54:10against the wishes of the parents was a violation of human rights.
54:14But the result wasn't an immediate ban on corporal punishment in Britain.
54:18The government's decided corporal punishment should continue in English and Welsh schools.
54:24But new laws will be passed to enable parents to insist that their children aren't beaten.
54:30But the government's opponents say the new laws will create confusion and injustice in the classroom.
54:36There was indeed confusion.
54:40So much so that in 1986 a bill to completely abolish corporal punishment went to the House of Commons.
54:48The government doesn't really know what to do about it.
54:51This is a Conservative government in the 1980s.
54:54Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.
54:56In the past she's declared herself in favour of judicial flogging.
55:01She's in favour of hanging.
55:03She's not going to lead a government that's going to abolish corporal punishment in schools if she can help it.
55:10It was a free vote and it could not have been closer.
55:13230 MPs voted to retain corporal punishment in state schools.
55:18The number voting for a ban was 231.
55:21The change in the law was partly thanks to the royal family.
55:26More or less everything is now set for the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.
55:31A short time ago...
55:32There was a royal wedding taking place the next day between Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.
55:38And a number of MPs, I believe about a dozen MPs, were actually sort of held up because of the crowds queuing to get a good place.
55:47About 12 Tories claimed that they were held up by the crowds and they couldn't get there.
55:52And also, even Mrs Thatcher wasn't able to vote against abolition because she was entertaining Ronald Reagan's wife.
56:03Corporal punishment was only outlawed in independent schools in 1999.
56:08And today, the debate goes on over smacking in the home, the only arena in Britain in which corporal punishment survives.
56:21Over the past 200 years, there have been many arguments in favour of corporal punishment.
56:26But in Britain, these ideas have slowly been pushed aside.
56:29Certainly, the side that says you should not hit have won the day.
56:33There's no question about that. They have definitely won.
56:36The fate of a 2005 legal challenge by religious schools confirmed the prevailing attitude.
56:43The schools argued corporal punishment was an expression of religious belief.
56:48But the House of Lords ruled that the right to hold the belief does not confer the right to act on that belief.
56:54Legislators have reacted to the views of psychologists and campaigners and responded to the changing notions of childhood, crime and human rights.
57:03But have we really changed?
57:05I think we are more squeamish, understanding, watchful, better informed society.
57:11And we don't have alibis like religion, for example, to justify the violence upon other people's bodies.
57:19But we are still the old Adam. We are still the basic, timely, curious, violent people, I think, that our ancestors were.
57:29For many people in Britain and throughout the world, the arguments that once justified corporal punishment are still valid.
57:38So could it return?
57:40It would be quite impossible for corporal punishment school beatings to come back, partly because of the European Convention on Human Rights,
57:47which is now enshrined in British or English and Welsh and Scottish law.
57:53I cannot imagine a return to corporal punishment in our society because it has been increasingly delegitimised.
58:03Now, that said, I have to say I was sort of hesitant because, of course, I think most people would have said that about torture.
58:11Most of us would have said, not that long ago, a few years ago, that it was impossible to consider that torture would come back in the Western world.
58:22So, you know, as an historian, I think we never want to say never.
58:27Human rights laws may make this behaviour effectively unlawful today, but laws change.
58:34There may be more to come in the history of corporal punishment.
58:39To challenge your views and learn more about the justice system, go to bbc.co.uk forward slash justice and follow the links to The Open University.
58:52Sports Stranger's Crimes is unpicking the facts and theories about the disappearance of the racehorse Shergar.
58:59Narrated by Vanilla Rice, download the BBC Sounds app to listen now.
Be the first to comment