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The Public Enquiry Experience Could Learn From Medieval Punishments

by Joanna Gray
30 May 2024 7:00 PM

A medieval whipping post and stocks still remain outside the churchyard of the village where I grew up. My great-grandfather could remember the stump from the ducking stool that once lowered local ‘scolds’ into the pond. I used to sit, bored, in church ignoring the vicar, reading the Book of Common Prayer, fascinated by the service: “A Commination, or denouncing of God’s anger and judgements against sinners,” where, “Such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be more afraid to offend.”

I was reminded of all of this when watching Simon Case limp into the Covid Inquiry the other day. For surely, a public enquiry is our modern day equivalent of the stocks and whipping post, where perceived wrong-doers are publicly humiliated. We delight in the tears of Paula Vennells, show collective disgust at the findings of the infected blood inquiry and tut righteously as Case reveals the Government failed to tell the public about alternatives to lockdown. The Commination service includes the chilling line: “Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent.” Couldn’t that apply to a great number of public figures?

Yet what the medieval church understood and we have perhaps forgotten is the importance of using the public humiliation of individuals to inspire better behaviour from everyone else. A line in the Commination service reads: “Being admonished of the great indignation of God against sinners, ye may the rather be moved to earnest and true repentance; and may walk more warily in these dangerous days; fleeing from such vices.”

It is of course far too easy to blame Ken Clarke for the infected blood catastrophe, Paula Vennells for the Post Office scandal and Cummings, Gove and Cain for lockdowns. The harsher truth is recognising our own errors and understanding that we are all in some ways responsible for the great vices of our times. 

“I haven’t done anything wrong – don’t get me involved,” my husband shouts over his gin and tonic. That’s of course what we all think. But that can’t possibly be true.

I remind him that he went along with those mask mandates, and I once ran a green initiative for a magazine I used to edit, encouraging everyone to sign up to smart meters in order to reduce their energy bills – ye gods! What balderdash. Neither Vennells, Clarke or the lockdown crew could have succeeded without willing accomplices ‘just doing their job’, ignoring obvious errors or going along with mad ideas in order not to make a fuss.

Our humdrum daily actions may not lead us to the stocks and whipping post of a public enquiry, but it is surely worth a pause to contemplate what we are still doing today, in our private or working lives, that allows greater evils to flourish. 

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.

Tags: Book of Common PrayerLockdown InquiryMedieval PunishmentsSimon Case

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17 Comments
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DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago

“Our humdrum daily actions may not lead us to the stocks and whipping post of a public enquiry”

It is certainly worth contemplating what we do ourselves but unlike the big names mentioned above, humdrum daily actions might get you, fined, imprisoned and have your life ruined for making an honest mistake or in the case of Horizon, being intentionally blamed for someone else’s.

45
-1
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

I recommend you watch the World’s best ever rant by Glenn Beck [5 mins] complaining that despite all the best efforts nothing happens, no one is held to account for their actions.

Except for the innocent, who took the Covid jabs or the Post Office workers wrongly convicted by a barristers and bent judicial system.

I have to confess that the multiple prosecutions of Donald Trump are one exception the Biden administration has achieved but like Karim Khan KC’s actions over Israel in the ICC it is politically motivated.

7
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JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago

Or even modern ones, in some parts of the world – even down to public executions. Allegedly to encourage the others etc.

14
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

I agree entirely. The culture doesn’t just rot from the head it is countless numbers of acts or complacencies born of vice. It is always easier to look the other way. Just let yourself sag in the face of human weakness. Always easier to be smug about yourself and therefore assume that you have arrived already. And then when you consider as well the venality of a lot of people. If you have ever worked in something like fraud investigation you will see the utter callousness and nihilism of some people. And a shamelessness and lack of caution that suggests deep rot of their moral core. Kant said two things filled him with wonder – the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. This can not be taught it can only come about through movng through the horror of our times.

16
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

The only way I can see a “public inquiry” working is it is highly adversarial with opposing teams of advocates setting a broad agenda with the ability to call witnesses and obtain evidence by force of law (by “working” I mean furthering understanding of a subject).

15
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JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Why not just prosecute them in a Court before a jury?

1
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  JXB

I would be delighted if that happened but the CPS would need to conclude that offences had been committed, that there was a reasonable chance of a conviction and want to go ahead with it- they are not going to do any such thing. But equally no government would allow a team from DS for example to have free rein either in a public inquiry – but maybe a slightly easier sell. In the US there are some Republican lawmakers who were opposed to the Covid scam who have a political incentive to score points and the power to do so. In the U.K. there is nobody like that.

0
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

I think it is best to go to that which forms the fundaments of our being. The Book of Common Prayer speaks to the malady of your age – “We have left undone those things we ought to have done; And we have done those things we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us.” That is what is really about if you are honest with yourself.

16
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

That’s how cultures die. Debased and on their knees and wondering if they went wrong and where they went wrong and what they did to deserve it. This is our last chance to avoid entrance into that downward cascade. Can we reverse nihilism and money worship. If we do escape it wil be by the skin of our teeth.

9
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

If we did face a struggle for our survival how may would be in fighting condition and how many would have the will to figh?. We have no experience of fighting a fierce and determined adversary. There needs to be some humility. We can’t assume that such struggles are beneath us and we will always be top dog. My insitinct is to keep it alive but this spirit has bee whittled and wormed away in a lot of people. I hope we can find some sort of resolution that will enable us to fight.

7
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

People conceive of wartime conditions as if it is the 1940s – rations and air raid warnings. Modern warfare is much more nasty and there are no effective air raid warnings and if you live on an island then you will be forced to find meat in unplesant places. Just look at how pet and wildstock populations declined dramtically in the years of the Depression in the US. And of course there are darker attendant horrors. Ask yourself, if you hadn’t tasted meat in two days, how easy it would be to dispatch your neighbour, put part of him in a chest freezer and then maybe have his ribs for dinner. After two weeks of hunger if you come across another human being your mind will see them as a source of meat and nothing else.

7
-3
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Either you do something or you succumb to this filth and consign your children to it. Sometimes a culture needs a slap around the face. Been jaded for a while but that luxury isn’t there anymore. You either fight or you die.

8
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

The loss of seriousness is a matter of great importance. If you have been given that feeling that nothing serious could happen then you need to be disabused of this notion.It is a matter of your company and your spirit. In a couple of months time you will see and you will curse this complacency.

4
-1
Iain McCausland
Iain McCausland
1 year ago

We are all guilty of feeding the Beast every single day by our use of fiat money; this feeds the debt based global Ponzi scheme that drives the destruction of all that is good.

8
-3
RW
RW
1 year ago

Whatever is pushed onto them, a majority of the so-called common people will go along with it at a level between enthusiasm and lip service and try to get along with their lives in the meantime as good as they can. There’s really little else they could do and despite the neverending obsession of those who believe to have been wronged to take it out on someone, no matter how insignificant and powerless that someone happens to be, it’s always the leaders who are responsible and not the herd which follows them.

7
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Old Brit
Old Brit
1 year ago

In the current climate of national flagelation over everything we are supposed to be guilty of, I’m not sure Joanna Gray will get many subscribers.
There is an area that could do with attention, though, that affects every one individually, which is whether language is meaningful. We probably assume it is, and that the growth of the status of language and communication from the printing press to the Internet and social media has been the socialisation of meaning. Is this true ?

1
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Moral hazard. Those in Government, bureaucracy or in an advisory capacity know they are free of any cost and consequence for their actions and policies.

There is no self-restraining influence which might limit their actions or persuade them not to proceed.

Until that changes, these situations will continue.

3
0

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