Bad Thoughts and ‘Therapeutic Justice’

After nearly a decade of writing about the political correctness madness into which Britain is plunging, I still find belief and reason taken captive by lunacy beyond the capacity of satire.

The country was sickened and horrified by the murder of a young soldier, Lee Rigby, by two Islamicist fanatics in a Woolwich street last May. A 49-year-old woman, Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, comforted Rigby as he lay dying, though the killers were still standing over him with bloody knives. She then delayed the killers until they were arrested. Details were not published at the time so as not to prejudice the trial.

She was praised by Prime Minister David Cameron for her actions that day, and dubbed “The Angel of Woolwich.” She received several awards for her bravery. A former teacher, Girl Guide leader, mother of two and a practicing Catholic, she has a long record of community service.

Recently she and her house have been attacked by gangs of local youths, apparently because she had appeared on television and is half French, although a fervent English patriot.

In October, 2013, a group of young boys began pelting her three-bedroom home, where she lives alone, with eggs and stones. When she went outside to reprimand them, she claims police threatened to arrest her for breach of the peace. Loyau-Kennett said was so traumatised by the incident that she fainted and an ambulance had to be called.

A few days ago she got into a row with a pharmacist who she told in the heat of the moment to work in Nigeria, not England. After this “racist rant” she was detained, not under any criminal provisions but under the Mental Health Act, intended to cope with dangerous lunatics. She was in an asylum for three days, then “released into the care of the National Health Service.”

Deeming overt or implied politically-incorrect opinions to be an indication of mental illness meriting incarceration for an indefinite period of time was, of course, a hallmark of therapeutic jurisprudence in the latter days if the Soviet Union.