Julia M at Ambush Predator's heart is – as always – in the right place. Her scorn for the ritual public sector response to the cruel abuse, torture and death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is palpable and justified. Our "servants" in the Deep State indeed played a role and their meaningless mantra of "lessons will be learned" is truly sickening.

 

Six year old Arthur was murdered by a wicked stepmother worthy of the Brothers Grimm. She was egged on in tormenting him by Arthur's father, who was besotted by her. The couple took good care of her children, so there's no question that they were capable of better. They alone are to blame for what they did, for their lies to social workers and for their exclusion of those (like the child's grandmother and uncle) who might have protected him.

 

Arthur's wider family blame Solihull Council's social workers. Perhaps those functionaries could have done more or better, but he might have had a better chance if they did not exist at all. This story illustrates perfectly how the British State has elbowed aside those in the family and community who would otherwise often have done a better job. The Welfare State's pledge to take care of us all from cradle to grave is, and always was, that most meaningless of all promises – an election slogan. 

 

Election slogans persuade voters to give up their rights and responsibilities to an all-caring, all-embracing, all-controlling state. They farm voters by creating "jobs" for those most likely to vote for an even bigger state and rewarding them with average pay in excess of that earned by the productive voters who pay for it all. The promise is that all these farmed voters will serve and protect us. Yet what do we actually get?

 

The social workers were easily sent packing with a stupid lie. Poor Arthur had an uncle who worried about him and wanted to intervene. Our "servants" in the police force service (there to protect us, right?) threatened him with arrest if he intervened. His grandmother feared for his welfare but the wicked stepmother was easily able to exclude her and the state would have supported the killer if she'd forced her way in. 

 

People who have to be paid to care for you don't. In this world, the best hope of help you have if you're in trouble is your family or your friends. The underlying evil of the Welfare State is that it displaces family, friends and neighbours. It reduces us all, psychologically, to children under its protection. It prevents the development of responsible adults who care naturally for others, without being paid to do so. It infantilises those who might have protected vulnerable infants like Arthur.

 

This is not to say that children weren't abused, tortured or killed before the Welfare State was invented. There were always evil people amongst us, but I wonder if more victims were not saved then than now.

 

My grandfather once asked my uncle's school friend about his black eye. When told that the boy's father regularly beat him when he tried to prevent him abusing his mother, my grandad didn't call the police or social services. He turned to my grandmother and said "make up a bed, he lives here now." When the boy's father turned up on the doorstep, drunk and raging, grandad (a war cripple, but still feisty) sent him packing. The boy grew up with my family.

 

Ask yourself how that story would end today. With my grandfather in jail, probably. Our modern police are tough with the law-abiding who pose them no threat and weak with the evil ones who do. More likely, conditioned by decades of Welfare State, grandad (hard though it is for me to imagine, knowing him as I did) would have just relied on the authorities to deal with it. I can't envisage – thinking of poor Arthur – that would have led to a better outcome.

 

Before the Welfare State, people knew that there was no-one but them to solve the problems they saw around them. Families, neighbours, vicars and priests were far more inclined to intervene and the police would not threaten them if they did. There were churches and charities staffed by volunteers motivated, not by an above-average salary, job security regardless of performance, and a pension guaranteed by state extortion taxes but by actual, honest caring. 

 

If Arthur's uncle or grandmother had not relied (as the law encourages them to do) on state "carers" and if they had ignored the police threats, he might live in safety today. Sadly given the woeful history of state children's homes in the U.K., he might also now be suffering abuse at the hands of other state employees.

 

How many times do we have to read such stories before we realise the Welfare State is a wicked con trick? It exists, not to serve us, but to provide jobs to the mediocrities we so regularly hear reciting the "lessons will be learned" mantra.  If we really care about vulnerable children like Arthur, we will demand changes to the law to allow access rights to wider family. We will give families back their confidence to intervene when children are suffering. The solution to the failings of the state cannot always – surely – be more state?